In rwanda it’s not easy to get a job,” says Jean-Paul Bahati, a student at Kepler, a college founded in Kigali in 2013. But the 22-year-old believes his course will help him stand out. He studies health-care management, a growing industry in Rwanda. Kepler’s degrees are accredited by Southern New Hampshire University (snhu), which runs one of the largest online universities in America. The first six months are a crash course in skills such as critical thinking, English, communication and it. “I like that Kepler knows what employers want,” says Mr Bahati.
In recent decades millions of young people like Mr Bahati have swelled the number of students in sub-Saharan Africa. Today 8m are in tertiary education, a term that includes vocational colleges and universities. That is about 9% of young people—more than double the share in 2000 (4%), but far lower than in other regions (see chart). In South Asia the share is 25%, in Latin America and the Caribbean, 51%.