The future of education in Africa: A conversation with J-PAL Africa's newest Scientific Advisor

Alex Eble is an associate professor of economics and education at Columbia University's Teachers College, a J-PAL affiliate, and our new Scientific Advisor for J-PAL Africa’s Girls’ Education and Empowerment portfolio. His research focuses on the economics of education in low-income contexts, and the role of parents’ and students’ beliefs and access to information on education decisions and inequality. As Scientific Advisor, Alex works with our team on the ground to guide new research directions and evidence synthesis and advise key policy partners.

We sat down with Alex to discuss his path into education-focused development work, his perspective on where education in Africa is heading, and how he envisions J-PAL Africa contributing to that future in his new role.

Many debates on education policy in Africa center on scale, quality, and limited resources. From your perspective, what role should rigorous evidence play in shaping the future of education systems?

Rigorous evidence is crucial. It can’t be the driving force, but in many cases, it should be a disciplining force for arriving at what is feasible and effective.

Ultimately, education policy comes from two sources: the will of the people, and the laws of what is possible. The role of evidence is to say, “given what the people want and what we could do, what’s the best we can do with the resources we have?”

The role of organizations like J-PAL and its affiliated researchers are to help the world learn more about what that “best” might be. Without that, we’re in a world of just vibes. While there’s a place for aesthetics, at the end of the day, much of human flourishing has come from people having a goal, trying something, measuring how it went, and then trying to do better.

That’s at the heart of what we do, and I think we all work so hard because we see how it holds great promise to amplify humanity’s work to expand human potential through education.

What do you see as the biggest challenges and opportunities for evidence to play such a meaningful role?

I think the biggest challenge is making sure evidence is actually useful to decision-makers. It’s fine to have lots of research on things that researchers find interesting, but if what gets produced is not what people, places, and policymakers need, then it won’t shape decisions in practice.

The opportunity is that, when evidence does meet people where they are, we are in perhaps a uniquely powerful moment in history for it to do big magic. Most of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa are growing more rapidly than they have in a long time, and that, paired with the great promise of technological leapfrogging, will amplify the creativity and ingenuity of people in a way that could transform humanity’s next several centuries.     

Your training spans education and development economics. How has that combination shaped the way you approach real-world education challenges, especially at this moment?

At the end of the day, the rubber has to hit the road. My training in education imposes a nice discipline on economics: for anything we do, it asks: Why do the findings of this research matter, for whom, and by how much? Economics, in turn, provides the rigor needed to test the big claims that people often make.

Educators—and really anyone trying to make a big difference—are often super passionate, and claim big things. Unfortunately, the incentives in the space make it very appealing to make big claims, even if you can’t back them up.

Economics comes in and asks “show me your data, and show me your model of the world.” I think something really special happens when you pair an uncompromising commitment to ambition from education and a ruthless commitment to results from economics.

Throughout your work, you’ve prioritized ensuring research speaks to policy decisions rather than stopping at publication. Where did that commitment come from?

I started off as a development practitioner, and came to economics from the desire to do development better. I care deeply about the research, about finding out how the world works and what does and doesn’t succeed in making it better. Ultimately, though, it’s always in service of the mission of development: to expand human potential, and to minimize human suffering.

How does stepping into the scientific advisor role build on your previous/ongoing research, and how does it extend the way you are thinking about evidence-informed education policy?

In my own work, I’ve been working on taking things that work in RCTs to scale with governments across two continents, and I think that’s given me a pretty unique perspective about moving from RCT-based big wins to policy that makes them bigger.

The new role builds out on this work, and pivots to a bigger challenge. Instead of finding things that could work and evaluating them, we’re trying to look carefully at what we know, and could know, and help to integrate that into systems that affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

What excites you most about the potential for evidence to inform education policy at scale?

What excites me most is that we already have resources and will. The promise of economics is to do better with what we have, and since we are already sitting on a wealth of knowledge and drive, I feel like we have tremendous potential to improve education outcomes at scale.

When you think about the next few years, what would success look like to you in terms of research influencing education policy?

I think if we’re successful, we will have two big wins.

One: we will work with a few governments to go big with a few things we know work, and set them—and the countries who can learn from them—on a path to having the majority of their youth learning, in school, how to read fluently and do complex arithmetic.

Two, we will take a few smart bets evaluating things that could similarly change the game, but are earlier on in the life cycle of ideas.

We hope this two-pronged approach is the best way to accelerate our path to a world where everyone has the skills needed to participate and prosper in the economy of both today and tomorrow.