Education in Africa: An Administrator's Perspective

Introduction Apparel and textile are among of the worlds largest industries.The global fashion apparel industry has surpassed the market size of US$1 trillion since 2013, now it represents nearly 2% of the world GDP, and almost 75% of world’s fashion market is concentrated in Europe, USA, China and Japan. Between 2007 and 2013 the market increased with an average annual growth of 5.1%. Currently, womenswear accounts for 50.0% of the global demand while the remaining market share is divided between menswear (34.5%), clothing accessories (3.9%), babies' garments (2.8%), gloves and mittens (2.3%), headgear (2.0%), other garments (4.1%) and parts of garments and clothing accessories (0.5%). Brazil, China, Italy, Japan and the United States represent the largest apparel markets while the strongest annual growth is forecast to occur in Tanzania (17.5%), Bangladesh (14.3%), Ethiopia (13.4%) and Cambodia (13.1%). What is Fashion Industry? As per britanica.com, Fashi...

Imagine yourself two decades back, when you would have expressed your desire to choose a career in fashion designing like one of your relative, managing a boutique. You would have been scolded by your parents on your aspiration to become like a tailor. I also got scolded when i opted to take a stint into fashion training just after my senior high schools in early 1990s. It was an era when most of the high school graduates were interested or counseled to opt for computer science, medicine or engineering at tertiary level. But thanks to my parents as they agreed for me to opt for designing, which was then emerging in India in 1994 and lot of youngsters (both female and male) were opting fashion, textile and graphic design as full time careers. We suddenly saw a host of private institutions with international tie-ups setting up fashion design schools in major cities with good number of students opting to study there. Now i realise the mantra behind their success in early years. It was t...