Book excerpt: Mastering Business Administration in Education and African Politics (the Sierra Leone Chapter) This is a revised and improved edition of your book, and as I have already been told, it is quite up-to-date with far more relevant information that address education, educational business, and political issues in Africa in particular, and how these are disturbing educational developments, especially in sub-Sahara and also with suggestions for improvements. According to Mohan Kaul, the co-chairman of Commonwealth Business Council, giving the challenges ahead, governments have realized that it is beyond their capacity and means to achieve the task of improving education for all. However, Patrick Dlamini, Chief Executive of Development Bank of South Africa, sited what has gone wrong with sudden growth of private schooling outside state control. The government is having problems of retaining seasoned teachers. Private schooling is poaching the best of brains from the public schooling system, and the government is left with poor-quality teaching and inexperienced teachers because now the private sector has taken the crme de la crme. How do you balance that? But business is business, and business is about getting the customers what they want and satisfying them most. If African governments are unable to provide what people prefer most, people have the right to choose from existing alternatives so that they can spend their hard earnings on what they want and what can satisfy them most as long as they have the ability and willingness to pay for them. That is the dictation of free-market philosophy. Mohamed Sannoh, Methodist Boys High School, Kissy Mess Mess, Freetown.