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Note: This document is from the archive of the Africa Policy E-Journal, published
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Africa: Education for All, 1
Africa: Education for All, 1
Date distributed (ymd): 000425
Document reposted by APIC
+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
Region: Continent-Wide
Issue Areas: +economy/development+
Summary Contents:
This is one of two postings today containing documents
related to the Education for All theme featured at the
World Education Forum (Dakar 2000), being held in Dakar,
Senegal from April 26-28, 2000. For extensive information on
the Forum see the Forum home page
(http://www2.unesco.org/wef). Information on the regional
meetings and country reports, including the 6-10 December 1999
Sub-Saharan Africa regional meeting and the 24-27 January 2000
Arab States and North Africa meeting can be found at:
http://www2.unesco.org/wef/en-leadup/regmeet.shtm
Additonal related information is at:
http://www.unicef.org/efa/main.htm
The Association for the Development in Education web site is
at: http://www.adeanet.org, and includes a new database of
projects at http://prisme.adeanet.org
Later this week the APIC/ECA Electronic Roundtable will open
its fourth session, on Education and Culture, with initial
panel presentations. To sign up or to review the archive of
earlier sessions, visit the Roundtable home page
(http://www.africapolicy.org/rtable). Additional resources on
education and culture can be found on the Africa Policy web
site at:
http://www.africapolicy.org/featdocs/educ.htm
and
http://www.africapolicy.org/books/educ.htm
The other related posting today has documents from the nongovernmental
Global Campaign for Education.
+++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
EFA (Education for All) Bulletin
No. 38, Education for All in Africa
[Other articles in this issue can be found at:
http://www2.unesco.org/efa/efa_38/05no38bul.htm]
Finding African solutions to African problems
Despite the daunting challenges facing basic education in
sub-Saharan Africa, the continent is finding its own way in
education. And even though resources are limited, there no
shortage of innovation, optimism and courage.
When Evelyn Karidakai, the Liberian Minister of Education,
received the invitation to participate in the global EFA 2000
Assessment nearly two years ago, her first reaction was:
"After seven years of civil war, we have nothing to report".
But to her own surprise Liberia actually had an interesting
Education for All story to tell. Thanks to non-governmental
organizations, religious groups and communities, a number of
schools in Liberia and in refugee camps in neighbouring
countries had managed to stay open throughout the war.
Moreover, the National Teachers Association remained active so
that after the war it was ready to resume its activities and
mobilize teachers both inside and outside the country. "This
made it easier to return to normal and create an environment
for decentralization and innovations," Karidakai says.
Liberia is one of many African countries facing enormous
obstacles to realizing Education for All. Only some ten
countries in Africa are on track to achieve the education
goals they set after the World Conference on Education for All
in 1990. However, during the sub-Saharan African Conference on
Education for All, held in Johannesburg from 6 to 10 December
1999, it became clear that "all is not gloom and doom in
Africa", as one participant expressed it. Twenty-five case
studies of successful country initiatives in education were
presented at the Biennale of the Association for the
Development of Education in Africa (ADEA), which was held
during the EFA conference. These stories confirmed the scope
of innovations taking place in Africa.
"In the past ten years an unprecedented number of education
reforms, programmes and commissions have made education an
issue being discussed in buses and bars," said Gabriel
Mharadze Machinga, Minister of Education of Zimbabwe. "Now
Africa has to show commitment. Africa has to act."
An African Renaissance
Many participants pointed to renewed Afro-optimism and even an
African renaissance. They cited recent economic recovery in
certain countries, the emergence of strategies based on
popular initiatives and new political leadership.
According to the Declaration adopted at the Johannesburg
conference, "the foundation of education systems shall be
built on African values and indigenous knowledge systems aimed
at liberating children, youth and adults from mental and
psychological domination and, at the same time equipping them
with relevant knowledge, attitudes and skills for a dignified
and fulfilling life."
"We must find African solutions to African educational
problems," declared Kader Asmal, Minister of Education of
South Africa.
The EFA 2000 Assessment reveals the enormity of the challenges
facing sub-Saharan Africa.
The number of wars and internal conflicts have escalated in
the past ten years, today nearly a third of the forty-five
countries in sub-Saharan Africa are embroiled in international
or civil wars. As a result, nearly a third (some 6.5 million)
of the world's refugees live in Africa.
Meanwhile, Africa has the highest population growth rate (2,6
per cent) and the fastest urban growth rate (4,3 per cent) in
the world, intensifying problems of poverty, unemployment and
distress.
The debt burden is another major obstacle, shifting
much-needed resources from social spending to debt repayments.
Africa counts some thirty of the world's forty-two
heavily-indebted countries and many participants expressed
hope that the newly expanded Heavily Indebted Poor Countries
initiative (HIPC) will accelerate debt relief efforts to more
countries and succeed in linking debt relief to poverty
reduction. Poor governance across the continent and lack of
transparency are also cited as major problems.
"This has been aggravated by the negative impact of a global
system which is biased against third world countries, while
the HIV/AIDS pandemic has had devastating effects on
development in general and education in particular," the
Johannesburg Declaration states.
The impact on education
The forty-five African country reports prepared for the EFA
2000 Assessment show that governments have primarily focused
on expanding access to education in the past decade. While
some forty million African primary school-age children are out
of school, at least 20 million more school-age children are in
school today compared to 1990.
Countries such as Cape Verde, Malawi, Mauritius, South Africa
and Zimbabwe have achieved primary enrolment rates of 90 per
cent or more. The synthesis report prepared for the conference
indicates that government policy can have an immediate effect.
In Uganda, for example, where primary education was given free
for four children per family in 1997, enrolment doubled from
2.6 million to 5.2 million in two years.
"The best results have occurred in countries that were already
on the right track in 1990," says Pape Sow, co-author of the
synthesis report. "Countries such as Angola and the Central
African Republic, where civil strife has set the agenda, have
seen their education system stagnating or even deteriorating."
African women have still to benefit from improvements, though.
The gender gap is not any narrower, despite the fact that
girls' education now figure high on most governments' agendas.
Existing policies have been revised and new initiatives
introduced in many countries to create a girl-friendly
environment in schools. Benin introduced a bill in 1993 that
exempted girls in rural areas from paying school fees. In
Eritrea, up to 300 female teachers have been trained over the
past few years to boost girls' enrolment, and many governments
in sub-Saharan Africa are now allowing young mothers back to
school after childbirth.
"The lack of progress in closing the gender gap is mainly due
to traditional beliefs and practices," says Ko-Chih Tung,
Assessment co-ordinator in Eastern and Southern Africa. "Girls
may be expected to help look after home and siblings and
forced to marry young, or else their parents lack trust in the
education system."
Low achievements
But even the good news of increased enrolments is undermined
by the fact that 25 per cent of those who are in school
repeat. Moreover, the number of pupils dropping out before
grade 5 has been on the increase in almost half of the
countries for which data are available. "The increase of
pupils is seriously affecting the quality of education in our
schools," says the Minister of Education of Malawi, Ken
Lipenga. In Malawi, only a third of children starting school
in 1995 were expected to reach grade 5.
Providing wider access and increased quality is therefore an
inherent contradiction, as one government official pointed
out. "We broaden access to education but get low quality
because of huge class sizes and overworked teachers," she
said.
Most countries face problems in producing and distributing
relevant and appropriate textbooks and teaching materials such
as mathematical instruments or maps, and book development is
in its infancy in most countries.
Educational surveys on pupils' learning achievement carried
out in eleven African countries in 1999 indicate that
achievements in numeracy, literacy and life skills are still
below the minimum mastery level set in 1990. And there are
serious disparities both between and within individual
countries.
"African education has often tended to concentrate on elites
rather than to reach the marginalized masses of learners,"
says Vinayagum Chinapah, educational survey co-ordinator at
UNESCO. "To aggravate matters, countries have often borrowed
'standard' models of education for all which pay little or no
attention to country-specific issues."
Meeting local learning needs
Dissatisfaction with current outputs has encouraged many
countries to re-orient their education systems. Kenya, for
example, is in the process of making education more responsive
to the needs of learners by introducing more
vocationally-oriented subjects and concentrating on
disadvantaged groups, particularly girls. In Mozambique, a
democratic and participatory process is being used to develop
a new curriculum. In Mali, Chad and Togo, community schools
are successfully responding to local learning needs.
Zimbabwe, Botswana and Kenya have invested heavily in teacher
training and, despite the difficult circumstances under which
teachers often operate, they remain a priority of many
governments. On an average, 90 per cent of education budgets
are spent on teacher salaries.
Areas such as early childhood education and adult education
have received increasing attention over the decade but
progress remains limited. Early childhood care and development
still receives very little government funding. In Central and
Western Africa, for example, only 3 per cent of all children
attend pre-school activities.
Adult education, the bedrock for life-long learning, continues
to be the headache of many African governments. UNESCO
estimates that 142 million African adults are illiterate,
compared to 126 million in 1980, and some fourteen countries
continue to have illiteracy rates close to 60 and 70 per cent
of the adult population. A positive new trend is that more
women than men enrol for adult literacy classes and several
countries areestablishing literacy classes in rural clinics
and schools where women are likely to be present.
Needed: new partners
One of the crucial problems in Africa is the lack of
resources. Today, governments spend only some 2 per cent of
the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on education. The
Johannesburg Declaration suggests that governments increase
this figure to at least 7 per cent.
However, education is no longer expected to remain the sole
responsibility of government. Virtually all countries now
advocate the need to forge alliances with multiple partners,
both external and internal. "The era of regarding civil
society purely as a tax base is giving way to one in which
everyone is a participant and problem-solver with their own
unique contribution to make," the synthesis report states.
But breaking down barriers takes time. "Non-formal and
informal education are still not in the same league as formal
education," comments Berewa Jommo of the International
Community Education Association in Kenya. "Although these
barriers are fading they still exist," she says. Together with
some fifty different African and international
non-governmental organizations, Berewa Jommo attended a
regional consultation prior to the EFA conference.
The efficiency of external funding was also criticized during
the conference. One participant pointed to an over-emphasis on
construction by both governments and donors, and a lack of
emphasis on building up the capacities of African
institutions. Another mentioned the time-consuming task of
dealing with donors: "Although external financing in education
amounts to just 2 per cent of the overall education budget,
many education ministries spend 80 per cent of their time
dealing with donor agencies. How can one effectively manage an
education system like that?" he asked.
What now?
Paul Bennell, an Africa specialist, has made one of the few
existing calculations of the challenges facing stakeholders in
Africa. "Unless government and donor funding is at least
doubled over the next fifteen years, the goal of primary
education for all by 2015 will remain unattained," he says,
referring to the goals set by the 1995 United Nations Social
Summit in Copenhagen. Many parents, he explains, do not see
education as a sound investment that directly improves
household welfare. One thing is sure: if the present low
enrollment and drop-out in Africa continue, the number of
children out of school will continue to increase.
An African framework for action to help reverse these daunting
perspectives is currently in the making. Together with the
frameworks drawn up by the five other regional EFA
conferences, it will feed into the global action framework
expected to be adopted at the World Education Forum in Dakar,
Senegal, next April.
This material is being reposted for wider distribution by the
Africa Policy Information Center (APIC). APIC's primary
objective is to widen international policy debates around
African issues, by concentrating on providing accessible
policy-relevant information and analysis usable by a wide
range of groups and individuals.
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