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Note: This document is from the archive of the Africa Policy E-Journal, published by the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC) from 1995 to 2001 and by Africa Action from 2001 to 2003. APIC was merged into Africa Action in 2001. Please note that many outdated links in this archived document may not work.


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.

URL for this file: http://www.africafocus.org/docs00/ed0004a.php