Africa’s Learning Crises: What Needs to Honor?
The world has celebrated the International Day of Education that the United Nations General Assembly adopted on December 3, 2018, a resolution proclaiming January 24 as International Day of Education in this January of 2020, in recognizing the role of education in bringing global peace and sustainable development International Day of Education. This year’s theme of Education Day is ‘’ Learning for All: People, Planet, prosperity, and Peace’’.
This day’s celebrations have a different meaning for the world countries when it comes to their tiers of implementing and realizing the celebrations of sustainable development goal 4 a goal that has become the side talk of meaningful meetings the world holds. Many countries of the world especially Sub-Saharan Africa are struggling with political instability, corruption, and challenges of climate change, the goal of finding a good quality public education is too tall for them.
The majority of the world’s millions of children who are Out Of School live in Sub-Saharan African countries. These children are forced to abandon schools while they are supposed to be in school by 2015 as per the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of education for all. But this did not come true. The 91 million children who are out of the learning environment in Sub-Saharan are here just because of the lack of commitment of its governments afflicted to poor governance, war and famine, and other artificial and natural factors. Also, the lack of commitment in terms of financial pledges made by Western countries for the MDG to mobilize all out-of-school children and introduce them into the learning environment has been a handicap and an impossible means to achieving the desired global goals of eradicating illiteracy. The out-of-school children's narrations in sub-Saharan African counties are no more acute that need immediate attention and become very Chronic.
Even if this region’s children got the opportunity to attend school still takes the highest number of 617 million children and adolescents who aren’t proficient in reading and math whether they attend a school or not. This shows a double problem that exists in this region; access and quality issues which are factoring by what everyone who adores this region’s Education can guess; financial and frightening in the competency of the schools and educational personnel like teachers is what makes the
Exclusions
Al thought its practicality is very doubtful, the International community recognized that to achieve this SDG4 agenda by 2030, the collective work of all developed and developing countries is necessary so that leaving no country behind will be ruled out altogether. In a meantime, countries in Sub-Saharan who are getting little support from the developed countries themselves are excluding their marginalized groups and implementing a policy that favours a few of their populations.
In principle, we know that education is a fundamental human right. We know that without it, the lives of these disadvantaged groups and indeed in any country in Sub-Saharan, in general, could diminish if corrective measures are not implemented to overturn the discombobulating political, social, and economic injustices that exist within. However, any collective progress these groups favoured by policies these poor countries implemented made over the years to get millions of more students into the classroom is cause for celebration. But with so many challenges remaining to fix in the country–from concerns about whether the few groups are leaning to the educational exclusion of so many underprivileged children in their country yet–there is no room for complacency.
Recommendation
If the international community including sub-sub-Saharan needs to tier from national to villages and schools with the same wavelength for the implementation of education goa- SDG4, there are things they need to honour; 1) If western deep pocket countries and donors would have finance sub-Saharan region’s education system to complement their limited budget wrecked by corruption and fulfil the pledges made to achieve universal education could usher in a sustainable development goal by today, and it is not too late still to commit the same commitment they did in SDG 4 to their last limit and without reservation. 2) sub-Saharan African countries need to show the world and lead by example by using whatever money you generate within their countries to motivate those who are willing to donate to your countries. 3) Perhaps there is also another important lesson in all of this. Maybe it’s about time Sub-Saharan countries made their own realistic and realizable goals instead of rushing to sign a goal that they cannot implement just because to secure the funds just tell the planners of the international community that you can tier with the same wavelength and make heard your voice; then no doubts you will be approached and bring home what you can achieve for good. 4) The last and fourth one is that the United Nations Central platform that reviews the 2030 agendas including this education goal must request a detailed report of the SDG4 and send independent evaluators for the 2030 agenda so that this will safeguard the exclusion of minority groups who are in these African countries otherwise let alone see a clue of realizing the education goal; let alone The World is Off Track to Deliver its Education Commitments by 2030 narrations and the learning crises that world faces now, it takes all into the deep oceans and where no one can even think about the celebration.
This article first appeared on Addis Insight
