schools
UN warn of education crisis in East and South Africa
International Education Day is celebrated annually on January 24th. photo
© Frank May/dpa
Too many African children still do not receive an adequate school education. In addition to the lack of teachers, this is mainly due to tight budgets, criticize the United Nations.
On today’s International Education Day, the United Nations are warning of an intensification of the education crisis in East and Southern Africa. A joint statement by the children’s charity Unicef and the educational organization Unesco states that 41 million of the approximately 165 million school-age children there did not receive an adequate school education. The region includes crisis countries such as South Sudan and Somalia, but also South Africa and Namibia.
In addition to the lack of teachers, the United Nations primarily criticizes the tight budgets of governments for education. Somalia, for example, only spends 0.3 percent of its gross domestic product on education. The states in the region also missed out on sustainable development of the education sector as a result of the first World Education Forum in Dakar 23 years ago.
UN calls for higher spending on education
At that time, the world community agreed on the goal of giving all children worldwide access to basic education by 2015. In East and South Africa, only a provisional educational infrastructure was set up and poorly trained teachers were hired with uncertain contract conditions. These interim solutions are still largely standard today. The UN therefore called on the countries in the region to allocate a fifth of their national budgets to education expenditure in the future.
International Education Day is celebrated annually on January 24th. Since December 2018, the UN has wanted to honor the role of education in global peace with this day of remembrance. According to the UN, sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest literacy levels in the world: only a tenth of 10-year-olds can read and understand a simple text.