From Africa News 15/07/2009
By Fred Cawanda, PANA Correspondent

Africa will hardly get out of its backwardness in education unless a firm determination emerges to stamp out corruption, a senior official with the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) has said.

Mr Lawalley Cole, ADEA’s Coordinator of Communication for Education and Development (COMED) Working Group, told a group of African journalists in Tunis, Tunisia, Tuesday that the continent needed a radical change in attitude at the decision making level for the rule of law to prevail.

He argued that in most developed countries, education and other sectors were highly rated, essentially because there were ethics and good governance in a clearly law-abiding environment.

Why is it that law in Africa doesn’t work whilst it does in other continents?, he wondered, noting that he shared US President Barack Obama’s view that we cannot keep on blaming our ills on the West.

He also wondered why the continent remained wanting in education, despite the huge amounts of money being poured into the sector from both national resources and foreign aid.

Indeed, he said, one can hardly understand that almost 50 years after the end of European colonialism, Africa remains far behind all other continents in terms of education, with over 30 million children, nearly half the school age po pulation, out of school.

Practically all indicators from the United Nations and other bodies show that Africa is far behind other continents. We are lacking good educational institutions and infrastructures. There are no enough schools and things are not moving the way they should, Mr Cole said.

He said Africa needed to take its destinies in its own hands and move forward, instead of continuing to blame colonisers and the West for its own mistakes.

According to the World Bank, sub-Saharan Africa has long been the most aided major region with the total annual education disbursements (excluding South Africa) rising from US$854 million in 1999 to about US$2.4 billion in 2006.

Nevertheless, it said, Gross Enrolment Rate (GER) in higher education in 2006 was only 5 per cent in the region, against 11 per cent in South Asia, 25 per cent in East Asia and 32 per cent in Latin America.

While access to primary education remains problematic, only 10 of some 44 countries surveyed had, until recently, a primary GER of 100 percent, namely Botswana, Cape Verde, Congo, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Togo and Zimbabwe.

Also, findings from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) show that students completing primary school often have an un a cceptably low level of learning.

Children are taught in over-crowded classrooms by under-qualified and frequently unmotivated teachers, who are often poorly and irregularly paid and receive little managerial support, UNESCO said, noting that corruption was the main cause for the poor le arning results.

The most frequent corruption habits identified in education systems in Africa by the non-governmental Transparency International (TI) range from embezzlement and misuse of resources to abuse of power, rigged tenders and illegal demands for non existent funds.

For example, the Kenyan media reported recently that its government was losing millions of shillings (thousands of US dollars) in payments to over 27,000 ghost school teachers while officials were reluctant to comply with the law on declaration of wealth.

Similar cases have been reported in many other countries, where the operation would be made possible by some connivance between the Ministries of Education and the general accountants’ offices.

The Berlin-based TI lamented in a report that corruption defeats the very purpose of education: having a universal and open system based on merit and not money.

In a corrupt educational system, it said, students do not acquire the skills and knowledge that will enable them to contribute meaningfully to their country's economy and society. They learn from a young age to value corruption, accepting it is a norm for them and society.

Mr Cole said eliminating corruption was crucial to Africa’s development and education advancement, but said this will not be eradicated through violence or wars but by way of education, dialogue, peace and democracy.

Mr Cole was briefing journalists on the preparations for the three-day conference of African Ministers of Education and of Finance billed to start in the Tunisian capital, Tunis, Wednesday to debate the impact of the current economic meltdown on education in sub-Sahara n Africa.

The conference is a joint initiative of ADEA, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the World Bank, with the support of the donor partners of the Education for All Fast Track Initiative (EFA FTI).

The latter is a global partnership launched in 2002 by the World Bank and development partners with the aim of helping children in low-income countries complete primary education by 2015.