UNESCO divulges statistics of over 184 countries under school closures tallying to over 1.54 billion learners out of school. Before such decisions, country policy makers faced a predicament on whether to close schools to maintain the required safety distance or leave them open to linger running the economy. This gave parents the shock of their lives to do home schooling for the children for an open-ended period of time as well as affecting the student’s social life and learning.
School time is fun and a great opportunity for a student to mature their social skills therefore days expended at and out of school will all be significant to the child’s skillset. Furthermore some kids from poor families access well balanced meals at school and for others school time keeps them away from joining gangs and dangerous peer groups. Therefore at such a time of total and partial lockdown in the world, where the best choice is to stay at home, the best social interaction is social media platforms and families can barely have the same engagements as before, it’s clear evident that students are locked down far beyond the country lockdowns.
As unfortunate as a home that never stocked food to subsist through the lockdown now that prices are mounting and countries are facing food insecurities likewise is ill-fated a country that never prepared their education sector for the worst, for retrieval to normal business may not be conceivable in the short run and this hits hard the African continent. With an Education system generally of least priority where the teachers are receiving the lowest remuneration of all public servants and the children studying under very deprived conditions like trecking to the Education centers, spending hours without food as they cannot afford to pay the small amount for meals and worst of all, attending classes of hundreds under tree shelters leaving a big question on how such schools will recover from the current shock and within what period of time.
Honest gratitude to our heroes and heroines, the rich men, women and organizations of this world that have prioritized with donations and grants to the African Education sector for these have a thirst to educate the African child. However, it’s now the time that the African policy makers should sole handedly plan and recover the Education sector given the world is supposedly hit by a recession and each country’s main objective is recovery of the Economy.
Recognizing that it is unwise to make predictions about the future, I still do anticipate that Africa, although not at the same pace with the rest of the world can recover from this recession and have the Education sector recuperate in the shortest time possible. A leader once quoted, “I am either part of it and aim at its success and growth or am out of it and watch it fall”. I do think that with this attitude practical on the African continent, we can recover in the very shortest time possible.
A continent rich in all resources, blessed with many of the most brilliant men and women of this world, if we come collected and aim at the same goal, we can surely achieve the better output for two heads are better than one.
If only Africa would make independent decisions depending of their status quo, it would have a generally better Education sector than it is today. At such a time of lockdown, E learning and Online classes are significant to keep the students engaged with classwork, but the vast majority are left out since they do not own the essential gadgets and neither could they procure them in the shortest time conceivable making it an invalid measure to the sector. In countries like Uganda, where television classes have been adopted, quite a number of students are engaged with classwork, but that’s limited to the urban and peri urban areas still leaving the vast majority out.
It’s a time for the Africans to get rid of their selfish ambitions while in power and come together to make their home a better place for now Is a time when no better education can be facilitated from the rest of the world and no special case transfers to better hospitals for treatment in Europe among others can be done but rather exploit the resources back home.
Africans should hence differ from thinking of how to copy the rest of the world in planning recovery measures but rather re-structure the Education sector for an African child. It’s a stint for an African leader and parent to come together and join resources to better their system for we have the resources, we have the brains and we do have the ideas, our biggest shortage is implementation.
I thus cry out to the stakeholders to effort together during this time of the Covid 19 to prepare the very best Business recovery plans for the sector to better the Africa of tomorrow. We as Project Act Africa always believe in solutions and we have a practical solution to keep educating the African child through some project we call Remote learning during quarantine. For more information about this project and our proposal contact us.
Article Prepared by Samalie Tusuubira
@ PROJECT ACT AFRICA Facebook YouTube @Projectactafric twitter and Projectactafrica.org