Africans Need to Act on Integrating Education, Peace Building: Eastern Africa Representatives

Addis Ababa May 22/2018 African countries need to rapidly act on integrating their educational systems and peace building to sustain stability across the continent, representatives from Eastern Africa said. A two-day workshop on Teachers Training and Development for Peace-Building in the Horn of Africa and Surrounding Countries kicked off here, today. In an exclusive interview with ENA, Teachers Training Director of South Sudan, Edward Kokale Juma said illiteracy is the dire problem that is spoiling the youth and children of Africa. “Africans should focus on sharing experiences, experts and strengthen partnership to curb violence and extremism and preserve peace and stability through education,” the Director added. If they are not educated and remain ignorant they cannot gain any skill that helps them keep busy and use the limited resources in developing their country. Speaking of his country, he said “teachers are running away, learners are not taught by qualified teachers and generally education is ruined by the current war.” However, changes are gradually coming after integrating similar training to the national curriculum late last year, he added. Kokale Juma urged African countries to move on towards taking education to the remote and rural areas with better infrastructure, and added “governments need to prioritize on education and allocate larger amount of their budget.” Teachers Training Director of Somalia National University, Mohamed Abdi said the contents of African education have to incorporate the issue of peace building, which is missing especially, in the Horn. “We need to empower the youth with education and ask in return their support and exert ultimate efforts in peace building,” Abdi pointed out. Stating that colonization had impacted the curriculum of countries, he said “most African countries are coming with new educational curriculum that arises from their culture which was one of the difficulties some years ago.” According to Abdi, neighboring countries should come together and take part in every aspect needed towards peace building instead of engaging in crisis management. Dakong Leopold, from the Ministry of Education of Central African Republic on said on his part “my country has been facing recurrent crisis, I want to spread the experience that I get here to in harmonizing my country through education.” Spreading values of tolerance, understanding and living together should be enriched in the minds of the youth and children through education, he added. Leopold further stressed that “it is only these values which can allow African people to achieve development because if there is no peace, there is no development.” According to him, the primary task of African governments should be ensuring quality of education by providing all the necessary skills while teachers will empower the youth. “Without taking care of the youth and their need, we cannot think of a bright future. Our future depends on how take care of the youth today,” he emphasized. It is to be recalled that, some 2000 teachers from Ethiopia, Eretria, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, and Uganda through the support of Japan and UNESCO had transformative pedagogy for peace building in 2017. Representatives from the ministries of education of Sahel countries, AUC education division and UNESCO are taking part in the workshop.