Dar Es Salaam — Tanzanian Vice President Dr. Ally Mohamed Shein has called on African governments to invest in adult literacy programs and ensure a privileged position for girls' education as the World Bank and other donors pledged "Continued strong support for education in Africa."

Opening the third biennale meeting of the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) in this northern Tanzanian town yesterday, Dr. Shein said without literate citizens Africa risked being marginalized even further in a globalised world.

"It is never too late to learn and without education Africa will be marginalized in this era of globalization ." he told about three hundred delegates, including a number of ministers of education from allover Africa who will spend the next three days here discussing education.

Tanzania had in the 1970s reached about 90 per cent adult literacy level but the gains nose-dived to about 70 per cent twenty years later, the Vice President said. The Tanzanian experience "may not be peculiar to our country," he added.

The important thing, he said, was to ensure that education reached people of all ages and socio-economic status lamenting that his country had currently "about 3,000,000 school age children roaming the streets." Civil society has constantly warned that the "street kids" as they are Sometimes referred to, was a time bomb that the country may have to pay for dearly someday as they grew into adults without hope, a meaningful life and future.

The Vice President also voiced his concern over the massive school dropouts mostly amongst girls due to early pregnancies and marriages."But perhaps parents in our continent have not attached much importance to the education for girls. The mentality still prevails that the place of a woman is in the kitchen," he said, adding: " That is absolute violation of human rights in the context of Education For All (EFA).

Speaking in the plenary session, the Executive Director of the Nairobi based Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE), Prof. Penina Mlama said "we feel in Tanzania we are in a girl friendly country."

"We take not of the fact that Tanzania was the first country in Africa to pass the Sexual Offences Act, 1998 which has provided great legal protection to women from the violation of their human rights," she said. The law provides for up to 30 years imprisonment in jail for rape.

The World Bank representative Mr. Birger Fredriksen apart from assuring delegates of continued flow of financial support said the meeting was a good opportunity to "learn from the past so that we can keep our promise to African children of providing them all with good quality basic education by 2015."

A representative from SIDA said Canada would use its present capacity as chair of the G8 countries to ensure that finances were available to support education programs in Africa.

ADEA has as part of its support for education on the continent, decided to launch at this biennale, an African Education Journalism Award that will be largely contested by print media staff.

The journalists will be required to submit published articles on education and three recipients will be chosen by a jury for working trips to either London's BBC or France's Le Mode education desks. The Award will not be cash prize, an official said.