Catholic Information Service for Africa (Nairobi)
11 December 2007
Maputo — Under a new literacy education program, the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Mozambique has partnered with the government to address the country's abysmal illiteracy rates.
An agreement signed last month by the church's Education director, Miguel Simoque, and Maria da Conceicao Bila, secretary for Mozambique's Ministry of Education, is an attempt to boost the nation's estimated 47 percent literacy rate, Adventist Press Service reported
At the signing, Bila noted the Adventist Church's worldwide emphasis on education. With the partnership, "we are saying that we want to learn and grow with Adventists," Bila said.
"The church has grown rapidly among recent migrants to the city, often faster than church buildings can be erected," church leaders said in an outline for the Mozambique Literacy Program, which is set to begin in January 2008. The launch will include 20 literacy centers throughout the country.
The Adventist Church will be responsible for running and staffing the centers located at newly built Adventist churches. Church leaders plan to hire an initial staff of 700. Mozambique's Ministry of Education will train staff and stock the centers.
Church leaders in Mozambique report that the country's war for independence, beginning in 1962, and ensuing civil wars left the country's educational infrastructure in shambles, resulting in at least two generations without a functioning school system.
The conflicts and civil unrest also led to mass migrations to the outskirts of the country's urban areas, particularly its capital, Maputo. There, church officials said, many subsistence farming families -- no longer able to practice their former livelihood -- are crammed in ramshackle shanty towns made of mud brick, thatch and tin sheets.
Today, less than half of the country's overall population, and less than one third of Mozambican women, can read and write. In rural areas, an estimated 81 percent of women are illiterate.
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