Dar es Salaam — "Education is the key to life!" Smiling schoolgirls from Zanaki Secondary, in Tanzanias commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, said it all. Welcoming African education ministers, and delegates from all over the continent, with song and dance, the students gave a passionate performance at the opening of the 8th conference of African education ministers on Tuesday.
But the challenge facing Africas educators and governments, as they chart the way forward to ensure 'Education For all' (EFA), is formidable and the message from the young girls to the assembled ministers and dignitaries was as pointed as it was passionate.
"You are the ones we are depending on," they sang, in both English and French, to enthusiastic applause from the ministers and others in the audience: "We are asking you only one thing: improve - what do they call it? - the quality-ee-ee of education, for the better future, of all the countries!"
As the delegates got down to business on Tuesday, at Minedaf VIII (the 8th conference of Ministers of Education in African Member States), with the girls songs still ringing in their ears, all were aware that time was not on their side. They must decide workable policies that will make the EFA goal achievable in Africa by 2015, the deadline set in Dakar, Senegal two years ago at the World Education Forum
Opening the conference, host president, Tanzanias Benjamin Mkapa, told delegates in his address that Africa must rededicate itself to the EFA cause; unless it invested its resources wisely in universal education, the continent risked being left behind. His speech was peppered with references to challenges and commitments.
"African countries must show their collective commitment by putting resources in education development. What is expected of nations, regions and the international community is action. All people must put their money and time where their mouths are," said the Tanzanian leader, whose speech and humour drew warm applause.
Mkapa outlined what he considered several major challenges obstructing the objective to ensure education for all in Africa. He mentioned inadequate national funding, questionable quality of teachers, low pupil/teacher ratios and student retention rates, low capacity of secondary schools to absorb primary school graduates and the departure of public school teachers to "greener pastures" in the private sector. Urgent strategies were needed, he said, to tackle these glaring and critical imbalances.
The Tanzanian president stressed that Africa must demonstrate its political will to reach these targets by "increasing the share of national expenditure deployed for education."
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"On their part," he continued, "rich countries, and the international and regional financial institutions, should fill the gap that thwarts the attainment of EFA goals, through debt relief and new resources."
Mkapas upbeat message that "shared knowledge is not lost knowledge; it is more knowledge," was in perfect harmony with the tone of the education ministers conference, but it will take more than lofty talk and nodding heads to reach the pressing goals that have been set.
A United Nations Education agency (Unesco) 2002 Education for All Global Monitoring Report noted that half the countries in Africa were unlikely to make the EFA target date. As well as highlighting poverty and external debt, Unesco pointed to HIV/Aids as one of the significant problems stunting Africas growth and development.
Mkapa, confirmed that the HIV/Aids was fast depleting the pool of schoolteachers in Africa. He said the financial and personnel task of trying to meet the existing shortfall in qualified teaching staff in Africa, because of AIDS, remained "truly daunting".
The pandemic is another of the challenges African education delegates will have to consider during their week-long conference, which ends on Friday, 6 December.
The executive director of UNAIDS, Peter Piot, his counterpart at the UN childrens agency, Unicef, Carol Bellamy, and the director general of Unesco, Japans Koichiro Matsuura, were all in attendance, seated alongside President Mkapa and Amara Essy, the interim chief of the African Union (AU) Commission.
