Kampala — "Knowledge and information are power," said Ugandas Education Minister, Khiddu Makubuya. "Our future is in our youth and we must offer them the best possible start in life".
One would be forgiven for thinking that the words refer to kindergarten or primary school education in Africa. But he was talking about secondary schooling at the opening, Monday, of the first regional conference on secondary education in Africa, being held in the Ugandan capital, Kampala.
To date, secondary schooling has played second fiddle to primary education, which has attracted most of the funds and attention of both donors and African governments in recent years.
"The secondary school problem has become the second child syndrome," said Professor Pai Obanya, an independent education strategist from Nigeria, taking part in the Kampala conference. He noted that while money, time and effort had poured in for primary education, with equal international donor interest in higher and tertiary education, the secondary sector had missed out.
Obanya explained this 'neglect in terms of first-time parents taking inordinate care and expending all their energies and attention on their first-born because, as novices, they were afraid to make mistakes and realised the importance of getting it right from scratch.
By the time their last-born arrived, the parents had had enough time to draw breath and replenish their energy supply. But, in between, number two child suffered.
Obanya concluded that while primary school was obligatory in most parts of Africa, tertiary education often won the day because of agitation by a politicised youth. Meanwhile the secondary sector often slipped through the cracks.
But all speakers stressed that the new focus on secondary education on the continent would not come at the expense of universal primary education or jeopardise its progress.
The challenge facing sustainable secondary education in Africa is the main theme of the week-long conference in Kampala sponsored by donors, including the World Bank. The meeting has brought together stakeholders - including teachers, other practitioners, educational experts, government officials and a few schoolchildren, at a leisure resort just outside Kampala.
Participants maintain that the only way to ensure a comprehensive basic education for Africas children, as well as enhance learning, is to run healthy parallel primary and secondary systems, relevant to the continents needs.
"Yet, donors often appear reluctant to finance secondary education in Africa," the Ugandan minister lamented. Makubuya said the prevailing evidence today was that secondary education had significant economic and social returns. "This calls for a balanced and simultaneous development of both primary and secondary education in Africa. Otherwise, the expected economic growth will elude us still for many years".
The mantra in Kampala, echoed in Makubuyas opening speech, is that this is the time to concentrate on secondary education, to empower the youth "by providing the necessary skills that will enable them to engage in gainful employment".
The minister concluded that parents would only send their children to primary school if they could see a clear advantage in terms of future economic benefits and if their communities could see the social and cultural gains of schooling". He said that everyone should be given the opportunity to complete high quality and relevant lower-secondary education.
But Makubuya warned that increased primary enrolment led to pressure on later schooling, making an even stronger case for the impetus to concentrate on secondary education.
We have the same clients, "the teachers and the children," said both the Ugandan minister and Jacob (Jaap) Bregman, the World Banks lead education specialist for human development in Africa.
Bregmans boss, Oey Astra Meesook, the Africa Region Sector director, acknowledged that the World Banks support for initiating a regional study on secondary education in Africa was primarily driven by the need for a strategic approach to expand and improve the quality and relevance of what is taught and learned in lower- and upper-secondary school.
"Few countries provide adequate opportunities for education and training needed by their youth," she said, adding that less than one-third of the relevant age groups were enrolled in secondary school in sub-Saharan Africa. "Yet the education and skills of this age group will be crucial in shaping national development".
Meesok pledged the World Banks commitment to help Africa ensure sustainable expansion, beyond primary education, saying the timing was critical because "countries such as Uganda are already feeling significant pressures on their post-primary education systems". She challenged governments, and international development organisations alike, to have ambitious goals, "like going beyond basic education. This is critical to helping Africas children join the knowledge society and take advantage of economic opportunities".
Meesoks speech mirrored the words of the Ugandan education minister, who said: Let me repeat that there is overwhelming evidence that secondary education provides the necessary knowledge and skills foundation for future teachers, managers, entrepreneurs, scientists and technicians.
Makubuya stressed that African adolescents, armed with only primary education, could not hope to win the race against international competition, from their counterparts in Europe, Asia and America, though he said they would all be confronting the same complex world, "and the competition on the labour market is ferocious".
Mamadou Ndoye from Senegal, the executive secretary of the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA), which is co-sponsoring the first regional conference on secondary education in Africa (SEIA), summed up the general feeling in Kampala with his speech.
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He said the "hegemony of intellectual capital" was now a "major feature of our times". Ndoye described it as a "direct productive force, a major factor in economic competition, a primordial source of cultural and ideological influence and a key determinant of the prosperity of countries and human communities".
His words were not lost on the delegates, from in and outside Africa, when he concluded that everything depended on "the stock, the level and the quality of the education and training that each country is able to provide the current and future generations of its citizens".
"In this respect," concluded Ndoye, "and considering the problems that must be resolved - given the current state of its development - I am convinced that basic education for all is still indisputably a priority for Africa".
The onus is now on the continents policymakers, with assistance from international donors, to develop sustainable, equitable and workable secondary education systems throughout Africa.
In Kampala, the priority and the challenge for delegates at the SEIA conference must be to come up with new approaches to education policy and practical solutions to make secondary systems on the continent more efficient, relevant and cost-effective prompting, said Ndoye, "commitment to resolute, innovative, lucid action" by African leaders and governments.
