Address by Mr Koïchiro
Matsuura Director -General UNESCO of UNESCO at the Eighth Meeting of
the Ministers of Education of Africa
Excellencies,
Honourable Ministers,
UN Colleagues,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It gives me great pleasure to welcome aIl of you most warmly to this,
the eighth meeting of the Ministers of Education of Africa (MINEDAF
VIII).
On this important occasion on the calendar of Africa and UNESCO, we
are called upon to meet the challenges facing education in Africa at
the begiI111ing of the 21 SI century and, in particular, to effect the
transition from commitments to action, from words to deeds.
Four years on from MINEDAF VII in Durban, South Africa, our collective
task could not be clearer and I am confident that aIl of us agree that
action must be our priority.
Frankly, nothing less will do.
Yesterday, at the closing ceremony of the constitutive conference establishing
the Forum of African Parliamentarians for Education (FAPED), I spoke
of the crucial importance of political will for achieving the goals
that African countries have set for themselves.
Our meeting this week is a golden opportunity to harness the political
will of the assembled Ministers of Education and the goodwill of many
development partners in a common cause, namely, making education the
priority of Africa and making African education the priority of its
partners.
I would like to express my great appreciation to you, President Mkapa,
for accepting the offer to host this conference.
Your beautiful country is providing a most welcoming environment for
our deliberations this week.
I very much appreciate President Bouteflika's message of support, which
he has sent as he is unable to attend in person.
We are also honoured by the presence of Mr Amara Essy, Interim Chai1person
of the Commission of the African Union; I am delighted that you are
here.
Also on the platform is Professor Kader Asmal, whose country chaired
the last MINEDAF meeting. Representing the No0 community is Ms Jennifer
Chiwela of the African Network Campaign for EFA (ANCEFA).
Other platform speakers from the development community are Ms Carole
Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF, and Mr Peter Piot, Executive
Director of UNAIDS.
Please note that many other partners are present here today or have
contributed to the preparatory phases leading up to this meeting. On
behalf of UNESCO, and in my own name, I thank you all.
Let me begin by looking at some of the main difficulties facing education
in Africa.
I would like initially to draw your attention to those problems that
originate outside the education system itself, of which there are many:
the disruption and destructiveness of wars, internal conflict and political
instability; weak economic performance and widespread poverty; the effect
of diseases such as HIV / AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria; the recurrence
of famine; the fragility of democracy and good governance; and the social,
cultural and ethnic divisions which are structured into the very fabric
of African societies.
In making such a list, my purpose is neither to paint a pessimistic
picture, nor to deny that there are positive developments in the continent.
My purpose is to acknowledge that the wider context of African education
is full of difficulties and that these difficulties have a direct impact
as well as an indirect influence on educational processes.
The effects take the form of school buildings destroyed or occupied
by soldiers; the teacher who dies of AIDS and is not replaced, thereby
leading to the closure of the school; funds for the purchase of new
textbooks or laboratory equipment languishing in unspent budgets or
somehow disappearing; children who go to school without having eaten.
In this perspective, education is very much at the mercy of forces outside
its control and this is certainly part of the reality we face.
But it strikes me with great clarity that, for each of the external
problems I have identified, education is not simply the victim but is
also part of the solution.
Indeed, education plays a crucial role in overcoming these difficulties
through education for peace, tolerance, human rights and mutual understanding;
through education for emergencies and post-conflict reconstruction;
through education and training of the human resources needed for development,
economic success and poverty reduction; through preventive education
to combat disease and ill-health; through curricula attuned to sustainable
development; through citizenship education; and through education for
inter-cultural dialogue and the celebration of ethnic, linguistic and
cultural diversity.
I am proud to say that UNESCO is working in all of these areas.
The comparative severity of Africa's educational situation bas been
recently revealed by the EF A Global Monitoring Report 2002, which was
prepared to inform the meeting of the High-Level Group on EFA that met
two weeks ago in Abuja, Nigeria.
According to the Report, 28 countries are at serious risk of not achieving
any of the three measurable Dakar goals by 20 15 at current rates of
progress.
Twenty countries in Sub-Saharan Africa fall into this category. Six
other sub-Saharan Africa countries are unlikely to achieve at least
one of these goals (universal primary education, gender equality and
adult literacy).
Please note that these estimations are couched in conditional terms.
The statistical trends on which they are based apply to 'current rates
of progress'.
Thus, the non- achievement of the three goals is not a firm prediction
but an estimation of what is likely to be the case in 2915 if serious
measures are not taken.
In addition, the statistical data do not reflect progress that may have
occurred in the last two years. Nevertheless, we cannot hide from the
fact that addressing Africa's educational challenge involves not a stroll
in the foothills but scaling a real Kilimanjaro.
The quantitative scale of the challenges facing education in Africa
is impressive. Sub- Saharan Africa alone accounts for over 40 million
out-of-school children, over one-third (37 per cent) of the world 's
total of 115.4 million.
The Monitoring Report shows that, of the 25 countries that have recorded
net enrolment ratios below 70 per cent, 18 are located in Sub- Saharan
Africa.
Repetition and dropout rates in Africa's schools remain high on average,
which means that millions of children never complete the minimum of
four or five years of schooling deemed necessary for a secure acquisition
of literacy.
Our meeting this week should seek to identify those measures that will
have the greatest impact on this scenario and to secure assurances that
they will be put into effect.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Time forbids an extended diagnosis of Africa 's educational ailments;
the discussion panels and special sessions will go into greater detail
and depth.
Let me therefore turn next to the real agenda of this meeting, namely,
the transition from commitments to action.
The commitments in question are those that national governments and
their development partners have made in recent years to address education
in particular and also other concerns that have a bearing upon education.
Among the fora devoted specifically to education, pride of place goes
to the Dakar conference of April2000 and its commitment to attain the
six EFA goals by 2015 at the latest.
Later in the year 2000, the Millennium Assembly made commitments, at
the very highest level of political will, on a range of development
goals whose achievement would transform our world.
As you know, two of the Millennium Development Goals are education-specific
(pertaining to universal primary education and gender equality in education).
An important follow-up to the Millennium Assembly was the Monterrey
Conference held in February 2002, whose paradigm of partnership and
responsibility in the financing of development has helped to reinvigorate
the world' s development agenda.
My purpose here is not to rehearse each and every commitment but to
focus attention on key considerations of strategic importance for the
transition from commitments to action.
Let me now turn to certain areas of education in Africa where action
is most needed.
Education for AIl (EF A) in the context of facilitating lifelong learning
is at the core of UNESCO's work and indeed that of all the partners.
No aspect of basic education in Africa should be left out of account.
Thus, greater efforts need to be directed towards early childhood care
and education, which is the foundation of lifelong learning and an integral
part of basic education.
Countries need to develop and implement an integrated policy on early
childhood so that attention is directed to the child 's learning as
well as to his/her healthy growth and nutritional needs. Support to
families should be an integral part of government policy and programmes
regarding early childhood.
With regard to primary education, l would like to stress the importance
of each country having one education system sufficiently diversified
to meet the needs of all children. Such an education system will increasingly
tend to be multi-partner in character, utilizing multiple delivery channels
and various types of learning locations.
By "one education system", I recommend a holistic sector-wide
approach.
I urge you to ensure a close linkage between the renovation of the basic
education system- including the nonformal providers -and appropriate
adjustments to your secondary, technical-vocational and higher education
systems.
After ail, in addition to having their own particular requirements,
these higher levels are the natural sources of qualified, well-prepared
teachers, administrators and researchers whose professional capacities
are vital for improving basic education.
One of the key EFA goals is that of reducing the world's rate of illiteracy
by 50 per cent by 2015. To ensure that all can benefit from education,
aIl must be literate.
Today, an estimated 862 million people in the world are not! In order
to address this issue, the United Nations General.
Assembly, through Resolution 56/116, has designated 2003-2012 to be
the international decade for literacy.
Recognizing the potential contribution of literacy to eradicating poverty,
reducing child morta1ity, curbing population growth, achieving gender
eradicating poverty, reducing child mortality, curbing population growth,
achieving gender equality and ensuring sustainable development and democracy,
the nations of the world have agreed that special efforts should to
boots literacy in the years ahead.
We call upon all of you therefore to participate actively in the literacy
decade, as one of the key mechanisms towards achieving the goals of
Dakar. Literacy in Africa, especially for African women and girls, must
be a priority in all our actions.
At this point, l would like to briefly discuss the HIV / AIDS epidemic
and its impact on education in Africa. This disease is threatening many
of the gains in educational expansion and education system development
during past decades. Education systems are in double jeopardy from HIV/AIDS:
if they fail, the epidemic will accelerate- and when the epidemic spreads,
it undermines the capacity of education systems to cope.
Ignorance about the epidemic and what causes it is deadly. But knowledge
is often not enough to change behaviour. Preventive education must make
people aware that they are at risk, and why -and how stigma and discrimination
fuel the spread of the disease.
The epidemic not only hampers development -in many countries, it reverses
it by destroying capacity, especially the capacity to cope and the capacity
to care.
The high rates of death among teachers, health workers and other trained
professionals will make replacements increasingly hard to find. And
children and the young are at risk on an unprecedented scale. Children
will lose parents at home and teachers at school -and many youth will
grow up deprived, under-socialized and disconnected.
It is estimated that an additional one billion dollars annually are
required to help education systems cope with the impact of AIDS as well
as deliver effective HIV preventive education.
It is surprising and distressing that, even in countries with established
epidemics, teachers are still not being trained to help school children
and themselves prevent and cape with RN.
To an extent that has yet to be fully recognized, this epidemic requires
a fundamental reconsideration of how educational services can be provided
in many countries.
In all educational activity, teachers are of fundamental importance.
Teacher shortage, therefore, is a major constraint upon expansion and
quality improvement.
It has been estimated that at least three million additional teachers
will be needed by 2015 in sub-Saharan Africa alone if the EF A goals
are to be minimally met.
At present, however, the tragedy of HIV/AIDS is decimating the ranks
of teachers.
And there are other problems too: teachers' status, for example.
Only a few years ago, the best and the brightest of young people in
Africa would have been attracted by the prestige and importance of the
teaching profession. Today, they are increasingly attracted to other
professions. Consequently, many current recruits are under-qualified.
All teachers are entitled to decent working conditions. The recent ILO/UNESCO
document "A Statistical Profile of the Teaching Profession"
describes how far the current reality falls short of minimum standards
regarding working and training conditions.
To this end, and in keeping with an agreement from a previous meeting
of MINEDAF on the creation of Centres of Excellence, UNESCO has embarked
on an initiative to upgrade one major teacher training institution in
each of the 46 sub-Saharan countries.
The upgrading will be based on the assessed needs of the country and
the institution. This initiative is aimed at improving teacher skills
and thereby enhancing educational quality.
I urge you to include among your recommendation for action the improvement
of the working conditions of teachers, and then to implement these recommendations.
For, us as our colleagues in the teachers' unions tell us, the working
conditions of teachers are the learning conditions of children.
We need to work together to improve these working and learning conditions.
Another key area for urgent action is that of gender equality. More
than 50 years have passed since the proclamation of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights (1948) and it is more than 30 years since the adoption
of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
against Women.
And yet women and girls world-wide, and those in Africa in particular,
do not enjoy equal rights to education.
Together with South Asia, Africa, especially the sub-Saharan Africa
region, shares the majority of the world's illiterates and out-of-school
children, the majority of whom are female. Certainly, some countries
have made remarkable progress in girls' education and there are a number
of innovative programmes in the region, but overall results are still
far from satisfactory.
The challenges ahead of us are indeed enormous, but we must do the maximum
possible in coming years for the sake not only of girls' and women's
education but for the very credibility of the EFA endeavour.
I urge you in your discussions to take account of the practical measures
that have a proven effectiveness in addressing gender equality issues.
These address problems both inside and outside of school.
Safe travel to school, the provision of separate sanitation facilities
for girls, increased numbers of female and gender-sensitive teachers,
curricula and textbooks that are not only gender-sensitive but also
relevant and useful to girls and their families, and classroom and school
management practices that are free from gender bias -these are some
of the measures through which impediments to girls' education can be
overcome.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I would like now to briefly consider certain instruments of action through
which our commitments in Africa will be achieved. The creation of the
African Union and NEPAD are most promising developments.
It is especially heartening to observe that African leaders have embraced
the key international commitments made in recent years within their
vision of African development.
In NEPAD's action plan for education, the Heads of State reaffirm that
" Africa's development begins with the quality of its human resources",
the very area in which the international community has an abiding interest
and is seeking to translate this interest to action.
NEPAD has rapidly become the agreed Africa-wide framework within which
the relationship between education and development will be played out
in the period ahead.
Rest assured that UNESCO will do all it can to contribute to NEPAD'
s success.
The cultivation of new partnerships between governments, the private
sector and civil society is vital for translating commitments into action.
Considerable international consultation already takes place, including
a mechanism for collective consultation with NGOs on EFA.
The participation of African organizations, coalitions and networks
has increased considerably, especially through the strong involvement
of the African Network Campaign on Education for All (ANCEFA).
Capacity-building programmes to reinforce civil society participation
have been launched. Indeed, the very process of this meeting reveals
that progress is being made.
Not only is civil society eminently represented on this platform, but
there has been a preparatory meeting with civil society representatives,
a civil society paper has been tabled, civil society representatives
are included in every panel and there is a Ministers/NGO consultation
to discuss partnership experiences and to elaborate strategies of collaboration
beyond this meeting.
Together with other partners, UNESCO is working hard to strengthen the
capacities of NGOs and other parts of civil society so that the development
of education in Africa is a truly participatory and inclusive process.
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
We have taken note of the new spirit of resolve and optimism expressed
by African leaders as they commit themselves to an African Renaissance.
UNESCO and all the partners are committed to support this resolve and
to buttress this optimism.
For its part, UNESCO is acting on the commitments I have described through
all the means at its disposal: through its Education sector at Headquarters;
through its regional education office in Dakar; through its cluster
and national offices at the country level; through its National Commissions
in Member States; through its institutes -the International Institute
for Educational Planning (IIEP), the International Bureau of Education
(IBE), the UNESCO Institute of Education (UIE), the UNESCO Institute
for Statistics (UIS), and the International Institute for Capacity-Building
in Africa (IICBA) based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; through its centres,
notably the Guidance, Counselling and Youth Development Centre for Africa,
in Lilongwe, Malawi; through its special programmes like the PEER operation
for the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes region; and through its networks
such as the UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs Programme and the Associated Schools
Project.
Indeed, in my vision of UNESCO as a networking organization, these and
other aspects of our capacity are enhanced by their inter- linkage and
by dovetailing with the activities of all our partners.
Let me assure you that UNESCO will do its utmost to assist and support
you in your efforts.
I urge you, Africa's Ministers of Education, to draw upon Africa's wealth
of resources, energy and potential, and to invest wisely in your most
important resource, the people of Africa.
For now is the time to translate commitrnents into action.
Thank you.
