Education in Southern Africa

  • The Time is Now: Building a Human Economy for Africa

    AFRICA, 2016/05/13 For Africa this could not be additional evident as our major and best-educated generation is coming of age. By 2025, half of Africa’s people will be under the age of 25. They stand at the epicenter of the African Union’s people-driven schedule for the next half-century: it is they that will build an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa. Leaders of Africa’s governments, business and civil society gather in Kigali for the World Economic Forum on Africa conference this week. They must place young people - particularly our most squandered talent, our girls - front and center of public policy discussion. These young people will need jobs, challenges, and outlets for their creativity. Investing in them, and building the “human economies” that can support them with opportunities, is paramount.
  • African Union merges science and education bodies

    BOTSWANA, 2016/01/13 The Africa Union has merged its science and education bodies in a move designed to improve sectoral relationships, effectiveness and efficiency. The African Ministerial Council on Science and Technology and the Conference of Ministers of Education of the African Union will presently operate as one entity. “The decision of the heads of states was as well motivated by the need to streamline ministerial conferences, limit their number and confer the power to convene them to the African Union Commission and save costs,” Dr Mahama Ouedraogo, the African Union’s chief of human resources, science and technology, told University World News.
  • ZIMBABWE Government bonds to fund higher education development

    ZIMBABWE, 2016/01/12 Zimbabwe’s government has resolved to issue higher and tertiary education bonds for the development of infrastructure at public universities, polytechnics and colleges. Presenting the country’s 2016 national budget in parliament recently, Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa said the bonds would cover all public tertiary and higher education institutions. The bonds would pave the way for the construction of physical infrastructure that includes staff and student accommodation, lecture theatres, laboratories, workshops, sporting facilities, government blocks and student service centres. The minister said that additional than 117,000 students require accommodation.
  • The Prem Rawat Foundation’s Peace Education Program is having a profound impact on youth in South Africa.

    SOUTH AFRICA, 2015/12/11 Amid a world discourse often dominated by discussions of violence and politics, The Prem Rawat Foundation’s Peace Education Program is having a profound impact on youth in South Africa. Prem Rawat recently spoke to students enrolled in the Peace Education Program (PEP) at TSiBA, an acclaimed nonprofit business school in Capetown, South Africa that specializes in giving disadvantaged youth opportunities to become entrepreneurial leaders. Hundreds of students at the tertiary school have participated in PEP, an innovative multimedia course that’s based on Rawat’s international talks about topics such as peace, hope and appreciation. On Nov. 27 they had the opportunity to discuss what they were learning with him, ask him questions, and hear him speak at the school as part of its Annual Social Change Lecture series. A lot of students reported that PEP was having a profound impact on their lives.
  • School dropout rate rising as drought boosts hunger in Zimbabwe

    ZIMBABWE, 2015/11/23 At the same time as Thabiso Dube isn’t helping his mother at home, the scrawny 8-year-old is working alongside her, doing odd jobs in exchange for food. He should be in class, but has virtually dropped out of school because he is always hungry, said his mother Sithandile Dube, of Lupane district in Matebeleland North province. Thabiso only goes to school “if he has the strength,” she says – which can be as little as once a week, usually at the same time as there is enough to eat at home. “We haven’t had enough (food) for a long time. Our crop failed. That’s why presently I have to work for other people,” she said. Over the completed five years, Zimbabwe’s two Matebeleland provinces and the country’s Midlands have been suffering from a disastrous mix of erratic rainfall, flash floods and long dry spells.
  • Why local content in Africa’s extractive sector won’t work without home grown human capital

    AFRICA, 2015/11/21 For over 30 years a lot of African nations have been exploring their natural resources, whether oil, gas or minerals. In the last ten years a lot of additional have joined the natural resource exploitation club. A lot of have as well witnessed economic increase and development. Significant investments have been poured into the development and increase of the extractive industry on the continent. But there is a disconnect between the industry and institutions of higher education. These are supposed to provide and develop the necessary skills, competencies and human capital required to develop and manage the industry. But there is a substantial gap between the kinds of graduates that universities are producing and what extractive industries need.
  • Akhona Landu said she is shocked by the actions of police at the campus, south africa

    SOUTH AFRICA, 2015/10/26 The University of the Western Cape's SRC president Akhona Landu said she is shocked by the actions of police at the campus. In an before interview with News24, Landu was forced to drop the line next she said police were firing rubber bullets at them. Landu said police used stun grenades and water cannons to disperse protesting students at the campus gates. "Upon returning from Erica Road, we were standing at the gates of the university and police warned us to go back to our residences. We refused and a little later stun grenades were fired. The students are angry presently and they are burning bins outside residences, singing struggle songs. Police keep coming in to separate us using water cannons and stun grenades," Landu told News24.
  • mathematics and some school subjects in Shona and Ndebele, Zimbabwe

    ZIMBABWE, 2015/10/26 ZANU PF MP for Buhera South, Joseph Chinotimba has demanded the teaching of mathematics and some school subjects in Shona and Ndebele arguing this was the best way students not gifted in the English language could pass. Speaking in Parliament last week, Chinotimba said Zimbabwe should take a cue from nations such as China and Cuba which were schooling their young in local languages. "If you go to China, the people in China learn Chinese until they attain their degrees. The same applies to Yugoslavia and Cuba," Chinotimba said in a question he was directing to Education Minister Lazarus Dokora. "My question is at the same time as are we going to respect our local languages such as Shona and Ndebele so that we are able to work mathematical problems either in Ndebele or in Shona?
  • Basic Education Committee Meets Stakeholders in Northern Areas of Port Elizabeth in South Africa

    SOUTH AFRICA, 2015/09/19 Parliament, Thursday 17 September 2015 - The Portfolio Committee on Basic Education today met with and listened to the concerns of various stakeholders in the Northern Areas of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape. The Committee is pleased with the attempt made by the Provincial Department of Education in filling the vacant posts in the province as a whole. The District Education Department indicated that some of the posts could not be filled as schools did not have vacancies for them. Most of the identified posts have been filled. They further indicated that some educators have not been paid due to bureaucratic systems.
  • More Education Is What Our Children Need is Africa

    AFRICA, 2015/09/19 Analysts looking at Africa from a western or developed perspective often quote demographics on the continent's young people as indicative of a prosperous next. In my view this is misguided at best and deluded at worst. Africa's young people is not a blessing, it is a weight on our resources and a critical impediment to faster development. In short, I believe the millions of unwanted children across the continent, are what is keeping us back. I do not see them as contributing to a prosperous next, only consuming by presently very scarce resources and diluting the prospects of the minority of the youth that will from presently on benefit from all the current "interventions" that are in vogue.