Category: Education

Eswatini, Africa’s last absolute monarchy, said Saturday it had shut its schools “indefinitely with immediate effect” as the country faces a wave of pro-democracy protests.

Students of the tiny, landlocked nation formerly known as Swaziland have been protesting for a number of weeks, boycotting lessons and calling for free schooling, as well as an end to the regime under King Mswati III.

“His Majesty’s government has taken the decision to close schools indefinitely with immediate effect,” Prime Minister Cleopas Dlamini said in a statement.

According to pro-democracy activists, the army and police have been deployed in schools this week, and several students have been arrested.

Civil society and opposition groups demonstrated in the largest cities, Manzini and Mbabane, in June, looting shops and ransacking business properties.

At least 28 people died as police clashed with protesters in some of the worst unrest in the southern African country’s history. The latest fatality came Wednesday.

On Friday, Eswatini shut down the internet for two hours as pro-democracy marchers headed to the capital.

The shutdown came as images of the protests circulated on social and traditional media, including pictures of two people who said they had been injured by gunshots fired by security forces.

The internet shutdown blocked social media and left many services running very slowly afterward.

On Saturday, the situation was calm, according to an AFP journalist.

King Mswati III has ruled Eswatini since 1986 and owns shares in the country’s telecoms.

He is criticized for living a lavish lifestyle in one of the world’s poorest countries and is accused of stifling political parties.

The king has accused demonstrators of depriving children of their education by taking part in the protests.

Source: Voice of America

The song “Oh Teachers” by Cameroonian singer Aunty Clo blasted through speakers Tuesday at Yaounde’s city council courtyard with about 200 teachers listening.

Aunty Clo’s lyrics are about how teachers should be respected and protected as they are the ones tasked with molding young minds for the future and Cameroon’s development.

Most of the teachers attending the protest, held to mark U.N.-declared World Teachers Day, say they fled the Boko Haram insurgency in the north or fighting between the government and English-speaking separatists in the west.

Fifty-two-year-old Peter Tar, a spokesperson for the teachers, says instructors working in Cameroon’s conflict zones endure a lot of suffering.

“Teachers are being persecuted every day, every hour. Some have been brutally killed. Others, brutally deprived of some parts of their bodies, forced out of their areas to become internally displaced persons. Some are now jobless. My heart bleeds for these teachers. I pray peace should return,” he said.

Tar said he escaped from a government school in the town of Ndop after separatist fighters kidnapped him.

The protest was organized by the Cameroon Association of Teachers in Crisis. Tar said the teachers want the international community to know that they are suffering.

More than 40 teachers have been killed in Cameroon since 2017. At least 300 others were abducted and freed only after their families paid ransom.

Hundreds of schools in the north and west were destroyed or shut down.

Valentine Tameh, president of the Teachers Association of Cameroon, says teachers sometimes have no option but to flee the violence.

“It becomes, really, a sorry spectacle, seeing teachers running with their families, some losing their lives, some fleeing to areas where they cannot do anything to sustain themselves. We are appealing that everyone who is engaged in a kind of war should understand that teachers and the milieu in which they operate are sacrosanct and fighters should understand that, without teachers, the community is preparing for a kind of dark ages,” Tameh said.

Cameroon’s Minister of Basic Education, Laurent Serge Etoundi Ngoa, says the military is protecting schools, teachers and school children in regions where there is a security crisis.

He encouraged teachers who fled insecurity to return to relatively peaceful areas for the sake of the children in need of education.

“We’ve just recruited 5,000 teachers to support those who have already been in the field. When you (teachers) go to teach in a region of Cameroon, you must know that it is your country. The children, who are there, are all our sons and daughters, so we have to do everything necessary for them to have a safe education because they are the actors who tomorrow will continue building Cameroon,” Etoundi Ngoa said.

The United Nations declared October 5 as World Teacher’s Day in 1994 to honor educators for the important role they play in economic development and other sectors.

Source: Voice of America

As COVID-19 has spread in Nigeria, Africa’s most populated country, so have myths about the virus, especially among children. A Nigerian author has written a children’s book to help them understand the pandemic and ways to avoid being infected.

A team of educators arrives at a government school in Abuja. Equipped with books, face masks and sanitizers, they’re here to educate schoolchildren about the coronavirus pandemic and personal hygiene.

The initiative is the brainchild of team leader Raquel Kasham Daniel, a Nigerian author and founder of the nonprofit Beyond the Classroom Foundation.

She started the foundation 11 years ago to help make education accessible to vulnerable children. But she said when COVID-19 hit Nigeria last year, she had to focus on teaching children how to stay safe or reduce their risk of contracting the virus through her books.

“Because COVID was evolving, I knew we’ll not have one edition of the book,” she said. “So, we’ve had different editions of the book where I’ve had to update it from time to time. The support that we’ve received has mostly come from social media and some funders who have seen our work.”

The COVID-19 children’s book is titled There’s a New Virus in Town. It contains colorful images, along with text, to help children better understand the coronavirus. It also contains a quiz at the end where children can guess the next character or topic.

Twelve-year-old Jemila Abdul read it at the Abuja school.

“I’ll wash my hands regularly, and I’ll wear face masks, keep social distances, and keep my compound clean,” she said.

Nine-year-old Peculiar Oyewole said he’ll keep safe in order to keep his friends safe.

“I was angry because the coronavirus killed so many people,” he said. “I don’t want it to kill my friends.”

Nigeria has recorded more than 200,000 cases of the coronavirus, but authorities say myths and misinformation about the pandemic continue to spread, and children are among the most susceptible.

Daniel’s program, which has reached some 14,000 children so far, is helping to address this problem not only in schools but also among vulnerable groups.

“Some will say only older people are dying because God wants to save the children, that God is cleaning the Earth,” Daniel said. “We heard all sorts of things. So, what we do with our volunteers is to teach them and arm them with information about this myth and teach them (that) when you get on the field, this is how to debunk it.”

Nigerian authorities have been making efforts to educate the public and try to overcome misinformation, which authorities blame for a slow vaccine uptake.

But in the meantime, Daniel will be having an impact on kids.

Source: Voice of America

ABUJA, NIGERIA —

The U.N. Children’s Fund in Nigeria said at least 1 million Nigerian children could miss school this year because of insecurity, as schools in the north of the country have been targeted by armed groups in a series of mass kidnappings for ransom.

UNICEF Nigeria said Wednesday the country had recorded 20 school attacks this year alone, and 1,436 students have been abducted. The report also showed that 16 students have been killed, and 200 remain missing.

As schools across the country began opening this week for a new semester, more than 37 million students are due back at schools.

But officials reported low attendance in attack-prone areas like north central Kaduna state. In the capital, authorities pushed back the resumption date to September 19 without giving a reason.

In the UNICEF report, country representative Peter Hawkins urged Nigerian authorities to prioritize security at schools, stating it was unacceptable for communities to be worried to send their children to school over fears they will be abducted.

Emmanuel Hwande, spokesperson at Nigerian Union of Teachers, said the government must take responsibility.

“We want the government to take actions, actions that will see that the security agencies respond properly to incidents of kidnapping, incidents of abduction where we’ll see them actively involved, actively engaging such criminal elements,” Hwande said.

Ransom-seeking criminal gangs began targeting schools in northern Nigeria late last year. Amnesty international says hundreds of schools there have been closed as a result.

Abuja resident Florence Ulo is scared about sending her five-year-old son back to school.

“Even me that is in the city, and of course my son’s school is not far from the house and they have security, but I still don’t feel comfortable,” she said. “The thought of that they can go into a school and abduct children is very scary for a parent.”

Last year, the coronavirus pandemic set back school calendars and disrupted learning for millions of students in Nigeria. UNICEF’s Hawkins said the situation has worsened “with the additional challenge of school closures due to prevailing insecurity across the country.”

He said that while countries worldwide, including Nigeria, have taken action to provide remote learning, many students are not being reached.

He said UNICEF joined a global “digital freeze” of social media Thursday to protest the inability of children around the world to access classrooms, and that unless mitigation measures are implemented, the World Bank estimates a loss of $10 trillion U.S. dollars in earnings over time for the present generation of students globally.

Source: Voice of America

Authorities in Cameroon say they are attempting to remove thousands of children working in gold mines along the country’s eastern border. Some of the children were displaced from the Central African Republic because of violence there and dropped out of school to mine gold for survival.

The 2021-2022 school year in Cameroon started Monday, and Cameroon’s Ministry of Basic Education says thousands of children have not returned to class in areas along the border with the Central African Republic.

The government says many of the children prefer working in gold mines.

Auberlin d’Abou Mbelessa is mayor of Batouri, a town on the border.

Mbelessa said his district wants all children to immediately leave gold mining sites and go to schools. He said village chiefs and religious leaders in Batouri have been asked to visit all houses, markets, farms, churches, mosques and mining sites to tell everyone that without education the future of children looks barren.

Mbelessa said at least 300 of the children and teenagers are Central African Republic citizens displaced by violence and insecurity following the C.A.R.’s December 2020 general election.

Among the kids who have refused to leave mining sites is 15-year-old Joseph Goumba. Goumba said he fled from the C.A.R. in January when rebels attacked the town of Bossangoa to protest the reelection of President Faustin-Archange Touadéra.

He said he relies solely on gold mining for a living.

Goumba says education is the best thing a child can be given but his preoccupation is to raise money and send it to his poor mother whose old age could not permit her to escape from the C.A.R. He said his father, who escaped with him, died in a gold mine in July and he has no one to count on for food and school needs.

Goumba said he earns $4 after 24 hours of work. Cameroon says there are over 400 mining sites on its eastern border, a majority of them illegal.

Corine Mvondo is a government labor official in Batouri. She said Cameroon will punish people who stop children from going to school.

She said Cameroon is a signatory to the Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention which was adopted by the International Labor Organization on June 17, 1999. She said a 2011 Cameroonian law states that people involved in child labor are liable to prison time of 15 to 20 years and fines of up to $20,000.

Life in the gold mines is dangerous. The government says 27 miners died in May due to landslides.

Cameroon has promised to offer free primary education to children who leave the mines. But some of the children say they lack food and books. The government has not said if it will provide those things if the children return to school.

Source: Voice of America