Sahelian countries adopt education strategy

Six Sahelian nations on Monday pledged to draw on their own resources to improve education, and urged international donors to follow-up with assistance that would give them greater independence in implementing their programmes. Officials agreed to commit half of their education budgets to primary education, and to set aside 4 percent of gross domestic product and contribute 40 percent of debt relief savings to education. “The heads of state have made some very strong commitments,” Ouane Adama, director of UNESCO’s institute for education in Hamburg, Germany, told IRIN on Tuesday. “We have a chance now to make a breakthrough.” Adama attended the weekend meeting of education and finance ministers in Bamako, Mali, and the follow-up summit on Monday. The presidents of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Niger attended the summit, while other officials represented Guinea and Senegal. Initially, officials appeared to want to rely on external support to improve education, but presidents Alpha Oumar Konare of Mali and Mahamadou Tandja of Niger presented convincing arguments for greater self-reliance with external resources as a supplement, Adama said. He said their message to the international community was: “Support us and let us be in the driver’s seat.” Adama said there were several local efforts underway in the Sahel region, such as fostering the use of indigenous languages (coupled with the official language) in education in Mali, or using “satellite schools” in Burkina Faso to reach more children. “There are a lot of innovations in the region,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be done from scratch. Things are moving.” Primary education enrolment in the impoverished Sahelian countries falls below levels for most of sub-Saharan Africa. In 1997, only Senegal had an enrolement rate (59.5 percent) above the sub-Saharan African average of 56.2 percent, according to the UNDP Human Development Report 2000. The other five countries ranged from 24.4 percent in Niger to 47.9 percent in Chad. Adama said officials would like to make greater links between poverty-alleviation programmes and educational outreach in their countries. Representatives of the World Bank, the United Nations, NGOs and other organisations attended the weekend meeting and summit.