Belgium to finance 5 million primary education textbooks

In collaboration with the Ministry of Education of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Belgium has initiated a project to produce five million primary school textbooks for Congolese children and teachers, Belgian Secretary of State for Cooperation and Development Eddy Boutmans has said. The announcement followed Boutmans' visit to the DRC last week. "There is a tremendous need in the DRC for teaching material of all kinds, at all levels of education - primary, secondary, university, technical schools - because the entire system has collapsed" during the past several years of conflict, Stephan Van Praet, an advisor to Boutmans, told IRIN on Thursday. Textbooks of some 256 pages will be produced for each of the six primary education grade levels, covering the fundamentals of all subjects - math, language, history, science - for that year. Van Praet cautioned that the project was still at its initial phase, and would hopefully be completed within the next two years. Although Belgium is seeking to commit 10 million euros (US $10 million) to the project, he said that Brussels needed the support of other donors to bring it to fruition. One of the main discussion points of the project, first conceived a year ago, is what role the primary national languages of DRC - Kikongo, Lingala, Swahili and Tshiluba - will play alongside the official language of the DRC, French. An editorial committee of teachers will be responsible for the content of the textbooks, to be printed by local publishers throughout the DRC, and will be sold for the "reasonable " price of 1 euro ($1), Boutmans said.