Maps of school infrastructure updated

Provincial administrators of Burundi's ministries of education and interior joined local officials of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in the inauguration on Wednesday of a collection of "vital data" on all primary school infrastructures in the country, the UN agency reported. "This data is being updated for the first time in more than a decade and will provide humanitarian actors and multi-sectoral planners a tool to better rationalise and prioritise interventions for children through the educational system," Raquel Wexler, the head of UNICEF Burundi's planning project, said in the capital, Bujumbura. The location of all of Burundi's 1,720 primary schools was to be established through mapping and, once done, UNICEF said, a comprehensive database would be developed linking the statistical information of each school to each geographic reference point. "Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology can facilitate the visualisation of disparities in school enrolment, girls' education, [and] student/teacher ratios within and between provinces. GIS can also be used with the UNICEF-developed CHILDINFO software, which is currently being used by numerous government partners in Burundi," Rose Marie Kidudi, UNICEF Burundi's GIS focal point, said. The school mapping complements last week's launch of electronic administrative maps. The school mapping effort was due for completion in three weeks, UNICEF said, after which the digital information would be made available to humanitarian bodies free of charge. UNICEF Burundi's basic education programme and the interior ministry's population department, it said, had jointly financed this activity. Wednesday's gathering brought together 40 provincial representatives of the education ministry's planning department and the interior ministry's population department.