Inter Press Service - December 6, 2000
Lewis Machipisa

In Africa alone, almost half the primary school age children, or 42 million, are not going to school. About 20 countries in Africa have actually suffered a decline in enrolment rates during the first half of the 1990s. According to UNESCO, Uganda, more than doubled its enrolment in two years when it introduced a free education scheme.

Failure to meet school costs is cited as the major reason why children of all age groups are not in the classroom. But a bold initiative wants to put education at the top and also at the forefront of the fight against HIV/AIDS.

"We live in a world were children whose families cannot pay for tuition, uniforms, desks, pencils, books and building repairs are shut out of classrooms," Bellamy regretted. "And yet we live also live in a world that ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child a decade ago, a world that recognised free compulsory education as the right of every child. Governments have both, a legal and a moral, responsibility to fulfil that obligation."

In the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, to attend the African Development Forum (ADF), which ends Thursday, Bellamy urged African leaders to join the global campaign for free primary education.

The campaign to abolish all fees and other costs for primary school-age children is part of a broader UNICEF effort to place education at the top of the world's HIV/AIDS fighting agenda.

The ADF 2000's meeting, which has as its theme: AIDS: Africa's greatest leadership challenge', seeks to generate commitments from African leaders on scaling up the fight against Aids.

Africa is home to the largest number of AIDS orphans in the world. The number of global orphans in 1999 was 13 million of which 12 million were in Africa, according to the joint United Nations programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). Most of these do not go to school.

The African continent has the highest incidence of HIV/AIDS in the world - with an estimated 25.3 million people in sub-Saharan Africa infected - nearly a million more than in 1999 and 70 percent of the global total of 36.1 million, notes UNAIDS in its latest global update.

Some 2.4 million people died of the disease in Africa, this year, compared to 2.3 million last year and they constitute 80 percent of global AIDS deaths. The education sector is also not well. Despite numerous promises and pledges, that have been made over the years, realising the 1990 World Declaration on Education for All has been elusive. Few countries can boast of going in the right direction to achieve the set education goals.

Countries such as Cape Verde, Malawi, Mauritius, South Africa and Zimbabwe have already achieved primary enrolment rates of 90 percent or more, according to UNESCO.

And although 42 million primary-school-age children are out of school in sub-Saharan Africa, at least 17 million more are in school today compared to 1990. One of the principal reasons education budgets suffer in sub- Saharan Africa is a crippling foreign debt burden put at 227 billion US dollars.

Globally, 870 million people are illiterate, 70 percent of these women. If all children of primary school age were to receive a good quality basic education lasting for a minimum of four years, the problem of illiteracy would be resolved in the space of single generation, notes UK- based Oxfam, an international organisation of 11 Non-governmental organisations working for poverty reduction.

Yet today, 125 million primary-school aged children are not in school, most of them girls. Another 150 million children start primary school but drop out before they have completed four years of education, the vast majority before they have acquired basic literacy skills.

In much of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, children can expect to receive about 4-7 years of education. In the industrialised countries this is 15-17 years, notes Oxfam

"Placing every child in a classroom has never been more urgent than it is today," says Bellamy. "Under threat from the pandemic, children must be able to turn to schools as places of learning, inclusion, stability and life-saving information about HIV/AIDS. No child should be barred entry."

But its not always the high cost of education that is prevents children from going to school in Africa. UNESCO estimates that up to two- thirds of the children do not getting an education in countries where there is armed conflict and civil strife.

According to Oxfam, the achievement of universal primary education within a decade in all developing regions would cost only seven billion U.S. dollars to eight billion dollars annually over and above existing expenditure.

Put in context, the figure represents about four day's worth of global military spending, or less than the annual amount that Europeans spend on mineral water or computer games.

Funding for public education across Africa is inadequate. In rural Tanzania, there is one textbook for every 30 children. In Zambia, one quarter of the country's classrooms lack a blackboard.

Having missed the initial target of education for all by the year 2000, the target has bee moved to 2015. But still, even after the target for the provision of good quality universal primary education has been shifted, Oxfam projects that, in Africa alone, the number of children out of school will rise to 51 million by 2005 and to 57 million by 2015.

And the gap keeps on widening. According to Oxfam: per capita spending on primary pupils in Britain is 3,553 US Dollars, around 130 times that of Zambia. While spending per child in the US is 5,130 dollars and 5,038 dollars in Canada, in India it is about 12 dollars.

"There is no shortage of money to ensure every child's right to a free basic education," explains Bellamy. "National governments can and should reallocate budgets to strengthen the education sector. The international community must relive the debt that siphons resources from schools."

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