Our Children, COVID-19, Education and The Looming Unequal, Inseparable Worlds
How Can Mankind Avoid Collision of The Two Polar Opposite Worlds on The Horizon?
They are the future of humanity. Our children. In some nations, they are nurtured and cherished by the political leaders.
In other nations, they are neglected by the leaders. They are trapped in a milieu of malnutrition, infestation with preventable waterborne diseases, absent or minimal access to basic education and lovelessness.
The coronavirus pandemic has exposed huge holes in the healthcare systems and social safety nets in several nations.
A new disease, Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) is associated with COVID-19. In this condition, there is inflammation of different organs including the skin, eyes, gastrointestinal tract, heart, lungs and brain.
While MIS-C is rare, the symptoms can be very severe in the affected children and has led to death in a few cases. It can affect any child; rich or poor, and is totally oblivious to ethnicity or national origin.
However, there is another killer pathogen affecting children and crawling its way silently across some lands. Unlike SARS-CoV-2, this “virus” is not universal among children. It is confined to certain regions of the world and in peacetime finds one of its greatest expressions in the world’s poorest region, Sub-Saharan Africa. If not contained, the dire consequencies of the “infestation” will soon — couple of decades — alter the lives of populations in the other continents.
This “virus” is a potent neurotoxin. It destroys that crown jewel of creation, the human brain. It kills knowledge acquisition, opportunities for deep thinking, innovation and discovery. It condemns the affected children to generational wasting, hopelessness and eventually, a war of all against all.
This neurotoxin is the chasm in ‘Basic Education’ and the digital divide between the nations of Sub-Saharan Africa and other regions of the world. It is the endemic woeful facilities for pre-school and primary school children in many nations of Sub-Saharan Africa due to woeful leadership and mammoth corruption.
The secondary schools do not fare any better, but we’ll leave that aside for now.
If you are wondering what gives me the authority to pen this lamentation?
Well, I have had a front row seat at the ‘ground level’ in the quest to educate children in poor communities in Nigeria for decades. I have also seen first hand, as a medical volunteer, the negative impact of poor healthcare systems on the health and education of children in several African nations.
The Impact of Science: Historically and Today
In the past 250 years, human development has been largely informed by science. Be it in transportation on land, in the air, above or below the high seas, in agriculture, medicine, architecture, technology and security apparatus, science has taken center stage.
Unfortunately, millions of children in Sub-Saharan Africa are growing up with no exposure, or at best melancholic exposure to science.
Superimposed on this debacle of scientific illiteracy, these children will inherit from the current mostly inept leaders, societies with poor infrastructure, food insecurity, prominent informal economy, fragile healthcare systems and weak security.
If the status quo in these nations is not reversed, humanity is headed for two totally different, yet inseparable worlds in collision within the next three decades.
COVID-19 has shed additional light on the huge gap, not just in access to basic education, but in the gravity of the poor quality of the available education.
With the lockdown of cities and villages, millions of children across Sub-Saharan Africa also had their education locked down. With no access to computers, iPads, TV or even reliable radio transmission, the children were, and are stuck in ‘information and knowledge darkness’.
Typical Scenario Across Towns and Villages in Sub-Saharan Africa
The following story by Proscovia Nakibuuka Mbonye titled: “How families are coping during the COVID-19 lock down; A tale of a mother” is from Uganda. www.unicef.org >uganda >stories > How families are coping during the COVID-19 lock down
“In Uganda, the COVID-19 pandemic and lock down has left many families with no option but to stay home and keep safe. Schools have been closed, workplaces shut, and many parents and caretakers are home with their families, save for those providing critical services. Before the lock down, Iculent Veronica a mother of five children aged between 14 and two years, living in the outskirts of the capital city, earned from providing laundry services for several clients. The earnings supported her children’s education and daily meals. Today her jobs have greatly reduced as she can’t walk long distances to reach her clients. In this story, she shares how her family is coping during the lock down.”
Time to learn
“A typical day at Veronica’s house begins with house chores like cleaning the house, cleaning utensils and fetching water, by all family members. This is followed by breakfast and catching up with homework. “Much as the children are at home, I want them to continue learning,” she shares. The family has a television and Veronica has heard that lessons are being screened. Unfortunately, her children cannot access these lessons. They lack electricity because it is regulated by the landlord and only available from 7 p.m to midnight, when the classes are no longer available. This worries her children who think their classmates elsewhere are learning more than them. This has not derailed the mother of five from encouraging them to learn using the learning materials provided by their schools”.
Welcome to existential reality in the world’s youngest continent, Sub-Saharan Africa. Goodbye to distant, remote electronic learning in the era of COVID-19 and immediate post COVID-19.
I titled the above segment; ‘Typical Scenario Across Towns and Villages in Sub-Saharan Africa’. Actually, this scenario is typical only for the fortunate few.
The reality is that in thousands of villages in the nations of Sub-Saharan Africa including the villages where my non-profit organization has been active, most of the families have no television and very few have radio.
The sad thing about this debacle is that it need not be so. Many of the nations of Sub-Saharan Africa have enormous natural and human resources. However, the post-independent leaders of these nations have largely failed the people. Nigeria is a case in point.
Compounding the problems of mammoth corruption and leadership failure in these nations is the issue of conflicts.
In addition to the suffering and deaths resulting from the conflicts, internal and external displacement of many families occur.
Women, children and the elderly bear the brunt of the disastrous effects of the resulting refugee crisis. This always leads to severe disruption in the education of the children.
If and when any classroom education is provided, the children take their seats on the ground, sometimes under trees or some other sub-human conditions.
The chasm between the lives of children in Sub-Saharan Africa and children in many other regions of the world has, arguably, never been wider. This is particularly striking in the education sector.
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
In September 2000, the United Nations Millennium Declaration was signed by 191 member countries. They agreed to try and achieve ‘The United Nations Millennium Development Goals’, MDGs — eight goals — by the year 2015.
The second of the eight goals states:
“To achieve universal primary education”.
The following is the “Millennium Development Goals Report” issued by the UN Department of Public Information — DPI/2594/5 E
“Over the past two decades sub-Saharan Africa has also achieved a large increase in youth literacy. However, the region faces daunting challenges, including rapid growth of the primary-school-age population (which has increased 86 per cent between 1990 and 2015), high levels of poverty, armed conflicts and other emergencies.
Of 57 million of global out-of-school children of primary school age in 2015, 33 million are in sub-Saharan Africa, and more than half (55 per cent) are girls. An estimated 50 per cent of out-of-school children will never go to school”.
Far from a glowing report card; I think most people will admit.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
The United Nations has set 17 Development Goals to be achieved by 2030. Goal number 4 is ‘Quality Education’ for all.
The enormity of the challenge facing the nations of Sub-Saharan Africa is revealed in this quote from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) report titled “Education in Africa”: Data for the Region Facing the Biggest Challenges.
“Of all regions, sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates of education exclusion. Over one-fifth of children between the ages of about 6 and 11 are out of school, followed by one-third of youth between the ages of about 12 and 14. According to UIS data, almost 60% of youth between the ages of about 15 and 17 are not in school.
Without urgent action, the situation will likely get worse as the region faces a rising demand for education due to a still-growing school-age population”.
So, what will happen if the next unexpected, inexplicable, catastrophic event, whether in the healthcare sector or in any other sector originates in Sub-Saharan Africa in the next two or three decades?
Who will extinguish the fire before it ravages the epicenter, the surrounding nations and jets across the globe? By the time rescuers arrive from across the Atlantic and Indian oceans and the Mediterranean sea, will it be too late?
A scenario of poorly educated and ill-educated Sub-Saharan African young leaders, saddled with concurrent major deficits in other sectors and unable to weather the storm in their homeland is indeed frightening. It would pose significant existential threat not only to Sub-Saharan Africa but to the rest of the world.
Possible Solutions.
What should be done to turn around the state of education, in particular ‘Basic Education’ in the nations of Sub-Saharan Africa?
How can Mankind avoid collision of the two polar opposite ‘worlds’ on the horizon?
Any astute observer of the socio-political dynamics of post independent nations of Sub-Saharan Africa would admit that there are no easy answers.
Nonetheless, there are decisive actions that can be taken now, especially by Sub-Saharan Africans, but also by their outside benefactors.
- The endemic corruption and leadership failure that have stymied the emergence and progress of the region must be boldly addressed. Without significant mitigation of the corruption and a new set of altruistic leaders, the future is indeed bleak for the region. These changes must originate from within these nations.
- Neither persistence reliance on the West nor the current dance with the East epitomized by the overwhelming presence of China, and to a lesser extent of India in Africa will solve this problem. They are simply postponing the day of reckoning. The culture of dependency must abate.
- The old playbook of open-ended benevolence from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, the United Nations and its agencies, and unlimited assistance from deep pocket Foundations cannot, and will not solve Sub-Saharan Africa’s problems. Foreign assistance must be restructured.
The future leaders of the nations of Sub-Saharan Africa must be the authors and executors of the ‘thought processes’ for the resuscitation of the region. Only then can the help from outside be meaningful and sustainable.
Hope On The Horizon?
It is tempting to come to a foregone apocalyptic conclusion about the future of some, or even majority of the children currently trapped in suboptimal conditions in Sub-Saharan Africa.
What do you expect? Some people would proclaim. Look at the scale of the corruption; look at the conflicts and lovelessness; look at the failure of the leaders to harness the enormous natural resources of their lands.
Yes, these children exist today in unsavory circumstances that are totally beyond their control, and in many instances, beyond the control of their parents.
However, as COVID-19 has shown us, the ‘mystical reality’ of the human condition has been in full display since January this year. What is that mystical reality?
It is the unexpected, inexplicable, sometimes overwhelming ‘Uncertainty’ which is beyond our gaze and can lockdown mankind. That is the ‘Certainty’ of the human experience.
Therefore, as ‘Uncertain’ as it may be, ‘Reformers’, i.e. sons and daughters of Sub-Saharan Africa from all over the world would emerge, hopefully soon rather than later. Together with genuine non-African supporters who also share the burden for these children, ‘Mankind Will Indeed Avoid Collision of The Two Polar Opposite Worlds on The Horizon’.
