Kenya sends more teachers to southern Sudan

July 6, 2006 (NAIROBI) — About 130 Kenyan teachers are teaching in southern Sudan with more than 60 others being expected to leave the country on Thursday to the vast region.

According to Nairobi-based non-governmental organization, Assistance Mission Africa (AMA), the teachers, whose contracts are dated July 1, have been recruited through competitive interviews by the institution.

Analysts say anticipating the return over the next several months of thousands of internally displaced Sudanese and Sudanese refugees who fled to other countries, southern Sudan authorities, UN agencies, and NGOs are preparing for increased enrollment of children in primary schools throughout the vast region of southern Sudan.

AMA Executive Director James Koung Ninrew said each Kenyan secondary teacher will be paid a basic salary of 300 U.S. dollars, while those in primary schools will each be paid 200 dollars.

More than 20 years of civil war, which ended in January 2005, destroyed most of southern Sudan’s infrastructure and it is estimated that only 20 percent of children attend primary school. Of those who do, just 35 percent are girls.

Out of an estimated population of 7.5 million, only 500 girls in southern Sudan complete primary school each year.

Ninrew said besides the salary, the Kenyan teachers would benefit from a meals allowance of about 90 dollars and an accommodation allowance of about 190 dollars.

Early last month, Kenya’s acting Education Minister Noah Wekesa said the east African nation, which brokered the landmark peace deal between the southern rebels and Khartoum, would send 200 primary school teachers to Sudan soon.

Wekesa said the government had agreed to send the teachers on request from the Sudan government.

“A delegation from Sudan will see me shortly. We have agreed to send the teachers there,” Wekesa said.

According to Wekesa, Sudan’s request for teachers followed successful negotiations over the deployment of 50 secondary school teachers from Kenya to Rwanda in May.

After more than two decades of civil war, the school system in southern Sudan is totally destroyed. Only about one child in three goes to school, the teachers work for nothing, or for the very little that parents can pay.

Because of this situation, the UN World Food Program (WFP) has begun a 3.5 million dollar construction project to build 25 schools in southern Sudan, where primary school attendance rates are the lowest in the world.

WFP has already signed contracts to build four schools following donations in 2005 of 800,000 dollars from the United Kingdom and 400,000 dollars from the Netherlands.

There are no enough schools to cater for all the school going age children currently in the southern Sudan and those expected to repatriate from other countries. The massive increase in pupil numbers immediately will create a problem of classroom space.

In the southern Sudanese capital of Juba, additional teachers are being recruited in anticipation of the expected surge in students whose families are returning after years of displacement in the north or other countries.

Education authorities have indicated their willingness to integrate teachers who fled the conflict in the south and have been living in the northern part of the country.

Displaced by long years of conflict, some 400 teachers in and around the capital, Khartoum, have reportedly indicated their willingness to teach in communities that have been deprived of adequate education for years.

Aid workers say about half of the teachers in southern Sudan did not have any professional training, while just 7 percent have had a year’s training.

There were only 1,600 primary schools in southern Sudan, they added, and less than 200 of these were housed in permanent structures.

Expectations are high among the people and communities most affected by the war that peace would bring a better life, and in particular, an education for their children.

So far, few donors have come forward with funds for recovery in Sudan.

UNICEF said it has received 2.1 million dollars of the 19.6 million dollars it needs in 2006 to support primary school education for children in the war-affected areas of southern Sudan.

Analysts say with approximately 24 percent of the adult population able to read and write, however, much more needed to be done to address illiteracy rates in southern Sudan, currently among the highest in the world.

“If you focus on formal education only, you leave out the vast majority of the population,” a regional analyst said.

(Xinhua/ST)