Ahead of tomorrow's International Day of Education, Misereor has called for increased efforts to enable more people to obtain high-quality school-leaving qualifications and future-oriented vocational qualifications. "After considerable successes have been achieved globally in promoting education in recent decades, it is now important to make up for setbacks from the time of the corona pandemic and to eliminate existing shortcomings," demands Misereor Managing Director Bernd Bornhorst. The global community pledged to do the latter in 2015 when it adopted the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. SDG Goal 4 aims to "ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all".
According to Thorsten Nilges,vocational training officer in Misereor's Africa department, there has been remarkable progress in the number of school-leaving qualifications on the African continent. Nevertheless, it is often forgotten that many of the poorest countries are barely able to collect such data and therefore do not have a clear picture of the overall situation.
Setbacks due to Covid 19
The positive trend in some areas has turned negative again, not least due to Covid-19: 107 million children and young people in Africa were recently out of school. A report presented by UNESCO and the African Union, among others, shows that Africa lacks 77 billion euros annually to achieve SDG 4. Numerous countries on the continent are also unable to close this gap because their budgets offer too little room for manoeuvre due to high debt repayments. Against this backdrop, Bornhorst calls on state and private creditors to be more accommodating. There needs to be significantly more investment in the quality of school education. At the same time, it is important to tackle malnutrition and undernourishment, the consequences of which often mean that children and young people are unable to learn normally and complete their schooling. The lack of education is particularly glaring in sub-Saharan Africa: almost 87 per cent of children aged ten living there have massive learning deficits and are unable to read or understand simple texts adequately, for example.
"This deficiency has considerable consequences," emphasises Nilges. "Anyone who can't read, write or do maths well has no chance of leading an independent life and is at risk of being patronised. Investing in education is also so important because it paves the way out of poverty and is the basis not only for sufficient income to live on, but also for political participation and knowledge of one's own rights."
Not resting on your laurels
Kira Häring, Misereor education advisor in South Africa, emphasises the importance of the latter point: "Without this kind of heightened political awareness, the youth protests in mid-2024 in a country like Kenya would have been unthinkable." Here, the massive resistance to the state government's policies had led to the needs of young people being given greater consideration by the government and international policymakers.
"The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 4 will only be achieved in Africa if the international community does not rest on past successes," warns Bornhorst. "For example, the number of children who have completed primary school has risen from 52 to 69 per cent since 2000. There is empirical evidence that this is a success of the joint efforts of the international community, which explicitly promoted educational measures in the 1990s and 2000s. We need to build on this."
The 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda were launched in 2015 at the World Summit on Sustainable Development as a global plan to combat poverty, inequality and protect the environment. Misereor is working with its partners in the Global South to achieve these goals, particularly in the areas of education, food, water, energy and sustainable cities. However, countries have not yet sufficiently fulfilled their responsibilities by the 2030 target.
