Richard Adzei, USAID’s Director - Office of Education and Youth [R], Emily Gray, UK Embassy’s Lead Education Advisor [M], and Tapfuma Jongwe, World Bank’s Senior Education Specialist [L] speaking on Eye Radio’s Dawn show, Wednesday, January 24, 2024. Photo Credit – Lou Nelson

As South Sudan joins the rest of the world to mark International Day of education today, some development partners are calling on the unity government to allocate more funds to the education sector in the country.

They say it is the sole responsibility of the government to ensure teachers are paid timely and schools are built and safe for learners.

Richard Adzei, the director of the Office of Education and Youth of USAID said the taxpayer’s money they are using to support South Sudan has limits.

Richard called on the transitional government to invest more in education in the country.

“We cannot do everything, South Sudan does not belong to the British embassy, it doesn’t belong to the American people, it doesn’t belong to the World Bank,” said Richard.

“It is also our job to identify ways that the transitional government can also do more because, at the end of the day, donors are here using taxpayer money from other counties,” he said.

“There is going to be a limit to how much of that can go into one country, and so we do the best of what we can make sure that we are aligned, supporting the sector plan from the ministries,” he added.

“We have data that looks at the expenditure in the country and looking at how much the developing community is spending in the country against how much the transitional government is spending,”

“The international community is doing quite a bit, and hopefully we are not doing too much that replaces the need for the transitional government actually to do more.”

Richard went on to say if teachers are paid on time, this will help improve the education sector in the country.

“If teachers are paid what they are supposed to be paid by the transitional government on time that’s the start,” said Richard.

“You can’t have students learning if there are no teachers in the classroom anywhere and that just goes globally, if the teachers are not paid, what do you expect?

“Unfortunately, the donor community are not in a position to pay that, that’s the transitional government’s job to pay their teachers and make sure they get paid what they are supposed to get paid on time,” he said.

“You read the paper these days, there are all these protests and issues with teachers saying they are not getting their due, that’s the problem.”

“The transitional government needs to be held accountable for that because those teachers belong to the system and the country of South Sudan

“Donors can do what they can but at the end of the day South Sudan has to take care of South Sudan.”

In August 2022, the Education Sector was allocated an increased budget of more than 107 billion pounds for the first time in the annual national budget.

The figure was allocated from the 1.3 trillion pound budget presented to the transitional national legislature in Juba.

According to reports, public expenditure on education in South Sudan is one of the lowest in the world.

The sector is suffering from low investment and low capacity, with its administration and management weakened by conflicts.

The national constitution states that basic education “must be free and compulsory to all children in the country.”

It also expects the government to encourage a culture of innovation, and develop and promote a general scientific approach in education.

It is also envisioned in the constitution that by the year 2040, South Sudan should be an educated and well-informed nation.

Emily Gray, the lead education advisor at the UK embassy in Juba said the unity government need to spend more funds on education.

“We know from the announces that we have done, last year the transitional government spent 8 dollars per child in South Sudan, only 37 per cent of the allocated budget was spent,” Emily said.

“Yes, donors can do what we can, but we fund education in South Sudan through money from our taxpayers and cannot use that to hold up another country’s education system.

“We can use our expertise, we can use our funds to try to help South Sudan to grow, to move forward and we care passionately about doing that.

“We don’t have the level of funding that allows us to fund an entire country’s teacher workforce and that has to come down to the government of South Sudan.”

For his part, Tapfuma Jongwe, a senior education specialist at the World Bank in Juba said the unity government has the biggest responsibility of funding the education sector.

“The partners can only do so much, but for governments across the world, domestic funding remains the biggest chunk of education financing that should go into any country,” said Tapfuma.

“What does this mean, it means that we have to be paying our teachers on time, using funds transparently. This means providing all students with great, appropriate teaching and learning materials, and ensuring that school buildings are safe, and learners are learning in a safe and conducive environment,” he said.

“I would say it is a dual effort, it is much about partners or financing partners putting so much, it is also about a partnership and striking a balance between what we are bringing it as partners and what is coming from the government.”

The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 24 January as the International Day of Education, in celebration of the role of education in peace and development.

This year’s theme is “learning for lasting peace.”

The right to education is enshrined in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The declaration calls for free and compulsory elementary education. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1989, goes further to stipulate that countries shall make higher education accessible to all.

According to the UN, education offers children a ladder out of poverty and a path to a promising future.

But it said about 244 million children and adolescents around the world are out of school; 617 million children and adolescents cannot read and do basic math; less than 40% of girls in sub-Saharan Africa complete lower secondary school and some four million children and youth refugees are out of school.

In South Sudan, as of October 2022, at least 2.8 million children were out of school.

This was according to George Ali, Director of Partners Coordination at the Ministry of General Education, who said the statistic was the biggest concern for the ministry and the government.

The government data reflects that of the UN’s children agency – UNICEF, which indicates that nearly 3 million children – over 70 per cent have dropped out of school, putting their futures and the future of the country at risk.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, South Sudan still has one of the highest rates of illiteracy in the world.

It said the number of illiterate people above 15 years was more than 70 per cent of the population, as of September 2017.