What brought me to this chair is one thing only, education – HH
What brought me to this chair is one thing only, education – HH
By Fanny Kalonda
WHAT brought me to this chair is one thing only, nothing else, it’s education, says President Hakainde Hichilema.
He says supporting education is the best investment stressing the importance of foundational learning in Zambia and on the African continent.
Speaking when he met the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) at State House yesterday, President Hichilema said without skills there is no country one can run.
He said education is the best investment, an equaliser and inheritance.
“I must indicate before I go far that education to us, supporting education to us, is the best investment. Nothing beats that. What brought me to this chair is one thing only. Nothing else, it’s education and we have a duty to expand this opportunity to many more of our children especially at a early age. Many more of our population since we introduced the free education in our country, we have seen 50-year-old mothers going back to school. That’s important. It’s important for foundational learning because that mother will make sure that the young kid goes back to school. The grandchild goes to school. That’s the connection to explain to you a little bit more things that you know already, but to put context,” he explained. “Our free education policy may not, should not, be viewed from education direct or support to education directly. We do yes that as the minister said, he acknowledged the free eduaction policy encompasses many things that you acknowledged – infrastructure, hardware, software…”
President Hichilema said efforts being implemented cannot work properly without foundational learning.
“This government is looking at the holistic offering to education and we were also clear that education … alone is not enough. I mean supporting, investing in that, so you look at other instruments we have which we call Constituency Development Fund, enhanced Constituency Development Fund. In there we also offer a good portion of that funding to education scholarships, bursaries…But all these things cannot work properly if foundational learning is not there. The facilities may be there, opportunities may be there, but the kid would have missed something at an early childhood education facility,” he explained. “As individual countries, we have to do our part in order to make this thing real. And we take this serious. A fellow like me takes this very very seriously and we want to assure you we will do our best within our challenges. We have a drought situation now which has stretched our resource envelope but we will do our best out of conviction to continue bringing more kids into educational facilities at an early age because that makes a difference. I didn’t have pre-school myself, so we are happy that we are in that space.”
President Hichilema said he is happy to champion policies to open up education to all children on the continent.
“But one ask that I want to make to all of us, just one ask, I belive that we need to begin to push the agenda that on our continent there must be basic minimums. Each of our countries must offer to its own kids, children by way of education, and early childhood should be one of those. The minimums that will require, obligate, our countries to support all the population of us especially those who are not able to because that’s where our focus is. I think that I am happy to push it through…” said President. “And I am happy to advance given that you blessed me with this opportunity, to be the champion. I am happy to push this with our PS (permanent secretary) on the continent in the various platforms so that each country has basic minimum policies to open up education to all our kids. I think this is important and I want to say from my business background, from my sins of the past, that without skills there is no business you can run. There is no economy you can run. There is no country you can run. So this I end here that this is the best investment, equaliser and to be honest, inheritance.”
CREDIT: The Mast