Education

Boy, girl education gap still a challenge

Boys at Nsongwe Basic showcase their skills in making woven baskets.

By DOREEN NAWA
LIKE many other remote areas in Zambia, girl-child education has continued to play second fiddle to marriage in Kazungula’s Nsongwe area.
This has also led to the continued gap between boys and girls in accessing education.

Many a parent evidently value marriage more than education of the girls.
The number of girls dropping out from school due to early marriages is common phenomenon at Nsongwe Basic School, a 20 minutes drive west of Livingstone.
This probably is evidence enough of the little value attached to girl-child education.
“We have never had a year without cases of early marriages or early pregnancy in school. We lose four to five girls each year,” says Nsongwe Basic School head teacher Regis Makala.
“We are still a long way from achieving the education for all goal.
“One of the barriers to achieving this goal is early marriage. The gap between girls and boys education in accessing education remains a challenge,” Ms Makala says.
UNICEF statistics indicate that Zambia is 10th on a global ranking of early marriages prevalence.
Particularly notable, is the vast gender discrepancy with 42 percent of women aged 20 - 24 years married before age 18, compared to only five per cent of men; indicating that girls are often married to older men.
Marriage takes place for economic, cultural, religious, social and emotional reasons.
In remote areas, especially among the poor, early marriage is common countrywide.
“Usually, it is girls who marry early and not the boys. The gender inequality present in all aspects of society, including education, leads to girls often lacking life skills and negotiating power,” Ms Makala says.
“Therefore, while most boys have a say on when and who they marry and what they do once they are married, many girls do not get the chance to make these decisions,” she says.
Early marriage can be a violation of children’s basic rights to a childhood, to an education, to good health and to make decisions about their own lives.
According to Ms Makala, the physical, emotional and social effects of early marriage are varied, but the most common outcomes is withdrawal of girls from formal education.
To remedy the situation, Ms Makala’s school welcomes girls who still want to attend school even after getting married.
“We have done enough of sensitisation to our pupils,” she says.
The downside to this initiative is that young girls often marry older men who expect wives to stick to the tradition of house-keeping and staying home to take care of the children.
Zambia has a re-entry policy of allowing pregnant girls to return to school after giving birth.
Bessy Muchindu of Nsongwe Basic School is one of the beneficiaries of the re-entry policy.
However, Bessy has a few reservations about the effectiveness of the re-entry policy.
“Even if we are allowed to return to school, the environment - rules, timetables and physical conditions make it quite difficult for us to attend school and perform the duties of a wife and mother at the same time.
Intimidation and abuse by some teachers, fellow pupils and other parents further erodes our self-confidence, forcing us to give up on school,” says Bessy.
Beatrice Muyaba of Nsongwe village, on the other hand, has had a bitter experience of early marriage.
“The idea of forcing girls to marry for material gain is not good. I got married early and I have lived to regret the action my parents took. They stopping me from going to school because they wanted cattle (dowry),” Ms Muyaba says.
She says early marriage can be a big barrier for communities seeking to raise education levels and break the poverty cycle.
“It is not just girls who suffer the consequences of early marriage, community too feel the impact. I have seen communities where educated girls have become role models to the young generation. Educated girls become the talk of the village thereby encouraging other girls to work had in school,” Ms Muyaba says.
The people of Nsongwe depend on cross border trade and handcrafts for their livelihood.
Early marriage is a global issue which affects the education and well-being of millions of children and has a knock-on effect on the poverty and development of communities.
Besides the impact on girl-child education, early marriages also pose health challenges to girls.
From a medical point of view, pregnant girls are at increased risk of acquiring diseases.
According to UNICEF studies conducted in Zambia, teenage brides are contracting HIV at a faster rate than sexually active single girls in the same location.
And Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, UN Population Fund (UNFPA) Executive Director, says child brides face much pressure to have children soon after marriage, which not only interrupts efforts to reduce sexually transmitted infections through use of condoms, but also puts the girls at increased risk of maternal death.
Ms Obaid says girls between the ages of 15 and 19 are more likely to experience complications during pregnancy and childbirth, including obstetric fistula.
“They are also more likely to have children with low birth weight, inadequate nutrition and anaemia. The health of these young mothers is further compromised, as they are also more likely to develop cervical cancer later in life,” she says.

Published on Wednesday, 27 February 2013 06:29

Human Rights

Social protection vital in policy formulation

By DOREEN NAWA
SOCIAL protection is often considered as something exclusive to developed countries like Zambia, even though some forms of it are often unstructured in every society.
As defined by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, social protection is concerned with preventing, managing, and overcoming situations that adversely affect people’s well-being.

According to Platform for Social Protection (PSP) Zambia in a document titled, ‘Social Protection in Zambia - An eye on Policy,’ social protection consists of policies and programs designed to reduce poverty and vulnerability by promoting efficient labour markets, diminishing people’s exposure to risks and enhancing their capacity to manage economic and social risks such as unemployment, exclusion, sickness, disability and old age.
Poverty and vulnerability are amongst the biggest socio-economic challenges facing Zambia.
Ms Mutale Wakunuma, Country Coordinator for PSP Zambia says poverty in Zambia currently stands at 60.5 percent and extreme poverty at 42 percent countrywide.
“Extreme poverty is measured using a food poverty line, which by translation means these households’ total incomes will not deliver a basic food basket on the table. Social protection is an emerging key sector in pro-poor development. Globally, it has been necessitated by the realisation that as we approach the 2015 deadline for the MDGs, poverty still remains rife and locally by the overwhelming vulnerability and mass indigence in the country,” Ms Wakunuma said.
PSP Zambia with financial support from Irish Aid advocates for the development and implementation of effective policies and programs for social protection.
PSP, a non-governmental organisation aims to raise policy awareness on social protection among civil society and other stakeholders and to facilitate and enhance effective stakeholder participation and contribution to social protection processes in Zambia.
Undoubtedly, achieving the MDGs targets will require a reversal of the poverty trends.
According to Ms Wakunuma, reversal of poverty and vulnerability rates can only be if there is excessive focus on market oriented policies.
“Leaving the country’s development to market dictates has unfortunately resulted in a yawning gap between the haves and the have-nots, with the gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, at 64 percent, reflecting the serious income inequality in the country. The conclusion is obvious; the rewards from general economic growth in the country are not inclusive and are not helping narrow the inequality gap,” she says.
What measures are needed to close the inequality gap and raise the majority of Zambians out of poverty?
Social protection stands out as one measure that addresses poverty and yet is not recognised as such, with the main argument against it being creation of dependency.
“The only difference is that social protection calls for support to the indigent to be more predictable, proactive, sustained, and if necessary better targeted as opposed to emergency responses which are temporary, reactive, one off and rotational, although this is not to say that emergency relief has no place in the social protection discourse.
“Thus the need for policy thinking that ensures relevance and effectiveness of social protection programming for as well as the need for enhanced targeting to maximize use of limited resources. As the sector formulates the policy, it would be strategic to ensure true government leadership in social protection thinking,” the document titled ‘Social Protection in Zambia - An eye on Policy,’ reads in parts.
According to the document, a policy helps to define the scope of Social Protection in the country and will provide stakeholders with a common understanding of Social Protection and what instrument will be used to achieve its goals.
The policy will outline the strategies and objectives that all stakeholders will contribute to and that government will be held accountable for.
“A policy as a statement of intent serves as a guide for decisions and helps achieve rational outcomes. A policy is typically a reflection of commitment and as such allows leaders to be held accountable for their actions. Bureaucratically, a policy would also help administrators to make decisions and priorities based on the relative merits of a number of factors; a policy merely guides actions toward those that are most likely to achieve a desired outcome. And paramount, a policy helps to define spending priorities,” Ms Wakunuma says.
As Zambia edges towards formulating a National Social Protection Policy, a comprehensive policy that will harmonise several policies that tackle issues relating to poverty and vulnerability, it is important to reflect on Social Protection, how it is defined, what it should focus on and how it should be done to have the most impact on poverty and vulnerability in the country.
Based on a Wikipedia article on Social Protection, social protection has been used in the European welfare state and other parts of the developed world to maintain a certain living standard, and address transient poverty.
One of the first examples of state-provided social protection can be tracked to the Roman Emperor Trajan, who expanded a program for free grain to include more poor citizens of the empire. In addition, he instituted public funds to support poor children.
Organised welfare was not common until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was during this period that in both Germany and Great Britain, welfare systems were established to target the working classes.
The United States followed several years later, during the Great Depression, with emergency relief for those struck the hardest. However, modern social protection has grown to envelop a much broader range of issues and purposes; it is now being used as a policy approach in developing nations, to address issues of persistent poverty and target structural causes. Moreover, it is designed to lift recipients out of poverty, rather than providing passive protection against contingencies.
In Zambia, however, the definition for Social Protection can be found in the 2005 Social protection strategy and in both the Fifth and Sixth National Development Plans.
The Sixth National Development Plan defines social protection as “a poverty reduction strategy that promotes human development, social equity and human rights … The Vision for the Social Protection sector is “a nation with capacity to promote and provide sustainable security against constant or periodic critical levels of deprivation and extreme vulnerability by 2030”. The sector goal is “to empower low capacity households and provide social assistance to incapacitated households and support to vulnerable people to live decent lives”. During the SNDP period, the focus of the sector will be to effectively coordinate and provide social protection through empowering low capacity households, providing social assistance to incapacitated households and supporting various vulnerable groups.”
Of further interest would be the definition from the political point of view, as contained in the ruling party’s manifesto, the Patriotic Front (PF).
The PF manifesto envisions Social Protection as “Subject to the cautions of the preceding paragraph, [in the manifesto], specific measures to be included in our comprehensive policy will include:
*The poorest families will be helped in accessing education and health, to ensure that they and their children are not excluded from basic services;
*Very vulnerable families will be helped into self-reliance through the delivery of input packs in rural areas, and skills training or micro business development activities in urban areas;
*People affected by unforeseen natural disasters or shocks will be supported with programs to support immediate survival, and to restore and strengthen livelihoods;
*Development of a package of life-cycle based benefits, including the development of age-based grants to address widespread poverty, deprivation and suffering;” the PF manifesto read in parts on tackling issues on Social Protection.
Generally, poverty in Zambia remains high among the rural population, especially those in the most remote and underserved districts.
The persistence of poverty both drives and is driven by poor nutrition, low standards of housing and the lack of access to safe water, quality health services, and quality primary education. As a result, poverty prevents the majority of Zambian children from fully enjoying their rights, and undermines future prospects for the country’s development.

   Published on Thursday, 14 February 2013

Entrepreneurship

Ignorance hampering Youth Development Fund success               

 

A youth in Monze displays his skills. Here, the youth is making braziers for sale.

By DOREEN NAWA
THE government’s innovative Youth Development Fund (YDF) has the potential to create jobs and improve livelihoods of the youth if the obstacles that impede its implementation are sorted out.
But in Southern Province, less than half of the allocated fund was accessed last year due to a number of factors, thereby limiting the realisation of its potential to transform lives of youth.

Ideally, the YDF is a revolving and non-profit general assistance fund aimed at empowering Zambian youth through entrepreneurship.
This entails that youth with innovative entrepreneurial ideas to create jobs for themselves and employ others can apply for these funds.
However, several factors have apparently hampered the realisation of its full potential.
For Southern province, the factors included ignorance on how to apply for the fund and the much deeper effects of the misconception that the fund is meant for youth affiliated to the ruling Patriotic Front (PF).
“We are happy that you have come to clear the air about the Youth Development Fund because there are too many myths surrounding accessing the funds. Most people here think that this fund is meant for the members of the PF and not any other, as a result, some youth have been reluctant to apply for the fund,” said a Monze resident Dresden Mwiinga.
According to Mr Mwiinga, Southern Province needs economic transformation but it can only be possible if people change their mindset.
“We need economic transformation not just to raise general living standards but also to create conditions in which people can enjoy social and political freedoms because economic advance and political progress are clearly linked,” Mr Mwiinga said.
In this year’s budget, Government has allocated KR19.1 million (K19.1 billion) to support youth enterprises compared to KR11.8 million (K11.8 billion) in last year’s budget.
Specifically for Southern Province, Government has allocated KR1.3 million (K1.3 billion) compared to the 2012 allocation of KR1.1 million (K1.1 billion).
Out of the K1.1billion only K422 million was accessed and the rest was returned to the treasury.
The failure to access the fund by the youth in Southern Province and other parts of the country prompted the Ministry of Youth and Sport which is responsible for the disbursement, to carry out sensitisation meetings in the province.
The team led by deputy minister of Youth and Sport, Nathaniel Mubukwanu, visited Mazabuka, Monze, Choma, Kalomo, Livingstone and part of Kazungula district.
The low number of youth who accessed the fund indicates that the attitude of people in the province towards the government initiative is unenthusiastic.
“The Youth Development Fund is meant for youth in Zambia regardless of their political affiliation. I feel this tendency of politicising government initiatives meant to benefit the Zambians is undermining development.
“Do not listen to these government critics, the fund is for all youth aged between 18 and 35,” Mr Mubukwanu said.
“Besides, the fund was initiated by the past government in 2010 and we just carried it over. Why should the fund be politicised?” he asked.
According to Mr Mubukwanu, Government saw it suitable to promote youth enterprises by continuing with the youth development fund.
“It is only through an innovative approach to funding small business ventures that Zambian youth can fight poverty and unemployment in the country,” he said.
Mr Mubukwanu further urged the would-be recipients of the fund to use the money wisely and change the well-being of their communities.
Accompanied by officials from BancABC, Mr Mubukwanu held similar talks with youths in Nsongwe in Kazungula district.
During the sensitisation meetings in all the districts along the line of rail in Southern province, youths came in droves presumably as ‘doubting Thomases’ but by the end of the meetings, more than half the number demanded to be given application forms for the fund.
“I was one of those that had a notion that the funds were meant for PF members alone because of what we have been told in the past about the youth development fund,” said Kelly Munsaje, a Monze resident who was delighted to have had attended the sensitisation meeting.
According to Muma Mukupa, the chief youth development officer at the Ministry of Youth and Sport, the fund is a catalyst to employment and wealth creation for the youth who wish to take up entrepreneurship to create employment for themselves and others.
“It is worth noting that self-employment is the easiest and quickest way to wealth creation using strategies at micro level. It is envisaged that the fund will contribute to employment creation through enterprise development by the youth, thereby contributing to the reduction of unemployment and under-employment among the youth,” Mr Mukupa said.
According to the Economics Association of Zambia (EAZ), the current youth unemployment rate stands at 43 percent.
In response, the government created youth revolving fund whose overall objective is to lend finance to viable projects by the young entrepreneurs as well as enable the youth to benefit from associated training and mentorship services.
It is aimed at supporting the growth sustainable youth-led small and medium enterprises (SMEs) into the private sector for wealth and employment creation.
In order to make a meaningful contribution towards uplifting the country’s economy, the Ministry of Youth and Sport has engaged services of technical advisor from the Zambia Development Agency (ZDA), to advise the youth on starting up and sustaining their businesses.
Youths can either apply for a loan, whose ceiling is currently at KR50, 000, or a grant, which is at a ceiling of KR30, 000.
The government has further decentralised the process of approving and reviewing of proposals.
From the youths, the proposals will now be going to provincial centres where different stakeholders have formed committees which are chaired by the provincial permanent secretaries who actually review the submitted proposals and conduct desk appraisal.
They also do field appraisals to ascertain their correctness and viability.
The YDF envisions empowered youth as the change agent.

  Published on Monday, 11 February 2013 06:11