4 months ago
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The 6th Mid-Year Coordination Meeting of the African Union (AU) yesterday opened in Accra with the commencement of the 45th Ordinary Session of the Executive.
The four-day high powered meeting is on the theme “Educate an African fit for the 21st century: Building resilient education systems for increased access to inclusive, lifelong, quality, relevant learning in Africa”.
Present at the 45th ordinary session were the Chairperson of the AU Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Mr Claver Gatete, the Chairperson of the Executive Council of the Africa Union, Mr Mohammed Salem and Ghana’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ms Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey among other dignitaries.
Opening the session, Ms Botchwey said there was the need for the continent to harness its collective strengths in utilising opportunities and finding solutions to the challenges it faced.
She said these challenges included those persisted in the education sector as specified by the theme of the session.
“We owe a duty to ourselves in this present age, and as an obligation to future generations, to achieve this,” she stressed.
Ms Botchwey said the theme was not only appropriate but also timely as it captured the essence of the challenges and opportunities faced in the education sector.
In addition, she said the theme highlighted the importance of resilient educational systems in addressing the challenges of the 21st century.
“It establishes the need for a renewed commitment to building a future where every African has access to an education that prepares them to meet the demands of their time,” she emphasised.
Recounting the Ghanaian experience, Ms Botchwey said under the transformative leadership of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the country had introduced the Free Senior High School (SHS) Policy and this had significantly improved education in the country.
Furthermore, she said the policy had enhanced the prospects of the youth to take on the exigencies of the 21st Century.
“The introduction of the Free Senior High School Policy in 2017 has significantly increased access to quality education. Since its inception, Senior High School enrolment has risen from 308,799 in 2016 to 507,519 in 2024, which has also positively impacted gender parity at the high school level. Our government recently launched the Ghana Smart Schools Project, which focuses on providing tablets to learners in Senior High Schools and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions across the country,” she emphasised.
On his part, Mr Gatete said for the continent to rescue the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and achieve Agenda 2063, it must put education, science, technology and innovation at the forefront of all efforts.
He stressed that Africa faced significant challenges in dealing with education, primarily due to inadequate financing and high indebtedness.
“Government’s struggle to access long-term concessional finance. Official development assistance and foreign direct investment are dwindling. Our limited tax to GDP ratios further constrains domestic resource mobilisation,” he said
Mr Gatete said these financial challenges were exacerbated by rising food and energy costs, fuelled by increasing and unpredictable extreme weather events, which had reduced the fiscal space for countries to operate.
In addition, he said the global level playing field remained uneven with Africa’s borrowing costs being over 10 times higher than Germany and nearly four times higher than the United States of America.
He therefore, called on African leaders to persist in advocating for the reform of a global financial architecture that is fit for purpose.
BY CLIFF EKUFUL
