Educational Vulnerabilities

Abstract

Educational challenges in Africa are compounded by a number of deep-rooted sociocultural sources at whose root is the notion of girls’ secondary status. They begin in primary grades and are evident, Mabokela (2004) and Pereira (2007) argue, even at the university level. Add AIDS and the scene becomes circular: when students are directly affected by the disease, they may be forced to quit school—either because they themselves are ill, or to take care of other family members who are, and their stunted educational opportunities manifest themselves throughout the economy and the social infrastructure of their countries. In Africa, this is all part of steps backward from human development that need to be addressed. As reported in The Post of Zambia, on the eve of the December, 2004 Global Summit on Orphans and Vulnerable Children, James D. Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank from 1995 to 2005, pointed out that one of the worst effects of vulnerability was that its prevention of children from access to education; pointing out how, as AIDS ravaged African countries, more children were dropping out of school. Two years later came a startling statistic: “Nearly half of young women in Zambia and Ghana cannot read a simple sentence even after six years of schooling” (Kaunda, 2006).

The problem of AIDS in Africa lies not only in the dimensions of its transmission. It is fraught with political and cultural sensitivity, and compounded further by economic and social problems which already impede progress in many spheres of development. Misconceptions about the transmission of the disease are common and diverse, ranging from exogenous and endogenous theories to the retributionist theories alluded to by many workers elsewhere… So while it is important to note that education has been wisely accepted as an appropriate weapon in the AIDS drama, health professions should not discard historical evidence of the successes achieved in health care programmes, where participation by communities in the information sharing process, has been accorded equal weighting as a tool in the struggle against ignorance and misunderstanding.

Laver, African Communities in the Struggle

Against AIDS (1988), p. 281.