Essential of Education in different sector

Education is very much essential for each & every sectors .Now a days we cannot think anything without education.We can compare education with heart and brain of human being.
Some of them are explain below

•   Traditional subsistence farming and animal husbandry

Relative to its territorial space, Africa is sparsely populated. Unaided by irrigation, fertilisation and crop rotation, life-sustaining fertile soil in vast areas of Africa is only a thin layer and susceptible to degradation and erosion. It cannot, therefore, sustain dense population. Subsistence farming is scattered in clusters of households over a wide area. When the soil is degraded and eroded, there has been periodic migration. In savannah and the arid regions, semi-nomadic communities, usually in kinship groups, live on animal herding. Many people had been driven into these environment and form of living by waves of earlier invasions of their own homelands, most recently by colonisation.

Although better farming techniques and reforestation programmes have been initiated, over-grazing and lack of soil care continue to hasten erosion in vast areas, causing the perimeters of the desserts to spread wider. Life on subsistence farming or herding is indeed very fragile. In times of draught, millions may suffer famine. When they cannot reach a hospitable environment or emergency-aid reach them, as for example, in times of war, millions of food-seeking migrants die.

Far removed from the mainstream developments in the capital city and centres of commerce, these people have retained their traditional culture, beliefs and languages, many of which have no written form.  As an alternative to the conventional school-based education, various delivery methods, such as mobile units, radio-based distance education, boarding schools and even forced ‘villagezation’, have been tried.  Provision of education for the widely scattered, semi-nomadic and nomadic people remain costly and logistically difficult to implement and sustain.

•   Cash crop plantations

In areas endowed with climate, topology and soil amenable to large-scale farming, cash crop plantations provide tea, coffee, cacao, sugar, tobacco and other agricultural products for consumers in Europe. With modern refrigeration and transport, fruits and flowers have also become exportable. To these commercial farms, labourers of both gender were recruited from wherever possible.  They could be from the nearby villages.  However, where land was acquired by driving away the indigenous population, people from other regions were brought in, including slaves and indentured labourers from other colonies. Isolated from their origin and their surroundings outside the farm, they developed their own unique cultures and languages.  Although spoken everyday, these languages have no written form. 

There have been very little educational opportunities for the children of farm labourers and families in the small villages that grew around these farms.  In modern times, the employers have organised or provided some form of education, but few, if any, attained level of quality standard that would enable the children to continue education or obtain qualified job elsewhere. 

•   Mining towns

In the mineral rich areas, many located in land-locked regions, large mining towns evolved. Aside from a few educated people needed for supervision and management, the unique social characteristics of these mining towns is the concentration of male manual labourers and absence of families. Recruited from various areas, the workers have very little education, if any, and speak different indigenous languages of the villages of their origin. As the men work and live without their families, every aspect of their lives has no permanence. There are many social and health problems in these towns.  There are often no alternatives to whatever services the mining company may provide.  School enrolment rate is, of course, very low in these towns, as there are very few, at least ‘legal’, children are present in these communities.

The other side of the coin is the absence of men of economically active age in the villages from which the mine workers are recruited.  The population of these villages consists mainly of old people, small children, young girls and their mothers, many of whom have been ‘abandoned’ by their husbands. School enrolment rates show, therefore, female predominance in these areas.

As long as the main economic sectors were dependent on cheap labour for agricultural and extractive industries, there was little incentive for investment in human development.  Although institutions for human control, such as administration, police and military, had developed during the previous era, institutions for human development had not.

•   Cosmopolitan port cities

As the continent is surrounded by sea on all sides, the countries along the coasts had the most intensive and extensive contact with the sear-faring powers. Major commercial centres in Africa are the port cities along the coasts and large rivers with access to the sea, some of which were, once upon a time, centres of slave trade.  Today these port cities are trading in African mineral and agricultural products in exchange for manufactured products from the industrialised regions. The population in these cosmopolitan cities is multi-cultural, multi-racial and polyglot. Cultural, social and financial institutions reflect predominance of European (English, French, Portuguese and Spanish) and Christian or Arabic and Islamic influences, both of which brought written languages essential for commerce and administration. Wherever their origin, the cosmopolitan enterpreneurial people were able to organise civic associations and religious institutions and provide education for their children in the languages required for the next generation to take over their business or to enter other professions.

•   The Capital city

The capital city in an African country is the centre of administration, politics and institutions of human control (government bureaux, police, military, etc.). It is the most, sometimes the only, developed part of the country, traditionally located at a strategically defensible position given the military technology of the time of its establishment and comfortable climate for the ruling class.  Therefore, it is usually located in the highlands, seldom in hot lowlands or humid coast, or close to the dirty mining towns teeming with labourers.  It can also be located at the centre of commerce, depending on the dominance of commercial or security interests.

The government ministries and bureaux provide employment opportunities for the educated in the civil service, businesses, technical services and organisations that cater to government needs.  There are also many professionals such as lawyers, doctors, etc. and services and entertainment industries catering to the needs of the ruling and the middle classes. They speak at least two languages, the home language and the official language. Whereas residential areas may have been racially segregated previously in many places, they are now increasingly income-stratified.

National university is located in the capital city. There are elite schools, many inherited from the colonial period, for the ruling class and private schools for the emerging middle class. The language of instruction and curriculum in the elite and private schools are usually European, as pupils in these schools encouraged by their parents mostly aspire to continue to university in Europe and increasingly the USA.

There are also many schools run by non-governmental organisations, especially religious organisations and ‘communities’, which played an important role for many Africans in earlier times when they could not enter schools in the racially segregated residential areas. Since independence, government financed schools were established in the cities and gradually spread to provincial towns and other areas. These government schools in the cities are usually over-crowded. In some countries, there was a time when revolutionary governments nationalised all schools. Subsequent governments have found it difficult to sustain them.

No matter what origin, education in the official language of government administration has been and is still today regarded widely as the passport for entry into this world of privilege.  National curriculum and examinations, therefore, often reflect this rationale; hence, irrelevant to the people with other needs and aspirations. Enrolment and literacy rates in the capital city are usually the highest in the country. This is changing due to urban migration. As white-collar work requires both males and females, gender-disparities may be the lowest in the country.

•   People in transition: migrants, displaced persons and refugees

On top of having to deal with the highest population growth rate (2.7%) in the world, EFA strategy in Africa has to address another target group - the urban migrants. As noted earlier in the section on demographic changes, African cities and towns are becoming overcrowded by urbanisation, due mainly to rural-to-urban migrants.  From 34% in 1995, the African urban population is estimated to be growing at the rate of 4.3%. It varies between 3% in South Africa to 9% in Burkina Faso.  Quantitatively alone, urban communities will have difficulty in expanding educational services at such a fast pace.  Even more seriously, the urban growth is due in large part to migration from rural areas.

Urbanization offers great opportunities for EFA, as many of the formerly unreachable are becoming reachable.  The traditional school-based education and clinic-based health services are difficult to deliver where population is scattered in remote regions. It was not too long ago, within the last two decades, that some governments tried forced ‘villagezation’, with the rationale that such public services can be more effectively administered. Without employment and other income-generating opportunities, such artificial collectivization was not sustainable.  Although urbanisation is often associated with problems, it also means that public services can be made available to an increasing proportion of the national population.

Rural-to-urban migrants in Africa, however, might just as well be foreign migrants, for many of them are ‘foreigners’ in these cities. They are refugees from rural poverty seeking employment and better future. They come from various conditions of life described above, often leaving behind impoverished countryside, eroded land no longer able to sustain life or laid down mines or commercial farms whose products are no longer competitive on the world market, or villages destroyed by natural or manmade disasters.  Many are illiterate and do not speak the mainstream language(s) of the city people.  They find temporary shelters in the outskirts of the city, where there are very little, if any, city amenities and public services such as health care and education. Adults and children scrounge for living, to survive another day in the hope of finding some income-bringing job. Families disintegrate, as traditional values, beliefs and morals are no longer valid guides and the youth seek luck and excitement in the streets of the city. Without education or skills for gainful occupation, boys may turn to street crimes and girls to prostitution. Where the rich and the poor live in close proximity, there are also NGOs and other forms of volunteer organisations that are motivated to engage in charity and help activities.

A minister speaking at a regional conference on EFA mid-decade review said that his country’s education policy was aimed at the rural population. No sooner than they thought that it succeeded, they were caught unprepared for the growing number of ‘street children’ and migrants in over-crowded in city slums squatter settlements mushrooming around the cities

•    Displaced population and refugees

By the very nature of the causes, governments of the countries in conflict are not able to provide security and social services, let alone education, to these people. Many organisations, with UNHCR in lead, are addressing the issue of provision of emergency assistance, including education. Many agencies have found it very difficult to raise funds for emergency assistance to Africa. Both agency staff and Africans are witnessing the extreme contrast in the response of Americans and Europeans to the plight of Africans and to that of Kosovo Albanians.

In provision of ‘emergency assistance’ as well as assessment and formulation of EFA strategies, one of the realities we must admit is the fact that there are, and there will be, massive amount of people affected by these conflicts on the continent.  It is more or less a permanent emergency. Millions of people, victims, perpetrators, traumatised women, children and child-soldiers in countries in conflict and in countries of refuge need medical and psychological treatment and special education.  Children’s preparation for life cannot be suspended until normalcy is restored. After such experiences, they are normal no more.

Restoration of peace and economic growth are essential for the children to be able to go back to school and normal life. Therefore, EFA strategies in Africa must include educational services for various stages of conflict as, for example, during the conflict, displaced population, refugees, and, after the conflict, return and restoration of destroyed schools, and rehabilitation of traumatised children and child soldiers.

Needless to say, there are no reliable statistics concerning education of these people.  Educational and demographic statistics from these countries, even where available, are distorted by these massive movement of people across national boundaries.