President Benjamin Mkapa yesterday reiterated the importance of education to Africa, saying it would enable its people understand better their constitutional and political rights.
Speaking at a ceremony to lay the foundation stone of the Aga Khan Academy – dubbed Centre of Academic Excellence – in Dar es Salaam, President Mkapa said educated people are easy to lead.
“Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave,” he said in an eloquent speech before the visiting spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims, His Highness the Aga Khan.
“While political rights are important, the right to education is paramount, as it is a critical enabler to the full enjoyment of political rights,” President Mkapa said.
He said that, if given opportunity, Africans are capable of learning, acquiring quality skills in all disciplines and to develop the capacity needed to change Africa’s fortunes in the global economy.
“There is perhaps no worse disservice to those African leaders struggling against all odds to make a positive difference than this benighted generalisation.”
President Mkapa said that the aspirations of the African people for a good education, for the needs and comforts of life, were as justified and real as they were in rich countries. He said that education expanded the horizons of an individual and sharpens the skills and capabilities for individual and national prosperity.
Earlier, the Aga Khan said that it had become evident that governments in developing countries cannot meet the cost of providing education alone to growing numbers of children.
He said that private initiatives play a vital role in supplementing efforts being made by governments in the developing world.
“If developing countries are to be successful in their aim to becoming modern economies with living standards comparable to the West, we must focus not only on universal access to education for the majority, and in due course for the whole but also population,” the Aga Khan said.
The developing world must also make available education opportunities at international level for the exceptional students who stand out from the rest, he said.
“The pity is that too many children in the developing world are never given the opportunity to have their minds challenged, stretched and developed to their full potential.
“We must strive to create institutions of learning that can help them maximise the potential to study, to learn and to function at the highest intellectual levels,” the Aga Khan said.
He added that the availability of world-class education institutions in the country would reduce the number of students going abroad for education.
The Aga Khan Education Service to Tanzania dates back to 1905, when Sir Sultan Mohammad Shah Aga Khan opened the first Aga Khan School in Zanzibar.
He said the Dar es Salaam school was part of a network of over 19 Aga Khan Academies that would be built over the next 10 years in Africa, South and Central Asia and the Middle East.
“One academy is already opened in Mombasa and the foundation stone has been laid for another in Maputo,” the Aga Khan, who was accompanied by Princess Zahra Aga Khan said.
The chairman of the Aga Khan Education Service in Tanzania, Al Karim Dawood, underscored the importance of education for children and said investing in the sector would provide the nation and the world with invaluable returns.
SOURCE: Guardian