Tanzania's population is becoming more illiterate
Dar es Salaam- Tanzania (PANA) --
The state of illiteracy in Tanzania is alarming.
While in many countries illiteracy has been decreasing over the years, in Tanzania the opposite has been the situation.
There are more illiterates in the country now than was the case in the 1970s and early 1980s.
At that time, about 80 percent of adult Tanzanians knew how to read and write, thanks for a special campaign in adult literacy education.
The Universal Primary school education programme also, at least initially, enabled every school going children to attend primary school.
Now, however, the situation has changed.
Adult education programmes lack the impetus they used to have previously as the focus now is on upgrading professionals and secondary school leavers to attain university education.
As a result, adults who did not get the chance to attend school have remained illiterate.
The Universal Primary Education programme, too, has died a natural death as enrolment could not match with the existing capacity of infrastructure.
Old buildings could no longer accommodate the increasing number of pupils, who lack desks, textbooks and new classrooms.
Worse still, in a bid to get more teachers, those who failed or performed very poorly in secondary school education and in some instance even those who failed in primary schools, were recruited as primary school teachers without undergoing any training.
At the end of the day Tanzania had teachers who taught what they did not know, with the result that the majority of primary school leavers, especially in the rural areas, completed their education as illiterates.
The rate of illiteracy increased and now stands at less than 60 percent.
According to available statistics from UNICEF, there are about three million children in the country who are unable to attend school for a number of reasons.
Earlier this year, President Benjamin Mkapa said no serious development would occur in Tanzania as the world entered the new century unless there was meaningful investment on human development, the country's greatest asset and resource.
Not all children in Tanzania have access to primary schools.
At the same time, Tanzania has the lowest rate of secondary school enrolment in the world.
However, the government has been encouraging citizens to build secondary schools through self-help efforts since 1986.
Recently, the government announced that major plans were under way to review the distribution of public secondary schools in the country in a bid to bridge a widening knowledge gap between one region and another.
This is because a survey on the distribution of secondary schools in the country revealed huge disparities in the levels of education between regions.
For instance, Same District in Kilimanjaro Region alone has 19 secondary schools while Lindi Rural District has only two.
While efforts to substantially increase school enrolment were successful in the 1970s and 1980s, the quality of education decreased dramatically in the past decade.
These are grandiose plans to which Tanzanians have always been treated to while illiteracy continues to extend its ugly wings.
Tanzanians have lost hope.
This time round, they are waiting with a lot of anxiety to see if those plans will really be put into practical form
The World Bank has withdrawn a $300m (£232m) loan to Tanzania, amid concerns about the nation’s policy of expelling pregnant girls from school.
The money, a significant proportion of funding totalling $500m awarded to Tanzania by the bank in 2018, was scheduled for approval last month. It was intended to help Tanzania’s education ministry to improve access to secondary education.