Skip to main content

African Teachers Against Privatisation

Teachers from across Africa urged the continental bloc to halt the privatisation of national education systems today.
Unions affiliated to the Education International (EI) federation pressed the African Union (AU) to stop the spread of sordid tin-shack schools funded by the world's richest man.
The EI statement, issued in the Ethiopian capital and seat of the AU Addis Ababa warned: “we are witnessing a shift away from education as a public good,” with “a reduction in education budgets and increased privatisation of education.”
“This is not the Africa we want,” said EI Africa Committee Chair Christian Addai-Poku, referring to the AU's 'Agenda 2063' plan.
“Quality education for the public good is an indispensable condition for the development of our continent and the realisation of the full potential of all its people.”
The teaching unions criticised the rapid growth across the continent of ‘low-cost’ private schools, which they said were “notorious for employing unqualified teachers with low salaries and few labour rights.”
“The rise of ‘low-cost’ school chains run by multinational corporations offers little connection with the culture and rights of citizens,” the unions said, adding that they “operate with inadequate, if any, monitoring or accountability.”
Unsanitary tin shacks
The statement was accompanied by an EI report into education on the continent which singled out for criticism the Nairobi-based but US-funded Bridge International Academies (BIA).
The company, founded in 2008 by three Harvard University graduates, is bankrolled by the world's richest man and Microsoft mogul Bill Gates, along with fellow dotcom billionaires Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Ebay's Pierre Omidyar.
University of Alberta, Canada, researcher Cutis Riep exposed in 2016 how BIA employs unqualified staff to read out rigidly scripted lessons from a tablet computer.
In May of that year BIA took out 'wanted poster'-style adverts in the Ugandan press, accusing Riep of impersonating a member of staff and of trespass.
He was arrested and questioned by police for two days – before being released without charge. BIA justified its actions by insinuating that Riep posed a threat to pupils at its schools.
In August 2016 BIA's chain of 63 schools in Uganda was ordered closed by Education Minister Janet Museveni, after inspectors found they failed to meet basic sanitary standards or follow the national curriculum.
A 2018 High Court ruling stated that BIA schools had “mushroomed in Uganda without any consultation or authorisation from the Ministry” and had only applied for the required license after authorities discovered them.
In February 2017 Kenya's Busia county ordered 10 BIA schools closed, following a court battle, but the firm still runs more than 400 schools in Kenya.
Unaffordable education
Today's EI report also challenges BIA's claim to provide “low-cost” private education to families living on $2 a day or less, saying its fees are still too expensive for most parents to send more than one child to school.
Quoting research by Curtis Riep and his colleagues, along with the Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) – a staunch opponent of BIA and school privatisation – it says the firm's advertised fees of $6 per month hide other costs adding up to a real total of $17.25.
That amounts to around half of average Ugandan household income to send two children to school.
Privatising schools “undermines the right of all students to free, quality education and entrenches inequalities, particularly for girls and the socially disadvantaged,” the EI statement said.
Global dominance
BIA also operates in India's Andra Pradesh state and Nigeria, and in 2016 was one of eight firms chosen by Liberia's government for a pilot scheme to privatise the primary education system.
A Liberian government report leaked in 2017 said the programme would not work “with sustainable budgets and staffing levels, and without negative side effects on other schools.”
Gates, Zuckerberg and fellow IT tycoon Michael Dell have funded a similar scheme in the Indian city of Hyderabad – dubbed 'Cyberabad' for its concentration of tech companies.
BIA also lists the World Bank among its “investors” – and has previously received funding from the UK's Department for International Development (DfID).
BIA's methods seem to be catching on in state education too. In his State of the Nation address last week, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the roll-out of digitised “workbooks” on tablets for all schoolchildren.

Ramaphosa was named on Sunday as AU chairman for 2020. It remains to be seen if the bloc will take any concrete action against BIA and other such interventions by billionaire western philanthropists.

Most popular

The mystery of the Guanches

The origins and language of the indigenous people of the Canary Islands remain a mystery, writes Dr Sabina Goralski Filonov Translation by James Tweedie The guanches, the aboriginals of the Canary Islands whose origin, lost in the mists of time, still arouses intense and passionate debate and great controversy about their origins and the how the seven Canary Islands were populated – which according to some studies occurred between 10,000 and 8,000 years BC. Literally, the word ‘Guan’ means man or person and ‘Chenech’ or ‘Chinet’ is applied to the island of Tenerife, thus meaning a man or inhabitant of Tenerife – although according to Núñez de la Peña, the Spanish named them the Guanchos during the conquest of the islands. But with the passage of time, experts in the subject are questioning whether the word Guanche was used to designate the primitive inhabitants of all the islands in the pre-Hispanic period.  The term ‘Guanche’ has also ceased to be applied to the di...
Read more

Homeless dogs’ home fights for compensation

Dingo Dogs owner Phil Nelson at his since-demolished home. DOGS’ home owner Phil Nelson has vowed to take legal action following his eviction from his Dingo Dogs animal sanctuary in August. by James Tweedie Indian-born Mr Nelson, along with former girlfriend and Dingo Dogs treasurer Leigh Crouch were left homeless by the court-ordered eviction and have been sharing a small hut in the mountains near Las Chafiras with ten dogs and three cats ever since. Mr Nelson’s dispute with his former landlord began in September 2004, after he officially registered his rented hillside finca as an animal sanctuary.  It was a requirement of his registration that he keep proper financial records, including receipts for payment of rent. Mr Nelson says that despite having a rental contract and paying his rent “as regular as clockwork” for years, his landlord never gave him a receipt even after he began asking for one every month in 2004.  In May 2005, after his landlord ha...
Read more

Sun-crossed haters endanger 220,000 lives

My stepmother Shanthie Naidoo and her sister Ramnie were on an overnight flight from Johannesburg to Heathrow for a speaking tour when Extinction Rebellion offshoot Heathrow Pause began wilfully endangering aircraft by flying drones over the airport this morning. Shanthie is an ANC struggle veteran who lived in exile in London from 1973 to 1993, apart from some time in the exile community in Mazimbu, Tanzania. She and all her immediate family were jailed by the Apartheid government for political reasons. Shanthie's late brother Indres did 10 years on Robben Island and later wrote the book 'Island in Chains'. Their grandfather Thembi Naidoo worked alongside Mohandas K Gandhi during the civil disobedience campaigns against the early form of Apartheid. Extinction Rebellion has chosen for its logo a variation on the 'sonnenkreuz', a symbol used by both proto-fascist neo-pagan organisations and modern neo-Nazis. Around 220,000 passengers fly in and out of Heathr...
Read more

Ecuador: Correa defends VP over graft charges

Former Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa backed Vice-President Jorge Glas on Monday — even as he was detained on corruption charges. "An honest man has lost his freedom," Mr Correa tweeted after the Supreme Court ordered Mr Glas remanded in custody pending an investigation into allegations he took bribes from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht. President Lenin Moreno stripped Glas of his duties as vice president in August but allowed him to keep his title. Mr Glas claimed his detention was "a clear retaliation" for criticising Mr Moreno's policies, with additional pressure from "major businessmen and opposition leaders." Mr Glas’ barrister Eduardo Franco said he would appeal the "bad, unjust and arbitrary decision" which he described as a "judicial coup" — like that against Brazilian Workers’ Party president Dilma Rousseff last year. "He is being victimised by the media, and by the political perversity of opposi...
Read more

Thomas Cook CEO predicts “return to growth” in 2010

Thomas Cook UK Chief Executive Officer Manny Fontenla (third from left). Playa de Las Americas, Tuesday December 15 2009 THOMAS Cook Chief Executive Manny Fontenla predicted on Tuesday that Tenerife's crisis-hit tourist economy would begin to recover next year. by James Tweedie Speaking at the travel giant's annual convention at the Magma Arte y Congresos centre in the resort town of Playa de Las Americas, Mr Fontenla said that the tourism slump had “bottomed out” and the island was “on the way back to growth.” He said: “Things have been tough in Spain because of the crisis,” pointing out that the weakness of the pound against the Euro had made non-Eurozone destinations like Turkey more attractive. But he stressed that Spain remained the favourite holiday destination for Britons, Germans and Scandinavians and that it took “barriers” to discourage them. Mr Fontenla said that British tourists were leaving it much later to book their summer holidays, a trend ...
Read more