MOST UGANDANS certainly missed the story this week declaring that 30,000 of our schools were likely to lose their operating licenses.
It was on the front page of our leading daily (this one), which is bought by fewer people than walk into Bugolobi nightclubs on any single Friday to spend 100 times the cost of the newspaper.
Our priorities are not confused, are they?
The 30,000 schools are reportedly in danger of stopping operations because they have not registered on the Education Management Information System (EMIS) portal, a digitised system that helps manage education in many ways.
The Ministry of Education and Sports (MOE&S) report about this says there are 61,835 private schools in Uganda, and half of them are having problems getting onto EMIS.
Vincent Ssozi, the Assistant Commissioner for Statistics Monitoring and Evaluation at the Ministry of Education and Sports, was quoted by The New Vision saying, “Many rural schools lack the necessary information technology infrastructure, such as computers…”
EMIS, the Ministry explains, helps the government keep track of education progress AND determines how much money should be sent to the schools so that children can learn.
All this is supposed to create one major factor of economic production – Human Resources; not just ‘labour’.
It also helps curb our OTHER big problem—corruption. Using EMIS even in it’s currently inadequate state, the government recently found 586,987 “ghost learners”—non”-existent students that schools claimed to have in order to receive more money from the government, which is certainly NOT spent on educating your employees of tomorrow.
On an arguably unrelated note, EVEN MORE Ugandans have been going about their lives quite unaware of an ‘Invitation For Bids’ put out by the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), Procurement Reference No. UCC/SUPLS/24-25/00024 titled, “Supply and Delivery of 4,500 Tablet Devices for Unserved and Underserved Households in 23 Districts in Uganda.
Of course, it meant just that, and UCC elaborated in their bid that they had “allocated funds under the Uganda Communications Commission Universal Service and Access Fund (UCUSAF) to be used for increased public access to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) services.”
That mouthful of an abbreviation could harm your teeth if you said it carelessly, but my problem was the migraine at the thought of this situation.
Today (November 21st), UCC is hosting a pre-bid meeting to tell you more about this opportunity, so if you’re curious, please head over.
I won’t be there, even if I am quite curious about the households that are going to receive these tablets and how they will be putting them to use. Depending on the computers required, these tablets would cover at least 15% of the 30,000 schools being threatened with discontinuance.
It’s not a joke either; the UCC programme is a real thing with a section on their website and even a brochure that says:
“This is a ‘proof of concept’ project that seeks to increase access to smart devices for households in poor communities in the unserved and underserved parts, which can help reduce household poverty and illiteracy while also contributing to a critical mass usage of ICT and adoption that can bring down the cost of internet.”
https://www.ucc.co.ug/devices-for-underserved-communities-program/
Can you believe such a statement? Meanwhile, 30,000 schools are about to stop operations for lack of computing power or internet access.
The people who think such things up are comfortable in their seats simply because most Ugandans do not read these documents; not because we don’t have tablets, but because when we get them we are distracted immediately…as will be the poor 4,500 unserved and underserved households.
At the end of their brochure under ‘Impact – of this program’ they wrote: “1. On-going”. And they left.
To be a bit fair, UCC did commission a study into the impact of the first rounds of device distribution to 10,706 households – co-funded by Global Digital Inclusion Partnership (whose address is in the United States, of course) in January 2024.
The study says everything you would expect, including the need for repair stations to be set up, and stating generally that there are benefits to these programmes.
Meanwhile, 30,000 schools are about to stop operations for lack of computing power or internet access.
When will we Be Serious and get our priorities lined up right?
And by the way, let’s not forget those 586,987 ghost learners that EMIS unearthed. If the government were going to send the schools just Ushs10,000 for each learner as “capitation funds”, that would have been a total of Ushs5,869,870,000.
That’s 5,869 computers at Ushs1million each – enabling more schools to get onto EMIS and continue operations.
But, hey. We would need to Be Serious and get our priorities lined up right first…and that requires a proper education.
Simon Kaheru
Jambo (Hi)! I'd be happy to hear your thoughts so…say something here?