When you kill the country's education system, you will not only consequently have killed the health system and governance of that country also but you will have effectively killed the moral fiber of that country too.
It is in such a dysfunctional education system that you find the early school dropouts outnumbering those in schools due to the fact that those going to school cease to see any benefits in continuing to be in school and this is treated as normal.
It is in this state of affairs that you find school going age girls being married off early in order for the parents to be able to earn a quick but short lived living and this becomes the trend in society.
It is in such a broken system of governance that you find a qualified engineer being equated to a boda boda rider due to lack of appreciation of the engineering skills and appropriate employment available for that Engineering graduate.
It is in such a dysfunctional education system that you find professionally trained teachers and nurses opting to be house maids in foreign lands due to lack of rewarding remuneration in their own country.
It is in such a broken health system that you find masqueraders and quack doctors in health facilities dispensing medicines whose names, cure and prescription they know not.
It is in such a broken atmosphere of governance that you find a graduate Medical Doctor operating as a local medicine practitioner due to not being able to be absorbed into the hospitals for job employment or being poorly remunerated.
It is in such a broken governance system that you find a graduate of Economics or Agriculture fully engaged in the trade of selling imported old clothes due to lack of availability of appropriate job opportunities.
It is in such a dysfunctional education system where the youths of the country who would have been the country's Aeronautical Engineers, Astrophysists, Neurologists or Neurotherapists end up being wasted in mimicking inventions that are never picked by anybody as start ups.
It is in such a failed system that even the most talented youths of the country who actually should have been displaying their God given talents on Broadway as Fashion designers and models, on Time Square in New York, and in Cannes Film festival or Hollywood as film actors, but end up only being glorified as national influencers and celebrities immersed in orgies of their mimicked "wines & blankets", "purple party" and "white only party" events.
Once the dysfunctional system takes root, many things also take different meaning and different descriptions.
In such a state of confusion and poor governance, the political landscape becomes the first and prominent victim.
The citizenry starts looking at the various and different political formations with cynicism and mockery because the citizenry actually stops seeing the relevance of those political formations.
They start seeing them as inept and unable to bring about the change or the political and social economic transformation that the citizenry yearns for.
They therefore start describing these political formations in even sometimes dogmatic terms.
For instance;
- Democratic Party (DP) becomes Dobonkana Party.
- Uganda People's Congress (UPC) becomes Unprincipled People's Congregation.
- Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) becomes For Disorganized Change.
- National Unity Platform (NUP) becomes Nation’s Uneducated People.
- Justice Forum (JEEMA) becomes Just for Fun.
- People's Progressive Party (PPP) becomes Purposely Patronized Party.
- Alliance for National Transformation (ANT) becomes Anti National Trend
Indeed, you kill the education system of a country and you will have killed everyone’s hope, everyone’s aspiration and everyone’s dream. With dysfunctional systems, everything becomes turned upside down and the society can only experience a downward spiral of actions and morality. When patronage and political expediency replace meritocracy and competency, when impunity replaces adherence to the set norms, law and order, when ineptness and procrastination replace pragmatism and decisiveness, when uprightness and accountability is replaced by graft and arrogance which is glorified and instead of being sanction it is rewarded, then a state of despair, helplessness and hopelessness set in. At this stage, everything stops mattering to the citizenry. Education becomes the first victim or culprit. People start seeing education meaningless because they can’t see how being educated or staying in school will propel anyone to surmount the enormous challenges in life in such a dysfunctional system where all the institutions are dysfunctional and operating abnormally.
This is a sad situation pertaining to all African countries. It is not only the economic potential of the African continent that has been sacrificed but rather all the attributes of potential social economic transformation of the African countries have been ignored and abandoned as dead capital.
Therefore, the ordinary African person continues to wallop in poverty as the enormous resources of Africa continue to be exploited to further enrich the historical colonial masters of the West in the same measure as to the satisfaction of the new neo-colonial actors that have popped up on the continent from the East.
This pertaining situation should serve to be instructive to all the African leaders. Africans must ensure that they jealously guard, improve and enhance their education system. A good sound education system is the bedrock upon which all other human development and progressive endeavors are anchored. What we learn from those countries that have been able to make tremendous development progress is that they set up solid foundations for quality education of their citizens. Nothing good can come out of an illiterate or poorly educated population. Yes it can serve as a political asset in the short term and for a small scope of selfish interest, but on the whole it eventually becomes a big national liability.
----- Edward Baliddwa – September 2023.