It’s 2016 and this West African country is about to take many steps backwards in an effort to make a dollar out of fifteen cents. Public education is still a human right, right?
Liberia plans to outsource their education system to fund the services rendered by Bridge International Academies. Their proposal is to privatize all primary and pre-primary schools within five years, when that money and effort could instead be used to improve the education system that’s currently in a state of disarray. Liberia is still recovering from a devastating Ebola outbreak, and the last thing their population — largely youth — needs is this attack on their right to public education. We’ve already seen what happens when outside forces and corporations interfere with African affairs.
UN Special Rapporteur Kishore Singh made his statements on the issue, condemning the proposal as completely unacceptable and in direct violation with Liberia’s constitution and global human rights.
“Provision of public education of good quality is a core function of the State. Abandoning this to the commercial benefit of a private company constitutes a gross violation of the right to education.” Mr. Singh went on to say that “it is ironic that Liberia does not have resources to meet its core obligations to provide a free primary education to every child, but it can find huge sums of money to subcontract a private company to do so on its behalf”
Thankfully, there are Liberians we can look to challenging this unfortunate proposal and providing a hope for the country’s future, like Wayetu Moore of One Moore Book, and Sang Kromah of Project READ.
