Funding for education in Uganda

By Emmanuel K. Twesigye, 29 December 1994

EDUCATION IS THE PRIMARY KEY TO DEVELOPMENT AND STABILITY IN AFRICA

It needs no argument to affirm thaat a good education is the necessary prerequisite for sound economic development in Uganda as in the rest of Africa. It is also the necessary foundation for any sound democratic political system. This is regardless of the nature of the political system, such as a monarchy, empire, single party or multi-party republican systems.

However, the question is how to finance and implement this system of education in a poor country such as Uganda?

These are some of my susggestions ( if I were the President of Uganda):

1. Cut the military force to a minimum and shift the budget to education.
2. Cut expenditure from the importation of arms and fund education and public health-care for the poor.
3. Reduce the number of ministries by combining several of them and put the savings to education and the building of the infrastructure.
4. Create a special tax on real estate and imports of luxury goods, such liquors, ciggarrettes, cars (excluding utility, buses and public service vehicles) and put this tax to work on the improvement of public education and public healthcare.
5. Promote the creation of good private schools for the rich and let the rich pay for these schools and universities.
6. Create a board of accreditation of schools, colleges and universities to ensure that there an acceptable minimum standard that is maintained across the board, regardless of location or how much is paid in terms of fees in the case of private schools.
7. Let the parents contribute either labour one a week or money for the purpose of building, and maintaning school buildings!
8. Let cities and villages impose a special levy on the respective residents and this money should be used to improve the local schools, under the super- vision of the Parents/Citizens' Board of Education. This levy is mandatory regardless of whether the person has children in the school system or not.
9. Loans from abroad or IMF or World Bank can also be used for education and medical projects, since these are long term investments on human deve- lopment resources.

In order to develop the nation, the leader must develop the human resources as the permanent basic foundation and infrastructure on which the rest must be planned, based and by which minds and labour the work of national development must be carried out and successfully implented!

Give me your vote or else the poorly educated military will keep on giving us the bulletes and the abuses, since ignorance is the mother of vice and evil, including, genocide in the miguided name of God (Sudan), tribe/ethnicity (Rwanda, Liberia, Somalia and Kenya), king (Uganda), party and religion (Uganda, Nigeria, and Kenya).

Emmanuel K. Twesigye, OWU