South Sudan: Prioritizing Education For National Development, Social Prosperity and Cohesion

By Ustaz John Garang Ayii Riak, Zhejiang Province, China

Tuesday, February 25, 2020 (PW) — Since South Sudan has signed peace and formed the new transitional government of national unity, then, what will be the next agenda toward the national building and where do we begin the national development? For me we will begin with education by prioritizing education for the National Development, because Education has been proven itself to be a means of avoiding poverty because the contributions made by an educated person to the nation are often much higher, as it is said by Nelson Mandela that, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

For South Sudan, to attain a rapid growth to reach the globalization’s developmental brink is to prioritizing national education rather than researching education outside the country.During the last civil war in our country, the educational infrastructure and human resources remain lessening, and many stakeholders in government and international and local organizations are not appropriately aware of the needs, challenges, and opportunities that face the education sector. This has led to the more than 1million displacements of the people from the country to the neighboring countries of Central Africa Republic, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Sudan and abroad, such as Canada, Australia and USA (Bul Elijah Bol, 2019).

First thing to be done now as a next agenda after peace attainment is to improve the national education by allocating more money in the education sector to improve education services right away from Early Childhood Development (ECD), Basic, and Secondary education, Tertiary institutions such as TVET and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Secondly, there is a great need to increase teachers’ remunerations in order to boost their morale because cannot teach well whenever is not happy because teacher is a very important person in the society.

To move, H.E Presidents should also appoint right people at the right time at the place under the right circumstances, people like Dr. John Gai Yoh for Higher Education to bring tremendous results and reconnect the nation to the internationalization of education’s setting, because the role of education has been accepted in the international development lexicon as the key factor toward the national building, not simply  of its pivotal role in improving  the welfare of individual, families and the entire nation, but also positive edges that its brings for community as whole.

For a contemporary society, education is very imperative. The hoary standards of education and ethics have been sweeping slowly, so it is the right time for this nation to get well educated by inculcating the history to the students. There is nowhere one can teach culture, education in the right process to transform the culture to modern society. It is the perfect stage to mold a person into a comprehensive frontrunner with all the human emotions, values and heritage. Education these days is important as the population is increasing; the needs of people are rising. Hence there are many firms where they require an enormous number of workforces to be developed to compete effectively in the globalization labor markets, so to bring productivity one should be able to gain knowledge and develop healthy competition.

To add on the list, women should be equally educated along with men and promote women empowerment as it is said that, educating lady means education a nation, so there is a need to recruit more women in educational sector, and education is the best platform for them to prove themselves that they are equal to men in society. Education guides you to develop as good citizens of the society. In other hand, education is an essential part of a living being, whether it’s a man or woman. Education helps an individual to be smarter, to learn new things and to know about the facts of the world. Education plays one of the most important roles in Women Empowerment. It also helps to put a sojourn to discernment based on gender.

In other words; Education is the first step to give man/ women the power to choose the way of life /he she wants to lead. Education helps people to be more productive in their works. A knowledgeable man and woman have the skills, information, talent, and self-confidence that he/ she requires being a superior father or mother, employee, and resident. Women constitute more than half of the population of our country. Men and Women are like two sides of the coin and need identical opportunity to contribute to the national’s development, therefore, one cannot survive without the other.

Furthermore, the Chinese great Philosopher known as, “Confucius” said that there are three most important things for the country, such as the military defense, the economy development and the education. Among the three, the most important one is education because once there is a quality education in the country, then, there must be a professional and standing military that can protect the nation from external and internal attacks and the economy will also boom.

As it has been said, that states have been established with education and have been formed by education and will also be dismissed through education, teaching-leaning process also either established by teacher or destroyed by teacher as per my argument at least, this means once the weak system of education is introduced with poor control of education attainment by recruiting wrong people to control education process, then the nation is definitely destroyed. So national development can be speed up by quality education hence we need to improve our educational system by prioritizing it.

According to Alice D Kanengoni (2016) said that, ”One thing that has become clear during the process of developing the new global framework for development, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), is that the world is quickly growing in complexity.  South Sudan like any other country in the world is faced with challenges such as increasing hunger, poverty, employment, inequality, depleting natural resources, and climate change among others, the new framework for achieving sustainable development will to be much more ambitious through prioritizing education agenda that should equal to the world standard.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the vision of the SDGs is to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change by 2030. Throughout the process of crafting the SDGs, feminists have kept a close eye on the nodes that could potentially ensure a positive shift in the various oppressive systems, and change the disadvantaged position of women and girls across the globe. The idea has been to ensure that gains made in the past are protected, and opportunities for advancing new frontiers are identified and capitalized on.”

Education strengthens national socio economic development; promote acquisition and utilization of national resources for socio economic and equitable distribution. Economic Contribution and Financial Satisfaction Every individual who pursues higher education does so with a certain aim in mind. This might be to get promotion in future, to get pay rise or just to raise his or her status in society. Higher education enables individuals to create economic benefits for the nation. The new knowledge and skills attained by way of education helps with the overall human development of the nation. Education makes one to participate in economic growth of the nation; USA, China Australia, and Japan are some of example countries with very high literacy rates. These countries are exceptionally successful and the citizens have a high per capita income. 

Other words, in underdeveloped and developing countries, where literacy rate is not as high, a number of people are still living below the poverty line. Education is vital for the economic prosperity of a nation compare to the nation with high rates of illiteracy. Increased educational attainment levels result in greater rate of overall consumption of goods and services. Barro (1997) found that raising the average level of schooling of the male labor force by one year increases the growth rate of Gross National Product by as much as one percent in the USA. Tinbergen (1971) found out that an increase in years of education contributes to a reduction in the degree of income inequality.

In addition,education foster national building through integration, peace and self-reliance patriotism and promoting respect and tolerance of other cultures, traditions, opinions and beliefs and this make a person a holistic and well-balanced person in all dimensions of his or her life and one can be a well-balanced person in all aspect of life. Besides that,education boost human resource capital, although the field of human capital has delivered prodigious understanding into educational development, few researches have revealed direct connection between human educational attainment and the socio-economic development of the nation.

Such evidence is critical for policy makers as they attempt to develop strategies to improve the general welfare of the nation. Scholars have increasingly called for a greater link between academic research and public policy development, formulation and implementation. Education is the most important tool for the development in a country. It is through education that a country produces its own professionals such as teachers, doctors, engineers and business persons.

Capacity Building and Manpower Development is the main key toward the national development because there is no any country that can develop without quality higher education system, although the formation of a higher education institution is expensive, difficult to run and maintain, its role is well-thought-out critical and important. The yields of (tertiary) higher education institutions form the core of nation building. Every country needs have competent and experienced people for development and such individuals must be well trained.

Education Promotes Socialization; socialization & education are interconnected to promote the psychological development of an individual. Socialization is the process of internalizing the norms and ideologies of society, it encompasses both learning and teaching and is thus the means by which social and cultural continuity is achieved”. On the other hand, Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. Educational methods include storytelling, discussion, teaching, training, and directed research. It frequently takes place under the guidance of educators. Life skills are key for proper growth & upbringing of an individual.

Socializing with people around the world is the first phase in order to proceed and learn from one another. Nowadays, globalization and internationalization of education became vital issues in education in which the current students and educators are much engage. Community plays a vital role wherein an individual resides. In a perpetually ever-changing environment, having life social skill is an important part of having the ability to fulfill the challenges of existence. To deal with the increasing pace and change in modern life, we want new life skills such as the ability to deal with people from other continents and it is only education that can bring this social skill.

Increase personal income; education, as a result, makes the manpower level of an economy. The manpower wants need to be in both quantitative and qualitative relationships. Qualitatively, education prepares the work force with the essential services and capabilities, which are vital for the development of the nation. Quantitatively, higher education aids to raise the amount of educated citizens in an economy as the educated people are wanted in innumerable areas. Hence, the significance of higher education should not be undervalued as an outcome the essential to discovery maintainable basis of assets for tertiary education. The human capital theory recommends that investment in education has very great socioeconomic profits for a nation. Education is able to improve the quality of life and subsequently contribute to the economic and social advancement of the nation.

Rees (1968) as mentioned in Cohn (1978) considers that education offers the individual with skills, knowledge, competencies, technical know-how and develops their general reasoning capabilities which raise their productivity and income levels. A rise in productivity of the individual increases the total output of the economy. Any increase in total output is a measure of economic growth. Countries which are richly endowed with natural resources and have highly developed human resources do enjoy a high standard of living as quoted by Watternbarger (1962) as quoted by Orwing (1971). Therefore, it should be emphasized and focused on as well as enforced so that everyone acquires basic education. Harbison (1973) also said that human resources not capital, nor material resources, constitute the ultimate basis for the wealth of nations.

Capital and natural resources are passive factors of production; human beings are the active agents who accumulate capital, exploit natural resources, build social, economic and political organizations and carry forward national development. For any nation to have a competent human resource or capital it should invest a lot in education to train people who will be competitive in the world’s labor market. The development of the human resources of a nation is obtained through quality higher education. Higher education is important to the individual. Weisbrod (1962) as mentioned in Blaug (1969) identifies benefits of education to the individual as having direct financial returns through higher education.

His income will increase which has impact on national development especially since he pays more taxes, takes care of other people i.e. the aged parents etc. The hedging option also makes the educated person to be able to adapt to any technological change. Certain research findings on the interface between education and poverty have led to three broad conclusions being drawn. Appleton, Kingdon, Knight, Söderbom and Teal (2014) note, firstly, that education is universally found to lift people out of poverty. Secondly, they assert that, compared to other forms of investment, returns for investing in education are on average low; and, thirdly, the returns on education accrue with each year of education completed (ibid).

Their study on whether education reduced poverty in Ghana, Uganda and South Africa shows that households with higher education levels are less likely to be poor, and they confirmed that returns on education rose with the level of education (Appleton et al., 2014). The Global Partnership for Education (2015) supports the above claims and argues that education interfaces strongly with SDG 1 on poverty and SDG 8 on decent work and economic growth. They assert that, “If all children left school with basic reading skills”, we could see a 12 percent decrease in poverty (ibid). Furthermore, for one extra year of schooling, the earnings of women would increase by 20 percent (Global Partnership for Education, 2015)

Increase of Knowledge and Skills; The knowledge, skills, values, and so on learnt through higher education would support transform the nation in all aspects, such as, political, social, economic, and so on. Human capital investments have also revealed to have quantifiable micro-level belongings, alike reflection made by Goldsmith & Darithy (1997) who reveal that human capital definitely influences psychological capital and effects individual productivity levels. It is also found that increases in individual achievement of higher education produced increased psychological capital, which agrees with increased worker productivity and economic production capacity of the individual.

The result is a higher standard of living of the individual with the resultant reduction in poverty and disease situations and manpower development serves as a substance to national development because it entails all processes by which the individual is prepared with knowledge, skills and the right attitude to change and improve the country. A person with higher education is broadminded hence is more likely to be able to adjust to any situation or change. As an example, a doctor has added incentive through higher education to administer medical treatment to his community instead of paying for their health care. Every country requires competent and experienced people for development and such people must be well trained.

The education and is able to contribute to his wellbeing and subsequently to economic and social advancement of the nation. With increase in the individual’s productivity, the total output of the economy rises. Any increase in total output is a measure of economic growth of the nation.

Eradication of Epidemic Diseases; Almost the last two decades, increasing stress has been placed on health education strategies that are collaboratively calculated, implemented, and evaluated. Consequently, various successful strategic health communications campaigns have been developed, notably in the human immunodeficiency acquired immune deficiency syndrome arena. However, as regards epidemic diseases, it is well known that as the incidence of epidemic decreased in the developed world, so did the awareness of and attention to this global public health problem. Through good education people are sensitized about the prevention and control of epidemic diseases and immunizations and vaccinations are done in a proper ways to reduce diseases in the community.

Empower people by grounding education in the local culture, traditions and environment including the use of mother tongue in formal education; Education is very important if a person want to be a self-dependent person. It helps one to be become financially independent but that is not all.  Education also makes one wiser so that he/ she can make his own decisions without be directed by any other individual because the biggest slavery is to be dependent thinker, but being independent in thinking capacity means being free from one ’slavery and this one of the thing people are suffering from including big people who are not supposed to be directed by another people in their positions.

To add on; education makes people confident; the educational degree is considered as a proof of our knowledge by many. If one is educated one has more chances of being heard and taken seriously. Generally, an uneducated man will find it harder to express his views and opinions owning to lack of confidence. Even if he does so, people may not take him seriously. Education gives one the confidence to express his/ her views and opinions. We all are living in the world, which has its own set unspoken rules, and one of them is education. The society expects one to go to school monitored by college, get a job, settle down etc. In fact education helps one become a useful member of the community. An educated member definitely has a bigger chance to give to his society.

Promote critical thinking and creativity; with education one become a creative and active member of the community and contributes in the ongoing changes and developments. Critical Thinking is the ability to analyze the way you think and present evidence for your ideas, rather than simply accepting your personal reasoning as sufficient proof. One may gain numerous benefits from mastering critical thinking skills, such as better control of his own learning and empathy for other points of view. Critical Thinking is, in short, self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking.

It presupposes assent to rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. It entails effective communication and problem solving abilities and a commitment to overcome our native ego-centrism and socio-centrism. Education makes one to think critically and use creativity in doing things because solve some social problems and so on, because is no problem or question without solution and answer to educated mind.

Last, but not least, education saves one from being misled or bullied because it saves him or her from being oppressed and deceived. We live in the world where we enjoy a number of privileges and liberty.  It is easier to take advantage of innocent and uneducated people. They may be trapped into signing fade documents or be deprived of some right which they have because unlike an illiterate person they are not well aware of their freedoms and rights. There is no country that can develop without good education system because education is the key toward the development. I believe that education has proven itself to be a means of avoiding poverty and creating upward mobility both at the individual and national level. The contributions made by an educated person to the nation are often much higher compare to uneducated one.

Finally; education supports good governance since educated population is more likely to see the benefits of life and comply with rule of laws and regulations and it is more inclined to understand and accept difficult policy decisions. Nelson Mandela said that, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” He also added that, “Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation.

It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.” Therefore, if big populations is well educated in South Sudan then, the country could not be hostile for many years, although some well educated people trigger the war against the nation, still they are back up by the big illiterate youths and if these youths are given civil education they might have not been in that war of backing up selfish rebellious leaders for the know the value of life.

Therefore, South Sudan needs massive reforms in the planning and budgeting in the Ministries of Finance by putting more money whether at the national or state level and this will make great difference because education is a debt that the present generation be indebted to next generations, and if we really wanted to make a national development our government should make a massive reforms right from primary schools, secondary and up to higher education level and this is the only way to develop this country.

Education is a vital resource for any country and it is also valuable in distribution of morals and ethics that transform a wartime society into one with a culture of peace and our country need such transformation and reforms. Education is very vital for every child whether boy or girl. Education has a lot of benefits right away from political, social, economic, spiritual and physical dimensions, therefore, South Sudan should adopt it as priority number one.

The author, Ustaz John Garang Ayii Riak, is a Master’s Degree Student, International Comparative Education, Zhejiang Normal University, Zhejiang Province, Eastern China and can be reached via his email: johngayii2014@gmail.com

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