Pastoralists across Africa want their children to have access to education
that suits their nomadic lifestyles, representatives of pastoral communities
said on 9 July, 2007 in Isiolo.
"The issue of the education curriculum is important to understanding
pastoralism; imagine taking a lot of time to teach a child in Mandera
[northern Kenya] how to plant beans when that child could be taught how
to tan leather, given that it is the available resource," Ali Wario,
Kenya's assistant minister for special programmes in the office of the
president, said.
Wario, who opened the three-day workshop attended by at least 70 participants,
said children in Kenya's pastoralist areas not only lacked access to education
but, when available, the curriculum often did not suit pastoral lifestyles.
"We must have mobile schools in pastoralist areas if children are
to gain from the education system."
Besides education, he said, pastoralists also lacked access to livestock
markets and proper land ownership and tenure systems to sustain their
lifestyle. They also faced difficulties in accessing credit from financial
institutions as cattle were often not considered assets against which
institutions could lend money, Wario said.
The workshop was being organised by the African Union's Department of
Rural Economy and Agriculture, the AU's Inter-African Bureau for Animal
Resources (IBAR), and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs-Pastoralist Communication Initiative (OCHA-PCI).
Report by the UN Integrated Regional Information Networks (Nairobi)
www.irinnews.org
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