Bujumbura — The ambition of 'Vision Burundi 2025' is to build a competitive and diversified economy. Notably, by modernizing agricultural production in rural areas, developing the services industry and promotion of urbanization.
All these objectives cannot be achieved without well-trained, competent people who are also competitive in the wider world. Towards this end, since 2005, the government has been supporting Burundians construct new primary and secondary schools, along with universities on a community development basis.
This explains the impressive increase of primary and secondary schools between 2005 and 2011. Moreover, the number of school children rose by 46% between 2005 and 2012.
This was highlighted as a significant achievement in the implementation of Axis 2 of the United Nations Millennium Development Goal objectives 'to ensure primary education for all'. In Burundi , access to primary education is equitable between girls and boys with a parity ratio almost equal to one in 2011. The beginning of basic school (Standard 1-Standard 9) is scheduled for the school year 2013-2014.
In addition, many secondary schools were also built and led to an increase of 100% in the number of schools between 2005 and 2011.
In turn, secondary pupils doubled during the same period. Thus, annually the transition rate from primary to secondary school steadily increased from 33% in 2010, 40% in 2011 and 50% in 2012.
The government's ambition is to also train at the highest level the future leaders of the country.
These will form the basis of promoting scientific, literary and artistic research so that higher education is actively involved in social, economic and cultural development. To achieve this noble objective, significant actions have been taken by the government. These include the enactment of the law on the reorganization of higher education, the introduction from the 2011-2012 academic year of the Bachelor-Masters-PhD program in harmony with other countries of the region.
It is true that the number of higher education institutions has increased remarkably, with a significant contribution of private institutions which have almost doubled between 2006 and 2011. But there is still much to do in order to meet the high demand of training in higher education.
To meet this challenge, the government is constantly seeking input from the public and the private sector to invest in education in general and in higher education in particular.
In response, the people of Gitega province, Burundi's second largest city (located in the central part of the country), have undertaken since 2010 a project to build a polytechnic community university.
The first phase includes six faculties; Agro-Processing Technology, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Business Studies, Environment and Natural Resources Sciences, Hotel Industry and Tourism and Medicine.
The university, which will be organized in Bachelor-Masters- PhD system, plans to open its doors in January 2014.
Besides admitting Burundians, students from East Africa and the rest of the world will be welcome.
The first admissions will be in the Faculty of the Environment and Natural Resources Sciences, the Faculty of ICT and the Faculty of Business Studies.
Recently, President Pierre Nkurunziza chaired a fund-raising meeting which at the end of the day managed to come up with BIF 661,300,000.
A host of dignitaries, both in government and the private sector, attended the successful function.
Amongst them were the Speaker of the Senate of Burundi, the Second Vice-President of the Republic and Chairman of the Steering Committee of the University, the Chairman of the Ruling Party CNDD-FDD, the Ombudsman, parliamentarians, ministers, senior officials of the State, representatives of public institutions and private companies and individuals.
No comments:
Post a Comment