Mozambique: Nyusi urges stakeholders to ensure inclusive education – Watch

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Mozambique: Nyusi urges stakeholders to ensure inclusive education – Watch

8:47 CAT | 31 Jan 2022

Photo: O País

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi on Monday formally opened the 2022 academic year, urging the various stakeholders to ensure an inclusive, patriotic and qualitative education, which leaves no one behind across the country.

Nyusi made his call in the southern city of Matola, in the locality of Chinonanquila, where he also inaugurated a secondary school, named after him, built by the aluminium smelter Mozal. The school cost 134 million meticais (about 2.1 million US dollars, at the current exchange rate).

“This day has a very special meaning, because rather than opening the academic year we are receiving a brand new secondary school, funded by Mozal under the framework of their corporate social responsibility,” Nyusi said, adding that this is the largest secondary school built in Mozambique since independence in 1975.

The new school, with 48 classrooms, an administrative complex, physics, chemistry and biology laboratories, a computer room, and a library as well as other facilities, will host nearly 5,000 pupils.

Among the benefits, the delivery of the new school will contribute significantly to reducing the long distances students have to walk every day, especially those studying on the night shift, Maputo province now has 50 schools offering secondary education, an 11 per cent growth compared to 2021.

Nyusi, however, stressed that despite the great strides achieved by the sector since independence, most recent data indicate that about 2.4 million children are out of school and nearly 40 per cent of the population cannot read and write. This illiteracy rate is particularly serious among women.

“The reality becomes more complex when we take into account Mozambique’s high rate of population growth, estimated at 2.8 per cent a year”, Nyusi said.

Source: AIM