UPE AND THE FLIGHT FROM POVERTY

Getting out of poverty follows a simple formula.

But first what is poverty? Poverty generally, is the inability to meet your basic needs. The opposite of which is being rich, where you can not only met your basic needs, but have surplus income that comes from your assets.

"The formula of getting out of poverty is to trade value for income and with that income create more value and therefore more income. A virtuous cycle. A simple formula but not easy to execute...

The trick is to have something – a good or service, of value to trade. It is possible to have value and fail to trade it, either because there is no market for it or that the market is not aware of your value, but that’s a discussion for another day.

At the heart of the challenge for most anti-poverty programs is how do you create value and then get it to market, and do this sustainably over time.

The reason you are poorer than the richest man in your town is because he knows something you don’t. What he knows that you don’t, makes him behave in a way that ensures he earns more than you.

So invariably creating value often comes with mindset change.

Last week the education ministry commemorated the 25 years of Universal Primary Education (UPE) program. What started off as a response to a campaign promise by presidential candidate Paul Ssemogerere in  1996, was a good idea that was long overdue. Since then primary enrollment has jumped to  about eight million today from two million in 1996 and seen literacy levels  almost double to 75 percent from 43 percent in 1986.

As suggested above education, which by definition entails a mindset change and therefore creation of value, is a useful first step to lift people out of poverty.

There are questions about the content of our education system, but if one is literate can overcome these shortcomings with continuous learning.

It should come as no surprise that Kenya and Tanzania, which in the case of the former has had bigger enrollments at primary school or in the case of the latter started UPE in 1977 are bigger economies than Uganda. Their literacy levels reflect the earlier adoption of UPE with Kenya at 82 percent and Tanzania 81 percent.

"The thing with such social engineering initiatives is that it takes time to see tangible results, which may discourage people with shorter electoral time spans. But the benefits are there, its just that they may just creep up on you.

What value can you put on being able to communicate in one language all around the country? How much easier is trade? How much easier is it to mobilise populations? How much market do you create when more of us are educated or at least literate?

It’s happening already. While ideally we should be communicating in an indigenous language other than English, you can now go anywhere in the country and manage just fine with English, as most people now have studied English to some basic level. Hopefully with the introduction of Kiswahili at primary school, in another 25 years we should more improved communication around the country.

That being said there is a lot to be done. The education ministry reports that there is no government aided school in 1,617 of the more than 10,000 parishes in the country.

The ministry estimates that it will need sh1.89trillion or about sh1.2b per school to bridge this gap. Apart from questions of value for money there really should not be any hesitation in releasing these funds.

The best investment a nation can make is to invest in its people, and providing education as well as health services should be key.

A country like Singapore with a tenth of our population and for all intents and purposes, a rock in the sea has a GDP of about $400b.  Beyond basic literacy Singapore’s education system is ranked in the top 20 in the world. It helps of course that there has been an education system in that country since 1823.

Coming full circle to poverty eradication, there are two ways that I know of for an individual to create value, either through education or experience.

UPE has its issues. The idea is sound but the execution may be wanting.

"A previous generation, which did the proverbial 10 mile trek to and from school, have countless stories about how education made a difference. In single families there are siblings who had climbed out of poverty and others who were wallowing in poverty, the difference being one sibling went to school and the other did not.

Interestingly they started their schooling writing in the dust using sharpened pieces of wood (we call them stylus these days), often under trees and many times there was no school when it rained.

They came out fine and many of them lead or have led this country.