Several things I feel may need redressing in the system; Primary Education in most of the African countries run for seven or eight years before which an added two or three years in the preschool level is inevitable. In total a child spends about eleven years going through primary school education. Given that most of the African children only join school at the age of three, this will mean that the child is only through with the primary education at the age of fourteen years.

The secondary education, also known as high school education in different countries in Africa, runs for four or five years. Most of the countries have abolished the existence of the sixth form that was common in the 1980s. A student of fourteen years has to go through the five years. Only at the age of nineteen does the child finally get through the second stage of this education system.

Tertiary education is not standardize thankfully, most of the time that student who is at this level considered an adult yet depending on in parents for upkeep will have to go through at least two years of tertiary education to qualify the “job seeker” status of a lowest level. Is that fate or what? The twenty one year old young man or woman is still a dependant of his parents. If he is lucky enough he may be the only child of his parents making the burden lighter. But knowing Africa too well and only being one of them, a lastborn in a family of six siblings, what can I say? Being an only child must be as a result of misfortune where other siblings have passed on or impotency of one parent. That is Africa.

Now going back to the wound, the poverty well of African countries; I have asked myself time and again, why do we have to wait until our children turn twenty one to start thinking of empowering them to have independence of running their own lives? By the way, even at twenty one only about ten percent of those children can actually get their desired jobs or even start up businesses. Most of those who have managed to start up at a lower age have either come from families that knew how to manipulate the system or have rebelled and joined the music industry which for a long time had been considered a “no-go-zone” for a child deemed to be compliant!

Africans have drowned in poverty for ages now. A continent that has every resource one can think of; Gold, diamond, petroleum, Agriculture even affordable man-power! Yet the dear continent is shamefully the poorest in the world! Africans are not lazy people when it comes to manual labour, any company in the world could actually boast of hiring an African. Probably the hardest working manual labourer. But that is all there is. Africans have held on to manuals and guidelines that were handed over to them by their colonial rulers. When such manuals don’t work because the times have changed they cry out to their colonial rulers claiming “This does not work!”  It is obvious that such manuals have a “best before date” and that date expired just as soon as the industrial age kicked the bucket. Behold we are in a technology-driven world. Times have changed and so have the manuals. It is time for an upgrade.

How could it work? How could it work? I ask. A teacher teaches a student for the reason of making that student a more productive being than he was at the initial meeting. A student should not remain a student all his life or can he, Africa?

Up to date, it takes an average African child seventeen years to qualify for employment, which in my own opinion is not the correct dose to turn African poverty upside down! This monster called poverty has finally qualified to be a curse to this continent.

The solution to this isn’t so far of. In fact it is right at the tips of our fingers. If only we, the African people can stop pointing the same fingers at the West and the rest of the world and use the same fingers to rewrite the manuals of our education system, if only we would scrap of the unproductive system that has caused the political system of the land to come down crumbling with a bang, if only we were just a little bit more willing to let go more of that mental slugishness and shift the physical might to mental willingness, come up with a better system that will solve this mystery.

What does it profit the child eleven years of primary education? A fourteen year old who can only calculate the circumference of the earth and not own a bank account or run a tuck shop the least to speak of? What does it profit the parent of such a child another four or five years paying hefty school fees just to end the child in yet another position that the child cannot be financially independent? Even after the tertiary education the child is not guaranteed any way of earning an income or any way of independence?

I stand to rebuke this system of education after having gone through it, I know for sure my parents went through it and worse still that is what my children are doomed to go through. In fact they are already in the system! What to do? What to do? What to do?

Looking at the system and the products of the system you can tell it isn’t a productive system, for if it were to be considered productive the rate of unemployment in Africa wouldn’t be so high, the businesses started and those thriving would be in multitudes, Africa would be in a position to utilize the resources so well planted by her creator for the benefit of herself and the rest of the world. Instead of begging cross-legged in the economic highway of the West and the rest of the world. That isn’t the case. We have wasted the lives of our teenagers in the horrid believe that teenagers are unstable people and therefore can only be kept in the wasteful education system to keep them under control. Only to realize that it neither profit them nor their parents. It is a total waste of time.

There is the need to revise the education system in the African countries to enable the African child to gain financial independence at an age as early as fifteen years. Yes really I mean that. I only started earning at the age of eighteen and I can tell the difference because my siblings started so late, at about twenty four. Most of the people I have held this discussion with, especially people in authority like politicians have felt that it wouldn’t work because other countries outside Africa haven’t tried it. That is so African, I say. African leaders do not want to pioneer anything because they don’t want to be the first to fail. Hey, I have failed so many times but like Thomas Alva Edison I insist on trying once more and making things work. In fact I say, I didn’t fail, I only found several methods that did not work and therefore strive to get one that does.

Old machinery is rejuvenated, rebuilt to suit the needs of the people. Old engines cannot be used in new cars if those cars are expected to perform better than their predecessors. Why do we fear change Africa? Why do we fear invention? Why do we hate to be pioneers of progress? Why do we embrace poverty and failure as though we were created for such?

Why don’t we scrap of some of those years in primary school education and integrate profitable education in to it. Reintroduce business education and bring in personal development as a subject instead of that subject commonly taught in schools called Moral Education which has taught our children rebellion instead of making them responsible citizens? Why do we insist in teaching them rebellion and then cry to the West blaming them for our own mistakes? Claiming that our children watch television programs that are not helping them grow to be worthy people? Shouldn’t  we teach them how to create the programs that should inject success mentality into their lives?

Shouldn’t secondary school studies involve the practical life, economics at its best, those children who desire to hit the market taught how to live in the market place while the academics start shaping their lives at this stage? Isn’t this the time to define their ways? Two years at most and the young minds will have known what they are best at, and push it all the way to prosperity. Do we have to keep them in the system for five years studying photosynthesis which they do not even desire to pursue in their later days? Of what use is that length of stay without proper definition of their destiny? Who benefits from it anyway? Two years is all I ask, and let the young soul proceed to his destiny.

 Worthy children they should be. Dealing with everyday issues. Maybe even make it compulsory that a child learns how to make a profit out of selling old newspapers, coming up with projects that are profitable, exposing them to real life situations that will make these young minds open up with wealth of wisdom as they should. Every musical voice singing, every drummer drumming the beat out of his heart, every mathematician propelled to learn from the seventy year old professor the tricks of his time for wisdom is in his bones and before he bids us goodbye to leave such wisdom to these young brains?

What is the use of tertiary education if it lands the participants in more misery? The same child having spent sixteen or so years in school has no way of developing the God given talent in him. The same cannot even earn a living. A whole lot of African children do not even know the inner side of the college classroom leave alone the university gate. The education is so expensive for his parents to bear. A burden meant to discourage the young heart. The strangest thing about it all is that all these young souls are in this education system being taught how to write great resumes and nothing else. Very few if any can even start a simple business of selling home grown vegetables and make a profit out of it. What a shame! So just like they have been taught to do, they go through their studies and scuttle to the streets looking for Just-Over-Broke Social life- JOBS! Not because they are stupid but this is what the education system has taught them. Is Africa really that rich anyway? I ask.

I know you are reading this text, that is if you had the time to go to the base and get rebuked as I get rebuked too for failing to make things better for yourself and those around you, thinking “What is she doing about it?” Great! This is it, I am preaching this gospel so that you and I can brainstorm this subject and oust the fallen system of education, which Africa is clinging onto so dearly for fear of failure and being laughed at, come up with an education system that works for this generation to raise up the fallen continent.

Did you know that it is only in Africa that a fourteen year old cannot build a circuit board for a cellphone?

I could list a whole lot of what an African child cannot do, but for today, all I want is for the African child to apply what he knows for his benefit and the benefit of mankind. The African child deserves to grow his talent at a tender age not to waste his life in this misery of education system. Africa, do not waste the wealth in these young minds. Abhor the fallen system of education, its dead, its rotten, bury it!