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EDUCATION-CAMEROON: Poverty and Culture Conspire to Deny Girls Schooling

Sylvestre Tetchiada

GAROUA, Northern Cameroon, Nov 22 2006 (IPS) - Of the 71 pupils in Daouda Soulé’s class, only 18 are girls. “Last year there were about 20 girls, but even some…who were promoted to the next grade dropped out and are at home, although primary school is free,” the teacher at the Central Public School in Garoua, northern Cameroon, told IPS.

Her experience is not unique. Two months into the new academic year, there is a noticeable lack of girls attending schools, especially in Cameroon’s three northern provinces.

In part, this is a legacy of economic turmoil in the Central African country.

Cameroon began experiencing economic difficulties in the mid-1980s. This all but eliminated the slow progress that had been made in improving education for girls, say certain analysts.

According to Justine Ebwelé, deputy director at the Ministry of Basic Education, structural adjustment programmes have pushed many poverty-stricken parents to stop educating some of their children. Very often, she told IPS, it is girls who are kept at home.

“In addition, this crisis shook the educational system by creating drastic operating budget reductions. The Ministry of Education failed to maintain its training standards because the elimination of allowances and drastically reduced salaries sorely discouraged its teachers.”

Léonie Mbella, an educational sociologist based in Garoua, agrees. “In Cameroon, boys have a better chance of going to school,” she told IPS. “School enrolment for girls over the past few decades has suffered the…effects of the (economic) crisis.”

Something more than economics is at play, however – as demonstrated by the fact that gender disparities in enrolment persist despite the 2000 decree by President Paul Biya that made primary education free, and eased the financial burden of schooling girls. Traditional perceptions of the role of women also have an adverse effect on girls’ schooling.

“In Cameroon, the combined influence of historical, religious, economic and socio-cultural factors greatly hinders the development of girls’ education,” Josephine Ndinga, professor of sociology at the University of Dschang, said in an interview with IPS.

Esther Fonkam of the Cameroon Coalition for the Rights of the Child, which groups various non-governmental organisations (NGOs), notes that even though basic education is free, certain parents still allow only some of their children to attend school – giving preference to boys.

Perhaps ironically, Cameroonian women themselves present an obstacle to improving girls’ education that will need to be overcome.

“Women themselves still believe that the education of girls is not really necessary,” says Merline Mbang, programme director at the Equal Rights and Opportunity Forum (EROF), an NGO based in the capital of Yaoundé – adding that teenage pregnancy tends to put an end to the scholastic prospects of girls.

“They are already considered adults, and the young wife and mother no longer has time to learn. When she was younger, she was already ‘prepared’ for her role as a woman, by having to help her own mother with all the domestic chores.”

Figures from the National Institute of Statistics (Institut national de la statistique), indicate that 58 percent of girls enrol in primary school, and that only 37 percent complete their basic education. For boys, the figures are 83 percent and 60 percent respectively.

The report for 2005 from EROF tells a similar tale, noting that of the 1.7 million children without access to primary school, 1.3 million were girls. In addition, more than half of girls aged six to 11 did not attend school last year.

According to the Network of Associations of Mothers of Schoolchildren for the Education of Girls (Réseau des associations des mères d’élèves pour l’éducation des filles), an NGO based in Garoua, eight out of 10 children who do not attend school are girls.

The results of this are reflected in illiteracy rates. “Although half of Cameroonians can neither read nor write, illiteracy does not affect both sexes equally: only 40 percent of men are illiterate, compared to 60 percent of women,” said Mbella.

Government and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have previously mounted public awareness campaigns to increase the enrolment of girls. These appear to have been ineffective, say local observers.

Nonetheless, UNICEF announced another initiative earlier this month called ‘Schools: Friends of Children, Friends of Girls’, which will see educational materials worth 524,000 dollars being made available.

The programme aims to improve the rate of school enrolment and completion by children and girls in particular, in the schools of northern Cameroon.

Business as usual in the matter of girls’ schooling will undermine Cameroon’s prospects of reaching the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of attaining universal primary education by 2015. (Eight MDGs were agreed on by global leaders in 2000. They also focus on halving extreme hunger and poverty, and reducing maternal and child mortality, amongst other objectives.)

And, girls like Awa Halimi will find classroom doors closed to them.

“I was supposed to enroll this year…but my parents said they didn’t have money to buy supplies,” she told IPS recently in Garoua.

“My father told me that my place from now on was at home, and that he planned to marry me off by the rainy season.”