On the 28th and 29th of July 2021, world leaders converged in London to hold a World Education Summit. This summit was co-hosted by the UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and the Kenyan President – Uhuru Kenyatta.
The Global partnership for Education facilitated the event and the purpose was to raise a $5 billion rolling target over the next 5 years with the following goals.
1. Helping to transform education in up to 87 countries thus, ensuring every child gets education (especially the girl child),
2. Widening access to education, and
3. Helping recover the grounds that has been lost by children due to school closures, because of the pandemic.
In addition, this event was to focus world leaders on the importance of improving educational outcomes by ensuring a fully educated workforce, improving educational infrastructure, and increasing domestic spending on education.
IA-Foundation believes this is a watershed moment for education globally. We can feel the hand of history upon us. It is indeed a game changer and IA-Foundation joins the organisers in raising our hands for education.
The IA-Foundation Founder, Mrs. Ronke Adeagbo believes this is a great initiative and long time coming. This is a time for governments all over the world to be intentional about transforming the educational landscape in the developing world and especially for marginalised children of the world. The pandemic has exacerbated the need to address this issue hence, this is no longer ‘business as usual’, but ‘business unusual’. Ronke is acutely aware that government cannot deliver on all these initiatives alone and this is where NGOs like IA-Foundation can help, especially in Nigeria.
We would like to compliment government’s action and enable Nigerian government to achieve the United Nations’ SDG4. We commend the state governments for their political will and commitment, especially in Borno State, where Governor Zulu is bending the curve of history and has recently opened an ultra-modern primary and secondary school facility. Education has been under attack in this state, since Chibok girls were kidnapped in 2014 but he is boldly changing the script.
At the education summit, President Mohammed Buhari committed to doubling the educational budget by 50% in the next 2 years. The 2021 education budget is N742billion, which is 5.6% of the total budget. Ghana, on the other hand has committed to spend 23% of their total budget on education. It would be nice and expedient for Nigeria to also aim close to that figure-bar.
IA-Foundation envisions a future where all children would unleash and maximise their potentials. So, IA-Foundation raises its hand against poverty, gender discrimination, disability, insecurity, and displacements which stops any Nigerian child from accessing quality education.
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