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PM:Tanzania lagging behind in students enrollment to varsities
2006-07-12 09:46:25
By Adam Ihucha, Arusha
Tanzania is lagging behind the other African countries in terms of number of students who are joining higher learning institutions, Prime Minister, Edward Lowassa said yesterday.
”Regrettably a mere 0.27 percent of students in Tanzania are getting opportunity to join various universities, which is a pathetic figure, when we compare with other African territories,” Lowassa observed when he was inaugurating the buildings of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Makumira University College (MUCO) of Tumaini University.
Unveiling the statistics to justify his statement, the premier mentioned some of the African countries with their percentage on brackets as including Mozambique (0.33), Malawi (0.42), Angola (0.44), Zambia (0.83), Lesotho (0.98) and Zimbabwe (1.05).
Others are Uganda (1.23), Botswana (1.33), Kenya (1.47), Swaziland (2.22), Namibia (4.66) and South Africa (9.11).
”We need to tackle the situation immediately because currently the doors of the labour market are opening due to globalization, and we also put in place investors friendly policies and the investors want competent workers capable of sustaining fast technological changes and new management,” he stressed.
Lowassa said the biggest challenge before Tanzanians at the moment was to set up infrastructure at the level of university colleges in order to cater for a wave of Form Six leavers particularly in the wake of Secondary Education Development Programme (SEDP).
”The university Infrastructure is paramount due to the fact that in the wake of information technology people need them in order to access crucial information on education and their development easily” PM said.
Lowassa further said that the university infrastructure will put the country in a position of creating employment for its graduates as they will be competent enough to sustain in a stiff competition at the labour market across the world.
The other reason, he said, is to increase the number of badly needed experts in various fields, adding that that way back in 2005 there were acute shortage of secondary and college teachers amounting to 5,753.
”To make the matter even more worse, we expect to face another serious acute shortage of teachers in 2010 when there will be a shortage of 50,000 teachers,” Lowassa noted, stressing that there was a need for the government in collaboration with higher learning institutions to chart out strategy to overcome the problem before the situation is beyond control.
He however commended the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania for being able to open up the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Makumira University College.
PM said: ”The faculty buildings have been completed timely – when we are implementing the ruling party general elections manifesto which stress that upon reaching 2010 we should enable 12.5 percent of Form Six levers to join higher learning institutions”.
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