South Sudan: Govt launches bid to boost education after years of war
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00:00 than $40 million more dollars will be going towards improving access to education to children
00:05 in South Sudan. It's the world's youngest country, but between 2013 and 2020, a brutal
00:11 civil war cost at least 400,000 lives and upended millions more. The conflict prevented
00:17 generations of people from learning and addressing the fallout from that is an urgent priority.
00:24 This month, a new drive started to get at least 135,000 more kids into school in a bid
00:30 to reach young people worst affected by the crisis. The head of the fund providing some
00:35 of the $70 million for the program recently returned from South Sudan and told me some
00:42 of what she learned about the conflict's impact on schooling there.
00:46 South Sudan has gone through decades, of course, of conflict and the last one, not the least,
00:54 but also there's been a severe underdevelopment over the decades. So Education Cannot Wait,
00:59 which is the UN's global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crisis. We have
01:04 invested in South Sudan since 2019 and I was out there with my team last week to launch
01:12 a new multi-year resilience program for education for South Sudanese children. There are 2.7
01:20 million children out of school. The situation right now is relatively peaceful. The government
01:27 of the Republic of South Sudan is very collaborative and cooperative and they really prioritize
01:32 education for the young generation to build that country, not the least girls' education.
01:38 Now, you're not just looking at the immediate learning needs of South Sudan. You said that
01:43 the work being done today is crucial to sustainable development. So what's the link there?
01:50 Well, you see, education is a development sector. You need at least a minimum of 12
01:55 years to provide a quality education to a child. So it's why you need to come in during
02:00 the humanitarian crisis, if not before. You cannot wait until the crisis is over. That's
02:07 why we are Education Cannot Wait. So the development side of it is that we bring humanitarian actors
02:13 and development actors together, delivering with speed, but at the same time, building
02:20 the capacity and empowering the government and local school administration to also build
02:26 long-term capacity to take on and continue the education.
02:30 Now South Sudan and many other countries nearby are taking in a lot of people fleeing the
02:34 war. In Sudan, in general, can refugee communities maintain access to education and what kind
02:41 of things can organisations like Education Cannot Wait do regionally to help?
02:48 Well, right now, the current conflict in Sudan itself is of such magnitude that it does impede
02:58 the humanitarian operations and make it nearly impossible for development assistance. However,
03:06 Education Cannot Wait has a $25 million programme investment, together of course with civil
03:11 society and UN agencies in Sudan, who are trying to find opportunities to still deliver
03:19 whether at home or in areas that are considered safe education for these children. But it
03:25 is very difficult during an active armed conflict and as a result, we have seen an influx of
03:31 refugees from Sudan to the five neighbouring countries - Egypt, Chad, Central African Republic,
03:40 Ethiopia and South Sudan.