Is Education a budget bully? :: Mmegi Online

Every budget since independence has generously pumped funds into education, under the nobel mantra: " education is the key to life". Billions of Pula later, misgivings and strategic interventions are beginning to set in, as decades of investment seem to be swelling the jobless masses. Staff Writer, BABOKI KAYAWE, looks beyond the numbers.

“Most important of all, the colonial government failed to recognise the need to educate and train our people so they could run their own country. Not one single secondary school was completed by the colonial government during the whole 70 years of British rule. Nor did we inherit any properly equipped institutions for vocational training even at the lowest level of artisan skills.” The first president, the late Sir Seretse Khama uttered these iconic words in a moving speech given at Uppsala, Sweden on November 11, 1970.

A short four years after independence, Seretse was outlining what continues to be the principal rationale guiding budgetary investments in education. A lot of work needed to be done, he was saying essentially, and that work will be the foundation of the Botswana we aspire to.

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