By Dr. Mahamud M. Yahye

I. Introduction

In a recent report released by the United Nations Development Programme, it was revealed that Somalia currently has the lowest enrollment of pupils at the primary education level in the entire world.

This sad news motivated me to write the present article. (I would also like to write it in memory of the late Prof. Ibrahim Mahamud Abyan, former Dean of the now defunct Somali Institute of Development Administration and Management (SIDAM), Mogadishu. Mr. Abyan, a U.S. trained educationist, who was regarded by many as one of the most courageous Somali intellectuals and cleanest civil servants, was unfortunately murdered in cold-blood at the start of the Somali civil war in early 1991. His Crime? He just belonged to the wrong clan). But the UNDP’s finding is not surprising, because Somalia is one of the poorest countries in the whole world -- a situation aggravated by a seemingly intractable civil war and the absence of a functioning central government for almost 15 years now. This devastating civil war has also dealt a crushing blow to the Somali economy, which is now in limbo, and has caused all kinds of political, social and humanitarian crises to our people. This multi-faceted tragedy also reminds me about the great English bard, William Shakespeare, who wrote in his famous play, Hamlet-I: "When sorrows come, they come not as single spies, but in battalions!" Likewise, Somalia’s senseless civil strife has certainly created enormous problems in almost every aspect of our country’s life, as if we are a nation cursed by the divine power.

II. Destruction and Historical Background

To appreciate the magnitude of the destruction that has befallen Somalia’s education system, it is worth mentioning that at one point in the 1980s, the country had around 1,400 primary schools with about 3,370 teachers. Mogadishu alone had tens of schools (both at the primary and secondary levels). Unfortunately, during the civil war, 90% of the schools were reported to have been completely destroyed or seriously damaged. (For the first couple of years, after the breakout of the civil war, there was no schooling in the country, for all intents and purposes). The few that were spared are now being utilized as either camps for the warring militias or living quarters for the destitute, the down-trodden and internally displaced families. In this context, the previous Somali administrations – both civilian and military – could be faulted with many things, but one cannot deny that they had accomplished a great deal in terms of developing the country’s educational system. Siad Barre’s regime, in particular, is credited with introducing in 1972 a written Somali language for the first time in the history of our nation. That regime had also devised a unified curriculum for all the country’s primary and secondary levels, with strong emphasis on math and science, and Somali became the main medium of instruction. Here, the numerous literacy campaigns - in which I had the honor and privilege of participating – were believed to have substantially contributed to the reduction of adult illiteracy among our people; but this has now regressed alarmingly. Moreover, this last functioning government enlarged the country’s then single institution of higher education, i.e., National University of Somalia (NUS), situated in the heart of Mogadishu. At the peak of its existence, it comprised 15 faculties (departments), including medicine, agriculture and engineering, with 7,000 full-time students and 600 academic staff, both nationals and expatriates. (Incidentally, I used to be critical of Siad Barre’s regime and was persecuted and imprisoned by them, for political reasons, when they were in power, but I have, today, to give the devil his dues, as the saying goes. I firmly believe that any fair-minded Somali will admit that the crazy, selfish and unpatriotic warlords who followed him were much worse than Siad Barre and his dictatorial military/socialist regime).

However, as a result of the comprehensive and wanton destruction of its education system – something which one scholar aptly termed as de-development of the country - Somalia now boasts one of the lowest educational achievements in the entire world. For instance, according to the latest statistical data from the World Bank, Somalia recorded in 1995, the last year for which information was available, a mere 10% of gross enrollment at the primary level. Compare this to the ratios of 95% and 99%, which were recorded by 2003 by Sub-Saharan Africa and Low Income Countries of the world, respectively. Taking into consideration the serious gender disparity (between boys and girls) and the fact that the majority of our people are roaming nomads, with no fixed abode and no schools and other social services available in their neighborhoods, the picture becomes bleaker and much graver. Under such circumstances, the overwhelming majority of school population is presently threatened to remain illiterate and innumerate due to the appalling lack of educational facilities. In my rough estimation, a child who started his/her elementary schooling in 1990, when the ruinous, senseless civil war erupted in Somalia, could by now have approached graduating from university!

When we had peace and a functioning national government, Somalia’s basic education consisted of two main cycles totaling 12 years (primary: 8 years and secondary: 4 years). This was followed by a 4-year undergraduate, university education (to be preceded by a 1-year national community service). In addition to that, the system had primary teacher and vocational training of two years each, after completing primary schooling. The beauty of Somalia’s old educational system was that it was totally free, from elementary till university. (None of wealthy America’s 3,000 universities and colleges is totally free and many of its high schools, I was told, charge tuition fees). Thus, every Somali child, no matter how humble his or her family’s economic background might have been, could aspire to get an equal chance for a good modern education, and then land a decent job – provided he/she had sufficient motivation, discipline and worked equally hard. Not anymore these days.

At that time, there was also an expansive scholarship programme whereby friendly foreign governments in: Great Britain, Italy, the Ex-Soviet Union, USA, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Ex-Eastern Europe, and even far away China, would award hundreds of full scholarships to Somali students through the latter’s central, recognized government.

That is how the overwhelming majority of educated Somalis of my generation got a chance to complete their tertiary education. In other words, almost all of us were educated with the help of our Somali State and not by support from our clans or even families, which were mostly too poor to send us abroad for getting educated. Incidentally, some of these countries, especially in the Arab world, and even Pakistan, still allocate scores of seats at their universities to Somali students.

However, due to the dire financial conditions of our embassies overseas and the fact that none of their staff has received a dime as a salary in the past 15 years, it is an open secret that these scholarships are sold by our diplomats to the highest bidder. So only kids from wealthy families, especially in the Diaspora, can now afford to obtain a real educational opportunity.

Somalia’s old educational system also contained a good number of specialized technical and vocational training schools – at the secondary level – where young men and women could learn useful trades or technical specializations in such diverse fields as accounting, agriculture, nursing, and industry. These specialized schools were very important because they would teach practical skills that were badly needed by the local labor market or even in our neighboring oil-rich countries of the Arabian Gulf. Moreover, our previous Somali administrations had realized that we had to create jobs for our ever-increasing youth to avoid serious socio-economic and political problems later. They also understood that not every student was willing or able to go to college, nor did we have at our single university the capacity to accommodate all the needs of secondary school leavers, even if they all aspired for college education.

The appalling situation of current educational facilities in Somalia reminds me about a sad story which an American journalist had written about the sorry state of the famous College of Education, situated in a small village near Afgoi (around 30 km to the west of Mogadishu). This college, which I believe was established in the early 1960s with the help of the American Government – and is better known locally as Lafoole - used to be the best teacher training center in the whole country.

Thousands of qualified Somali teachers graduated from it over the years. But in his disheartening essay, titled "Letter from Mogadishu", and published by the new Yorker in March, 1995, W. Finnegan wrote about the current terrible conditions of Lafoole as follows: “The low-rise, modern looking building of the former College of Education is now a displaced persons’ camp. The classrooms and dormitories were full of families; the walls were blackened by cooking fire…The library was a world of dust. Books were piled everywhere, on sagging shelves, on toppling heaps… The dust was so deep that it was as though the desert itself was creeping through the walls, burying the books in fine sand”.

This occurred more than 10 years ago and most probably the situation has, in the meantime, deteriorated much more seriously. And the rest of the campuses of Somalia’s historical, single university (NUS), which used to be mostly funded and manned by the Italians, did not fare any better.

In their report of 2003 on "Somalia’s Economic Recovery, Institution Building and Resource Mobilization", a special panel of experts pointed out that apart from the terrible destruction of Somalia’s educational infrastructure, its system presently suffers from other serious impediments. These include: (i) Physical facilities which are generally poor and require extensive rehabilitation and modernization; (ii) Inadequate textbooks; (iii) Concentration of schools in urban centers; (iv) Shortage of qualified teachers and the absence of teacher training (many of these educators were either killed - as happened to Prof. Abyan, as indicated earlier – or fled the country for security reasons, are internally displaced within the country or have changed jobs, because of the usually very low salary and hard work normally associated with the teaching profession); (v) Absence of educational policy, proper and unified curriculum and low management capacity; and (vi) Gender disparity (male vs. female), especially with regard to higher grades, and the positions of teachers and headmasters of schools. Another serious shortcoming of Somalia’s current rudimentary, privately-funded education systems is that it does not produce a sufficient number of people with technical skills and specialties that the local labor market actually needs. The above cited report further indicated that the penniless Somali Government would need to spend at least US $20 million to effect basic rehabilitation of the nation’s shattered educational facilities.

III. Some Recent Positive Developments

Despite this very gloomy picture, there were some positive developments which have taken place in Somalia’s education system in recent years, especially in the relatively peaceful regions, thanks mostly to the initiatives of local communities and the help as well as the risk taken by the private sector. Consequently, scores of schools, particularly at the primary and secondary levels, have been established or rehabilitated with the assistance of some Islamic charitable entities, international NGOs, the U.N. and the European Union. In my opinion and in the view of many observers of the Somali socio-economic scene, these developments were most remarkable in the tertiary (or university) level whereby at least five different universities have opened their doors in various regions of the country. The first among these higher education entities was Amoud University in Awdal Region (in Self-declared Somaliland) which was established in the late 1990s. This was followed by the universities of Mogadishu, Hargeisa and East Africa (in Bossaso). The construction of three campuses of the newly created State University of Puntland and the affiliated Community Colleges have either been completed or are still underway in Bossaso, Growe and Galcaio, while several fund-raising functions have recently been organized for the purpose of launching the new University of Hiiraan.

I share the opinion of those who believe that the creation of different universities in the major regional capitals is an excellent idea. It is one of the bitter lessons that we have learned from the mistakes of the previous Somali administrations whereby all developmental efforts were concentrated in one city, namely, Mogadishu, the capital. Consequently, when the ruinous and senseless civil war flared up, we lost the single higher education entity we had, i.e., the National University of Somalia, and nearly all the major secondary schools in that city due to this misguided policy of paying disproportional attention to Mogadishu. Had we not put all our eggs in one basket in that fashion, and had we distributed the main faculties (or departments) of NUS over several major cities, such as, Amoud, Baidoa, Belet Weyn, Bossaso, Burao, Galcaio, Hargeisa, Kismayo, Marka, etc., perhaps a good number of these faculties may have been saved. As such, they would have been very useful to us today as we are dealing with the daunting task of reviving Somalia’s ruined education system.

Almost all the newly created schools and universities charge rather high fees, by local standards, for their courses. This is so, because these educational centers, especially in the South, are mostly funded by private businessmen; and in an economically ruined country like Somalia, where very few avenues for lawful, decent jobs are presently open, education becomes an activity to be engaged in by anybody irrespective of his/her qualifications and a commodity to be sold at the highest price possible. For instance, the tuition for enrolling at Mogadishu University is US $400 per year. This is in a country where the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) is a mere $100 at present (as compared to $900 for Djibouti) and 43% of its population currently live below the extreme poverty line, i.e., less than one US dollar per day, according to the latest U.N. reports (with Somalis in the rural/nomadic areas being much poorer, and even with some warlords making, illegally, US $2,000 per day). As such, it was reported that 63% of secondary school leavers in Hargeisa during the 2002/2003, for instance, could not further their university education.

On the other hand, the foreign “philanthropic” or charitable entities and international NGOs who come to Somalia are not driven by lofty humanistic ideals alone. They mainly come to create lucrative jobs fro themselves. From our past experience with foreign experts, we also know that most of the money they have lobbied for in their Western countries, in the name of saving the “starving, unlucky Somalis”, ultimately goes back to them or to their places of origin in the form of very high salaries, “hardship allowances” and other benefits in addition to the purchase of expensive – and at times unnecessary – equipment and/or hardware from their respective countries. Needless to say that a Western professional who can get a good job in, say, Britain, France, Italy, Scandinavia or USA, would most probably not venture to work in lawless Somalia. Moreover, setting up “madrassas” (or religious schools), by some of the Islamic NGOs, in a country with very meager opportunities for modern education, may produce numerous hard-line Muslim fundamentalists who could later pose serious security problems for Somalia’s future.

IV. Conclusions and Recommendations

Regarding the rebuilding of Somalia’s seriously damaged education system, many experts on Somali affairs believe that priority number one should be accorded to the restoration of peace and the rule of law.

Next, the new Somali government should order the evacuation within, say, one month, of all public education premises by armed militias, destitute families and even warlords or high ranking officials of local administrations; it should then immediately start rehabilitating as much of these educational facilities as possible, hopefully with financial support from international organizations, friendly governments and other donors. If that is achieved many qualified Somali teachers and real foreign experts, both for the university level and below, will most probably return to the country.

In this connection, in a new article currently posted on the Hiiraan website, under the title of “Students Defy Anarchy at Mogadishu University”, Reuters News Agency reported the following sad episode: “Students and lecturers are sometimes forced to lie down in between lectures and even during examinations as rival factions exchange fire.”

It then went on to say: “ For security reasons, the foreign lecturers [from India and Kenya] hardly ever see central Mogadishu, where militia fighters, sometimes in trucks mounted with anti-tank machine guns, patrol dirty streets lined with pock-marked buildings.” What kind of useful learning or teaching can one obtain or impart in a terrifying atmosphere like that? It is a measure of the intensity and irrationality of tribal animosity in present day Somalia that an entity like Mogadishu University, or any other regional educational institution for that matter, would go all the way to India to recruit foreign lecturers, but would not consider hiring equally qualified Somalis from other regions of the country, and at a much lower cost, because they could turn out to be from undesirable tribes!

Secondly, the question of the illiterate, armed militias has to be satisfactorily tackled. At present, there are thousands upon thousands of ex-nomadic young men who were brought from the countryside (baadiye) by the notorious, cruel and unscrupulous Somali warlords to wipe out other Somali clans and, thus, gain power and privilege. These thugs do not possess any practical skill, except the firing of their Klashnikovs, and mainly use their guns as a means of livelihood. They are normally too old and too primitive to be enrolled in elementary schools and cannot go back to their nomadic, very harsh environments. But without taking care of these armed militias and finding an appropriate source of livelihood and an abode for them, peace and stability will not return to our homeland. The country’s new Ministry of Education should, therefore, address this thorny issue by teaching some useful skills of, say, 6-12 months duration, on carpentry, electrician’s trade, masonry, mechanics, plumbing, etc., to these young men.

Alternatively, they could be engaged in the re-construction of Somalia’s dilapidated infrastructure (particularly roads) and other public works or “Work for Peace” programmes in agriculture and similar activities, as the World Labor Organization and other UN agencies have occasionally been doing in southern Somalia.

Thirdly, the rehabilitation and enlargement of the old technical schools and vocational training centers should be given enough attention. Such schools could play an important role in absorbing idle, intermediate (or junior high) school leavers who could not continue with the traditional education system. Hopefully, they will also create job opportunities for this youth both at home and abroad. Even the newly created universities have to focus more on teaching technical and professional subjects that the country badly needs, like veterinary and animal husbandry, agriculture, engineering (including computers), medicine, business administration etc., and not by mostly offering courses on arts, languages, literature and social sciences. It would also be wiser and more cost-effective if these new universities could coordinate their activities and avoid duplication of the courses they offer.

Fourthly, great emphasis should be put on the rehabilitation and enhancement of the primary level. In other words, we have to reconstruct our destroyed education system from the bottom up - and not the vice versa – because this is how we can lay a solid foundation for it (that is also how one can usually rebuild a collapsed edifice); and we can not afford to do otherwise, since at this stage we have no appropriate resources, either financial or human. This bottom-up approach will hopefully enable us to save the next generation of Somali kids, because it is now too late to do much for the preceding one.

Again, ensuring a seat in the classroom for every Somali child, who is now around 6 years old, may be a very daunting challenge for penniless Somalia without massive donations from friendly foreign governments. Perhaps we will not also be able to achieve the minimum of the UN’s well-publicized millennium development goals (MDGs), foremost among them being universal or 100% primary enrollment by 2015 in all developing countries. Nonetheless, we have to start somewhere, if we wish to save our unlucky country from further disasters in this day and age of internet and cyber highways. Obviously, without imparting proper education and training to your citizens, you cannot make any meaningful progress or aim for peace and prosperity in this globalized world.

Finally, I think it would be quite fitting to end this article by the words of Mr. Mohamed Hashi, a former army officer, who at the age of 62 has recently enrolled in business administration at Mogadishu University. He said he does not mind the bullets, because he believes that education is the only way Somalia can lift itself out of ruin. “Knowledge is power, and I am happy to seek it at this old age,” said Hashi whose daughter is reported to have graduated from the same university in 2000. “I urge my fellow students to work harder, and call upon the world to support education [in this country], because ignorance is the source of chaos in Somalia.” But I only wish to add to this profound wisdom that modern education also instills independence, self-confidence and worthiness as a human being, together with a sufficient level of morality.

These good personal traits would presumably prevent a citizen from taking the law into his own hands and waging a brutal, suicidal/genocidal and senseless tribal war against his own countrymen and fellow Muslims.

References

(1)Abdi, Ali A., "Education in Somalia: History, Destruction and Calls for Reconstruction,” Comparative Education, Vol. 34, Issue e, Nov. 1998, p. 340.

(2)Retamal, Gonzalo and Devadoss, M. "Rehabilitating Education Sector in Somalia: the Role of UNESCO." (UNESCO, February, 1994). [Mr. Retmal and Devadoss were Education Adviser and Education Officer, UNESCO-Somalia, respectively]

(3)"U.N. Somalia Theme Group on Education: Proposed Strategy Framework for MDG-2 [Millennium Development Goals-2]." (A U.N. Report, November 2004, to be accessed through the internet).

(4)"Country Studies: Somalia, Education." U.S. Library of Congress [undated]

(http:/countrystudies.us/Somalia/1.htm)

(5)"Somalia’s Education." United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), undated. [www.unicef.org.somalia/education]

(6)"Amoud University, Bossaso University (a.k.a. East Africa University), Hargeisa, University and Mogadishu University". [Browse their respective websites]

(7) "Ceremony for the Establishment of Hiiraan University." Hiiraan Website [www.hiiraan.com/2005/aug/HU.htm]

(8)"Project for the Preparation and Development of Education Curriculum in Arabic for the Somali Republic [in Arabic]". World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY, Saudi Arabia). [A pamphlet prepared by WAMY for collecting donations from the general Saudi public and published in 2005]

(9)"Somalia, Education: Country Profile, 2005." The Economist Intelligence Unit, EIU, London, United Kingdom, p.15.

(10)Yahya, Mahmud M., "Management Education & Training in Somalia: The Case of Somali Institute of Development Administration & Management (SIDAM). [Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, USA, 1984]

(11)Simmons, John, The Education Dilemma
(Brogamon Press, NY, USA, 1980)

(12)"Country Brief for Somalia." United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), July 2005, pp.5-12. [To be accessed in the internet, through Google, under that title].

(13)"Somalia’s Economic Recovery, Institutional Building and Resource Mobilization", 2nd Draft Report, February 2003. [UNDP Office for Somalia, Nairobi, Kenya]

(14)"Conflict in Somalia: Drivers and Dynamics." The World Bank, Washington, DC, USA, January 2005. [To be accessed in the internet, through their website]

(15)Omar, Mohamed O., The Road to Zero: Somalia’s Self-destruction (Haan Associates, London, 1992)

Mahamud M. Yahye, Ph.D.
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
e-mail: mm2yahya@yahoo.com