UN to Pay Ugandan Parents for Keeping Children in School

{{Ugandan parents could soon earn quick bucks for keeping their children in school if a project being mooted by the United Nations and government is implemented.}}

Details of the project are still scanty but a statement released following discussions between country’s Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi and the UN special envoy on global education, Mr Gordon Brown, says the programme, currently being discussed with the Nigerian government, will be “replicated in Uganda.”

They held discussions in Johannesburg, South Africa. The United Nations Development Programme, the agency charged with achieving universal education in developing countries like Uganda by 2015, referred inquiries about the project to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).

Unicef had not responded to email inquiries by press time.

However, according to the statement, parents will receive cash incentives to keep children in school if the project bears fruit.

The project also provides teachers with on-line training and mobile phones to access educational materials digitally, instead of using printed textbooks.

The promise followed an appeal Mr Mbabazi made to the former British prime minister about the “high drop-out rates” that continues to hamper primary education in Uganda.

“We have about 9 million children enrolled in school but there are high drop-out rates and another 10 per cent of school-age going children are not attending school,” Mr Mbabazi is quoted telling the UN special envoy.

Mr Brown responded that the UN “is ready to support Uganda get and keep as many children as possible into school.” “The United States is willing to fund up to one million children, some of whom can be Ugandans,” he said.

According to a World Bank report published last year, out of 100 children of school-going age in Uganda, only 91 are enrolled.