'When we invest in girls' education, we invest in a nation': S Sudan education minister

One of the world's longest civil wars on record lasted for 22 years in Sudan, ending in 2005. After a Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed, South Sudan was granted autonomy. And following a referendum, the country gained independence in 2011. 

Relatively a new country, resources remain limited after 12 years of independence. And now a fresh bout of violence in neighbouring Sudan poses a new set of challenges.  

In 2006, Brac commenced operations in South Sudan and has since become one of the leading NGOs in the country, operating in the areas of youth empowerment, agriculture and food security, education, health, microfinance, and ultra-poor graduation. Recently, Awut Deng Acuil, the Minister of General Education and Instruction of the Republic of South Sudan, and her delegation arrived in Dhaka, Bangladesh for a short trip to observe the various activities of Brac's education programme 

On 17 May, the last day of a five-day trip, she spoke to The Business Standard about the country's scope and challenges in education and the purpose of her visit to Bangladesh.

In speaking to Minister Awut Deng Acuil, her grit – and perhaps in effect her ministry's grit – was palpable. Before she was appointed as the education minister in 2020, Minister Acuil had held a long record of public service since 2005: serving as Presidential Advisor on Gender and Human Rights, Minister of Labour, Public Service and Human Resource Development, Minister of Humanitarian and Disaster Management and Minister of Gender, Child and Social Welfare. 

The following is a trimmed and edited excerpt of the interview for clarity.   

After 12 years of independence and building up a country from scratch, can you share challenges from your experience as South Sudan's education minister? 

Well, there are many challenges. We are inspired by our background. 

For us [in the education ministry] it was to be able to handle the mini-challenges. One was the payment of the teachers. It was just so low, to the extent that teachers left their professions. Then access to education and access to "hard to reach" areas. The other challenge is material, [or the lack thereof]. When I came in [2020], it was 19 children per book. 

So, there were many challenges. But I learned a lot from my mom about education. She went to a place where there were no schools and opened a community school. And I was the first to go. And she went from one house to another house to get the children to go to school. She was so fascinated by education. And she made sure that children go to school, whatever the circumstances. And during our liberation struggle, people lost many things and children were hesitant to go to school – which was under the trees – without clothes, my mom said, "Your brains are not naked. It is only your body, which is naked. So it's not a big deal." 

That gave me the strength to put my team together. 

We managed to increase the budget from six to 12.5% [for education]. We managed to get resources from outside the government. We also convinced the leadership and the country to increase the salary by 140% for the teachers. 

And our president is talking about providing education to everybody; he recently declared education free and made it compulsory. 

That is why community participation becomes key. No one can handle challenges alone, even within our own ministry, and work as a team. Now our plan is to prioritise the hard-to-reach areas, and capacity building for teachers. 

In an earlier interview in 2021, you categorised the challenges in regard to education into household and community-level barriers, school-based barriers, and policy system-level barriers. What kind of action plans are in place in South Sudan to convince families to send their girls to school? This falls under the community and household-level barriers.

In South Sudan, cultural practices are a barrier. There's always a selection between a boy and a girl. If a family is to choose who to send to school, the son gets chosen. Recently, there was a conference with practitioners and community leaders mainly to discuss girls' education. And our title was "Let us invest in girls' education". When we invest in girls' education, we invest in a nation. 

So the actions we are taking right now are actually to speak with and foster dialogue within communities; empower them to take leadership, become a role model in their community and send their children to school.

In South Sudan, women have been projected as 54% of the population. This is a force that can contribute to development, meaningfully. So there's no room for them to be left behind. We are taking education to the communities. To hold dialogues with them to say education is not a bad thing for a girl. 

And the response is tremendous. One thing they asked is for female teachers. And to create girls' schools. We are ready to cooperate and bring children to school. It is also important to reach and empower the hard-to-reach areas. Once empowered, they will change the situation they are in. 

Recently we took a decision to make a law to ban early child marriage — meaning marriage for girls below 18. 

We also have "education week" with our president. And all the governors in 10 states and three administrative areas speak about education. We used to have high-quality education, but lost it during our struggle for liberation. 

In this campaign, two months ago, our president was the one moving from one state to another state, saying, "Please, don't marry them off. They have to finish university." 

We are also reviewing our curriculums. For the first time, we are implementing our national curriculum. And we want to bring on board the female workforce.

We are also involving the media. The other approach is partnering with Brac to work on community girls' schools, specifically for girls who dropped out and those who did not have the chance to go to school. 

The 2.8 million out-of-school children you mentioned earlier in this interview; did the pandemic add to the figure, and if yes, to what extent?

It is interesting. That's why I was saying, you know, to learn from each other's experience. We [in South Sudan] kept schools open. And amazingly, nobody got sick — not our teachers, not our students. And we didn't want to lose the progress we had made in education up until then. 

So there was a mechanism to protect girls to continue with their learning, otherwise we would have lost them. But we kept the schools open. We were the only country in the region that kept schools open. And we are the only country that conducted physical examinations during Covid-19.

The outbreak of violence in Sudan started in April this year. Can you tell us how the Education Ministry plans to address its reeling effects on South Sudan?

My concern will be what will happen to the education of children in Sudan. What will happen, how can we help children who have crossed the border to come to South Sudan, as refugees? What do we do so that they are not completely disconnected from education? Because we also have our people. So we have planned to make sure that we respond to this. And that's why it is important to have resources to respond to education in crisis, children in crisis. 

It cannot be done by a country alone because it's a huge responsibility. So partnerships with organisations like Brac, international NGOs, and other international bodies like the UN are needed to respond to this crisis. 

Sudan is a very important country for us. We have the longest border with them, whatever happens [there], it affects us directly. Our president has now been asked to mediate and he's doing that, and we have opened our borders to everybody; we don't even ask for papers. 

We were refugees ourselves. So many South Sudanese have been refugees in different countries [during the civil war] so we feel that it is our duty to help.

[For some years, Minister Acuil lived as a refugee with her children in Kenya.] 

Can you tell us about your takeaways from this tour?

First of all, let me express my gratitude to Brac's leadership. I was invited by the executive director. Brac has worked very closely in South Sudan. I received this invitation last year but for a scheduling clash, I could not come sooner. 

So, the purpose of my visit is really to learn about the experiences from Bangladesh. We share a common history. We came out from struggle and you came out from struggle. And how you also managed to recover. So that you can progress in development. 

Because it's one thing to be in the liberation struggle and another thing to move to the next phase of development, which is very challenging in many countries, like us in South Sudan who are starting from scratch. 

So the purpose of the visit was to see what Bangladesh has managed in terms of education. That's what brought me here. We cannot reinvent the wheel, but we can learn from each other. And see how best we can help our people to be empowered.

And here I have seen something unique: Play Labs [play-based early learning to young children ages three through five] is something that we also have to have a look at in terms of the curriculum. This will also, you know, promote a foundation for children before they get formal education. Learning through play can play a major role in education.