Matching hardware with software – building systems and services in Southern Sudan
by Andrew Heavens, UNICEF Writer JUBA, June 2008. It all seemed so easy when George Mogga was camping out in Southern Sudan's bush, fighting in the civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). As he saw it back then, the SPLA would win the war, form a government, raise revenues, then start funding their own education system. But things were not so simple. The SPLA did end up signing a historic peace agreement with the north in 2005, winning its own semi-autonomous government and share of the country's oil revenues. Setting up an education system, however, proved a tougher job than anyone had expected. “When we were still in the liberated areas of the SPLA, we thought it would be very easy putting a system and making things run. We were optimistic,” said Mr Mogga, sitting in his refurbished office in the Ministry of Education in the city of Juba. “But then we started facing the reality.” The reality was that two decades of civil war had left Southern Sudan's education system in tatters. Many youngsters had spent the past years fighting as child soldiers or fleeing the country rather than attending classes.Many youngsters had spent the past years fighting as child soldiers or fleeing the country rather than attending classes. School buildings in many areas had been destroyed, occupied or neglected. Education records were incomplete, destroyed or simply non-existent. And the region's small band of qualified teachers had scattered, some of them refugees in neighbouring states. The new generation of education officials had to start from scratch. The first job for Mr Mogga, the new Director of Planning for the new Ministry of Education, was to gather data – data on who was out there across south Sudan's vast expanses who was qualified to teach, and who was out there who needed teaching. “You can't plan without information," he said. "You can't plan without knowing what is on the ground. This country could go back to war if a section of people are saying they are marginalized. “You need to know there is a section of people there who are marginalized. If you don't know, how can you plan for them?” So the education team started setting up an education information management system, a series of databases and policies and other documents all designed to turn their ideas into action. Many donors who had been supporting the south during the civil war refocused their attention once the 2005 peace agreement had been signed, thinking that the worst of the region's problems were over.
UNICEF was one of a number of development agencies who decided to further strengthen its operations in Southern Sudan, hoping to make some real advances on the ground now that the conflict was history. Development agencies are known for their work funding physical projects in the field – such as drilling boreholes, vaccinating children and equipping schools. UNICEF's very public “Go to School” advocacy campaign this year ended up encouraging 1.3 million children into the classroom UNICEF's very public “Go to School” advocacy campaign this year ended up encouraging 1.3 million children into the classroom – in comparison with an estimated enrollment of just 340,000 in 2005. Books, pencils and school bags have been handed out. Hundreds of classrooms have been built, refurbished or set up in tents. But equally important is the work that goes on in the background, building up local government staff and offices - the people and institutions who bear the day-to-day responsibility for running those vital services. In 2007, UNICEF's education team in Southern Sudan set itself the task of "increasing the institutional capacity of the Government of Southern Sudan at central, state, county and other levels to plan, manage and deliver basic education services, effectively and efficiently facilitating enrolment/retention, participation and quality learning." In that year alone, the target took it to all of the region's ten states, from Upper Nile and Unity to Northern Barr El Ghazal and Warrap. The first job in each state was helping officials to set up structures and institutions to enroll more students in classes – one of the key targets in the Millennium Development Goals. UNICEF has also brought in technical experts to help the south build up regional and state-specific databases of schools, students and teachers on the ground – the information management systems so badly needed. UNICEF also helped the Government of Southern Sudan run a teacher headcount, tracking down the exact location of teachers, their gender and their level of training. Tracking down teachers was key, said Mr Mogga, because without them all the work put into the south's gleaming news classrooms and curriculum documents would have been wasted. "The biggest number of teachers were all soldiers during the war,” he said. “And they were demobilized to come and teach. That was the whole point.”
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