Over the past years, the Lango sub-region has been in its state of recovery from the 20-year Lord Resistance Army (LRA) Political Instability that transpired in the displacement of the Langi and Acholi people.
Among the healings was transitioning from ignorance to literacy. However, despite various interventions, the communities still grapple with keeping children in school due to conflict-related effects inclusive of poverty.
“Parents could not take their children to school during that instability and even if peace was restored more than ten years ago, the literacy levels are still low due to poverty and parents’ inability to afford school fees and other requirements,” said Prof. James Acai, the chairperson Lango Development forum.
Reports justify that the region further suffered from extreme poverty following the 1997-2000 cattle rustling that left many parents poor with no capacity to take their children to school.
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic made the grapple more severe. The region was hit hard by teenage pregnancies which also saw it ranked third nationwide in 2020 with 31,192 teenage pregnancies after the Central region which recorded a total of 67,592 teenage pregnancies.
To this end, Lango Development Forum was moved to intervene by launching a bursary scheme to support the unprivileged children in Lango. The forum now seeks to Raise UGX 1.5 Billion to aid take Children through education.
Speaking at a fundraising event on at Silver Springs Hotel on Saturday, Achai said that the forum hopes to collect at least shs. 300 million every year to support 50 learners from secondary to university level.
At the event, participants managed to collect Shs130 million in pledges inclusive of the 10 million given to them by the Speaker of Parliament Anita Among who was represented by a member of parliament of Bukooli County Central Solomon Silwany.
According to projections, the Fund will require a total of Shs1.5 billion in five years, translating to an annual figure of shillings 300 million.
The national literacy average stands at 60 percent. However, for the Lango sub-region, it is at 48 percent. Also only 10 percent of learners aged between 13 to 20 years in Lango who should be in secondary school complete their education, which is far below the national average of 27 percent.
Meanwhile, Makerere University Department of Education’s
Professor Betty Ezati said that there are also some sub-counties in the region that don’t have a secondary school yet.
She justifies this has since resulted in poor performance among Lango children despite tremendous efforts to see them through education.
” This sets a backtrack due to the long distances to get to school thus dropouts yet the private ones don’t fit into the pockets of parents,” she said.
