School Connect Africa has lamented over the declining budgetary allocation to the nation’s educational space.
According to the Lead consultant, School Connect Africa, Dr. Adefunke Ekine, in the last decade, the level of funding to the educational sector has reduced drastically to about six per cent when compared to the 13 per cent recorded under the Olusegun Obasanjo regime.
She said the current budget for the sector is a shortfall of the 26 per cent recommended by the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
Ekine stated this at a press conference to inaugurate its digital interactive platform called the school to connect Africa.
In her words: “Although the Federal Government during the celebration of Teachers’ day promised to give a stipend to anyone reading education, so I think we are going through the right direction if they really walk their talk, we expect that something will change, but presently, they are performing woefully.”
She said the School Connect Africa project is an initiative designed to connect the huge and ever-growing educational sector players across Africa with the global business world via an e-commerce solution.
“This solution allows schools first in Nigeria and then in other African countries to access products and services with just one click, thereby creating a platform for commerce, training, and resource acquisition.
“With this project, we are changing the narrative and building the first digital edu-economy in Africa. An educational economy that has a current market capitalization of over $1 billion, over 100,000 private schools in Nigeria, and more than a million across Africa,” she added.
The Lead Consultant stated that as a truly African brand, the company believes the project would serve as a niche market where corporate entities will have the opportunity to smartly spend their marketing budget on a clear specific channel that delivers access to a huge, active, and vibrant market.
Also speaking, the Consultant, Strategy and Collaboration, School Connect Africa, Ladipo Oke, said technology is a leveler and a common denominator, saying that the education sector has not maximised the use of technology as a platform to deliver mass quality service across the nation’s schools.
“We are bringing the school to connect Africa as a platform where every stakeholder in education can actually relate, engage and share best practices. We are using this platform to share the best of experiences, training, giving access to an average school owner the opportunity they would have not gotten standing alone ” he said.
He stressed that the education sector in Nigeria, as well all over Africa, is expected to also benefit immensely with access to funding, training for teaching and non-teaching staff, curriculum development according to global best practices, and global visibility via the project’s website.