Anna, 70, a happy-go-lucky grandmother of seven and resident of Kirungu village in Kayunga district missed the chance to learn literacy skills in her younger years due to her late father’s ill-advised insistence that she works the fields, rather than go to school.

Anna who eventually got married over 40 years ago, never lost hope, however, that she would one day learn how to read and write.

She kept bidding time and in August late last year, her opportunity to learn the fundamentals of reading and writing eventually presented.

In a year, Anna and a group of 25 other elderly women from Kirungu village progressively learnt alphabet sounds and the basic literacy skills of reading, writing letters and sentences, learning words and speaking English, under the tutelage of four instructors trained by UNESCO’s Institute of Lifelong Learning and the Commonwealth of Learning. The training is still ongoing.

For good measure, the elderly women also learnt how to use gadgets like iPads.

“I am happy I can now read and write,” Anna fluently says in a video grab shared on the UNESCO Institute of Lifelong Learning, webpage.

Anna waiting for her turn to read

Inevitably, Anna and her contemporaries’ interest in learning did not go unnoticed in Kirungu. It drew forth interest and oftentimes, they would get accosted by community members, eager to find out why they were studying in their twilight years.

Their response invariably was: “Because we want to hold committee positions in the community and Church and fill in voting forms on our own.”

While Anna’s story and those of her study mates may not necessarily reflect general or specific patterns in the country’s current adult learning and education ecosystem, they are pointers, in many ways, to the progress that is being made to improve the country’s adult learning and education sector.

Policies that have engendered progress in Uganda’s adult learning and education sector

 The progress, by all accounts, has been engendered by policies such as the National Adult Literacy Policy, the Integrated Community Learning for wealth Creation (ICOLEW) programme, the Jobs and livelihoods integrated response plan, the Education Response Plan (ERP) for refugees and host Communities, the Technical Vocational Education Training (TVET) Policy, the Persons with Disabilities Act 2020, the Village Savings and Loans Association guidelines (VSLA), and the Uganda National Apprenticeship Framework (UNAF).

As Anna’s case shows, the progress has also been buoyed by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).

UNESCO in line with Sustainable Development Goal 4 has put forth that equipping older people like Anna with literacy skills helps them participate fully and contribute to the betterment of society. It also lessens the risk of social isolation and helps them make better-informed health decisions regarding nutrition and preventive care, hence better health outcomes.

Adult literacy rate improves

Needless to say, the progress Uganda has made has occasioned an improvement in the country’s adult literacy rate, which UNESCO put at 76.53% in 2018. It should be noted that there was a 6.33% increase from 2012.

In the recent years, 2022-2023 Finance Ministry- background to the Budget paper, it was specified that Uganda’s adult literacy rate had increased from 73.5% in 2016/17 to 76.1% in 2019/20.

“Uganda’s literacy rate has steadily increased over the past decades. There was however a drop between 2010 and 2012 from which the country, however, recovered. Women, however, continue to be disadvantaged as a result of the transition from the Functional Adult Literacy programme to the implementation of the Integrated Community Learning for wealth Creation programme in 2019,” Kirsten Boyd, a Public Relations Consultant at the UNESCO Institute of Lifelong Learning in Hamburg, Germany, says.

UNESCO’s statistics showed that the female literacy rate was 70.84% as opposed to 82.66% for males.

The 76.53 UNESCO and 76.1 finance ministry literacy rate percentages, highlighted earlier, mean that Uganda still has some significant leeway to make up to reach the UN set SDG adult literacy rate of 90%, which countries are supposed to achieve by 2030.

“Uganda, notwithstanding challenges, is steadily bridging the gap, with instruments such as the Integrated Community Learning for wealth Creation scheme or ICOLEW, launched in 2016. The programme which started as a means of integrating adult literacy and numeracy with livelihoods and life skills offers an expanded vision for adult education in Uganda and has thus far reached 2,400 people in the pilot districts of Namayingo, Iganga, Nwoya and Mpigi,” Harriet Akello, Principal Literacy Officer at the Gender, Labour and Social Development Ministry, says.

ICOLEW, which is in line with Uganda’s Vision 2040 is implemented by the Gender, Labour and Social Development Ministry, in partnership with DVV International or the Institute for International Cooperation of the German Adult Education Association. In 2020, the ministry announced that ICOLEW was going to be rolled out in a phased approach to the whole country, namely 136 districts, 9 cities and 14 municipal councils.

Dr Rahman Sanya, an assistant lecturer at Makerere University’s College of Education and External Studies however thinks ICOLEW will only work if the government works to close the policy gaps for adult learning and education in the country.

Katja Romer, a communications specialist at the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, contends that the headway Uganda has made in the past few years on adult learning and education policy stands it in good stead.

“Since 2018, Uganda has made significant progress on adult learning and education policy. The policies the country has put in place bode well for the future of the sector. However, while participation in adult learning and education has increased, it remains at a low level with 18.924 adult learners currently enrolled (the reference year 2018),” Romer says.

“That notwithstanding, Uganda has witnessed an improvement in adult learning and education quality, with in-service and pre-service training for educators, employment conditions and the assessment of learning outcomes positively progressing.”

Dr Sanya however takes exception, noting that while strides have been made, there is still a lot of work that has to go into facilitating the training processes of adult education trainers, whose numbers, he says vary, at present, due to the different entities providing adult education.

“There is a small number of well-trained professionals with the knowledge, skills and, good attitudes and values of dealing with the non-literate adults for purposes of becoming literate,” Sanya says.

“Even then, the training of Professional adult educators at Makerere University has not been smooth since the training comes at a high cost which may not attract many interested trainees.”

A Masters of Adult and Community Education at Makerere University goes for sh5m per semester.

70-year-old Anna

Adult instructors at present

According to Akello, Uganda currently has 160 facilitators under the ICOLEW programme, which as aforementioned is still in its pilot phase.

Likely beneficiaries of adult learning initiatives

Rural populations, older citizens like Anna, people with disabilities, prisoners, women operating micro and small enterprises, and school dropouts, among others.

Adult instructors as well, are likely to benefit as a growing number of disadvantaged Ugandans are getting inclined toward breaking the cycle of illiteracy.
Adult instructors unlike other instructors spend less time on discipline and class management.

Finance

Romer says more inroads in Uganda’s adult learning and education sector have been registered in financing.

“The adult learning and education sector in Uganda benefits from a 10.5% budgetary allocation, which is way above the Belem Framework for Action commitments.”

Under the Belem Framework for Action of 2009, to which Uganda is a signatory, countries agreed to improve adult learning and education across five areas of action: policy; governance; financing; participation, inclusion and equity; and quality.

They committed themselves to invest at least 6% of their Gross National Product
in education with an increasing share allocated to adult learning and education.

Akello, however, says in terms of government funding, the government has only performed to about 20%.

“Implementation of the much-desired ICOLEW programme has received up to 80% external funding. The government has promised to fund but it is yet to be realized.”

Sub Saharan Africa strides

The adult learning and education sector has not only been making strides in Uganda.

UNESCO’s Fifth Global Report on Adult Learning and Education indicates that in the last five years, participation in adult learning and education in Sub-Saharan Africa has increased.

The report indicates that 59% of countries in the region reported that at least one in five adults had benefited from adult learning and education initiatives.

Adult education experts contend that the high participation rate in the Sub-Saharan Africa region may be explained in part by the strong demand for adult literacy and second-chance education.

In Uganda, the demand for adult literacy and second-chance education (former teenage mothers) has been rising through the years as evidenced by the rising adult literacy rate. Its presently at 76.1%, up from 73.5% in the years 2016/17.

The country’s new policy on the re-entry of teenage mothers into school is also making it possible for many erstwhile teenage mothers to get a second chance at education.

"The liberalization of tertiary education has seen a rise in adult learner enrollment in both government and private institutions. This Liberalization has led to increased demand for skills attainment due to the competitiveness in the job market. Most underprivileged groups also realize it’s important to have literacy skills to demand services or decentralized funds for government programmes,” Reuben Wanasolo, an education consultant and researcher, says.

The UNESCO report also indicated that female participation in adult learning had increased across 56% of countries, since 2018.

In Uganda however, over 6. 3 million people, the majority of who are women, are still illiterate, going by statistics from the Population and Housing Census report, released in 2016 by UBOS (Uganda Bureau of Statistics).

“High rates of illiteracy would by all accounts mean a big majority of Ugandans would not be able to fully participate in the development process; a scenario that would negatively impact the country’s quest to achieve middle-income status by the year 2040,” Wanasolo, says.

“With anecdotes like Anna’s however there is hope.”

Solutions

Dr Sanya recommends that the government and its partners should work to close the policy gaps for the sector by widening its scope so that it does not only focus on adult literacy.

 “Adult and community education covers a wider sphere of aspects such as environment education, guidance and counselling, gender, project planning and management, research, community development, health education and others.”

“ICOLEW will have an impact if the innovative Adult Learning and Education System Strengthening Approach (ALESBA) is well adopted to ensure a sustainable engagement of the participants to collect the work for wealth creation.”

Akello says Uganda needs to review and update its national adult education strategy and mobilize more resources from development partners if its adult learning and education ecosystem is to advance beyond its current state.

“There is an urgent need for the government to mobilize more resources from its development partners and to review and update the national adult education strategy.”

“Uganda requires further investment to make sure all of its adults have viable learning opportunities,” Boyd says.

“Prioritizing the establishment of community learning centres is a useful step since those centres if realized carefully by government entities, NGOs, and the private sector can be a very good instrument for quality adult learning and education provision.”

What others say

Musa Mbazira- Director Nakivubo Adult Education Centre

Uganda is not doing enough to improve the adult learning and education sector.  At the Education Ministry, there is no defined department regulating adult education and also adult education is wrongly incorporated into the secondary education sector.

Jared Oduor Okok-Executive Director of Umoja Education Centre

The government should recognise adult education institutions and support them by giving them special operation licenses and grants. Girls who got pregnant during COVID for instance could be more comfortable in an adult school than the regular schools

Patrick Kule- administrator, Kampala Adult school

The adult learning and education sector, which is largely dominated by private sector players, is lagging behind. At present, there is no proper monitoring and evaluation of different adult centres that have come up.

Adult education

UNESCO describes adult education as an entire body of organized educational processes, whatever the content, level and method, whether formal or otherwise, whether they prolong or replace the initial schools, colleges, and universities, as well as an apprenticeship, whereby persons regarded as adults by the societies to which they belong develop their abilities, enrich their knowledge, improve their technical or professional qualifications or turn them in a new direction and bring about improved changes in their attitudes or behaviour in the twofold perspective of full personal development and participation in balanced and independent social, economic and cultural development.