Wartime Education in Somalia

Where Is Somalia?

Somalia is a country located in the Horn of Africa, which is an eastern part of Africa that juts into the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden.  Somalia is bordered from north to south by Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya and it has the longest coastline of all African countries. 

Pre-War Times and Colonization of Somalia

Somalia’s earliest schooling consisted mostly of religious men teaching children how to read, write, and memorize the Koran (the Muslim Holy Book).  In the early 1900s, Italy began colonizing Somalia and shaping their education system.  While not much was done to educate Somalis during the initial stages of colonization, between 1950 and 1960, the Italian colonial government was required by the UN Trusteeship to begin to help Somalia be ready to be independent.  Part of preparing the country for independence meant educating the people.  When Somalia became an independent nation on July 1, 1960, the nation’s education system was beginning to develop, the economy was on the rise, and the future looked promising.

In the early 1960s, Somalis valued education and sought to educate as many citizens as possible in order to foster development of a population that could contribute to the process of building up the country.  In 1962, the future of Somali education looked bright as 18,000 Somalis were enrolled in school and the Italians had set up a university that offered law and economics courses.  During this time period, the biggest setback to the growth of primary education was the lack of script for Somali language.  At the time, all teaching was done in Italian or English, which were the colonial languages. 

The Growth of Education and Political Stability

In 1972, script for writing of the Somali language was developed.  The institution of Somali script led to a great increase in literacy rates among the Somali people.  Before the script was published, literacy rates were estimated to be around 5%.  However, there was a dramatic increase in literacy after the written language was adopted and by the mid 1970s, an estimated 55% of the population was literate.  In 1974, a campaign was started to educate more people and 100,000 students were sent to rural Somalia to learn with the nation’s immense nomadic population for a minimum of six months.  During this time, there was also a substantial increase in the number of children attending primary school.  The creation of Somali script was incredibly beneficial for the country and the growth of its education system. 

Another big development in Somali education occurred in 1970 when Somali National University was opened.  It enrolled about 5,000 students and offered programs of study in law, economics, agriculture, education, veterinary medicine, medicine, industrial chemistry, geology, languages, journalism, and engineering.  Unfortunately, by the end of the decade political and economic difficulties began to arise.  Somali military began manipulating clans, which was the beginning of a downward spiral and the start of government collapse and national divide.

The Decline of Education in the 1980s

As quickly as the literacy rate increased in the early 1970s, it dropped in the late 1980s, and by 1990 the Somali literacy rate had dropped from 55% to 24% in just 15 years.  The economy had been weakened by a war with the bordering country Ethiopia in the late 1970s and the military had not put any reconstruction programs in to place following the war. 

The combination of economic collapse and corrupt military leaders led to many highly educated individuals fleeing the country.  It is estimated that 100,000 professionals left the continent in order to find better and safer employment opportunities.  This left Somalia in a very difficult position, the country now had very little educators and scarce resources to teach children.

Unfortunately, the colonization of Somalia led to many conflicts with bordering nations over the years and caused the nation to be heavily controlled by military forces.  As a result of having such a great focus on having a large and powerful military, the countries budget was mainly used to support the military and little to nothing was left to fund programs such as education and health care.  All of this led to the fall of Somalia in 1991. 

War in Somalia

In the midst of chaos and collapse of government in the early 1990s, a civil war broke out and different Somali clans began attacking each other. This fighting resulted in the destruction of 90% of Somali schools.  Education was put on the back burner as there were far more important matters to worry about.  In 1992, it is estimated that 3000 Somali children were dying each day from the civil war-triggered famine.  The United Nations started Operation Restore Hope to put an end to such high rates of child mortality.  Their efforts helped greatly but nothing was done to help fund the reconstruction of schools and search for educators.   

Post-War Struggles (Late 1990s)

Unfortunately, children of Somalia had been exposed to so much military violence that many of them turned to violence themselves.  Many chose to attack other clans and others had to be physically aggressive in order to defend themselves.  Sadly, many young adults to did not see a need to restore the government because if it was restored, there would no longer be a need for them to be gangsters, robbers, or bandits.

The country lacked resources to rebuild its schools and needed trained teachers, textbooks, and other school supplies.  Most of the buildings that used to be schools were completely desolated during the war.  Following the war, the Somali National University’s College of Education building was described  as “a displaced persons’ camp. The classrooms and dormitories were full of families; the walls were blackened by cooking fire. The library was a world of dust. Books were piled everywhere, on sagging shelves, on toppling heaps. Some were stained and disintegrating, but most were intact. Every title I saw seemed, under the circumstances, absurdly ironic: ‘The Psychology of Adolescence,’ ‘Adolescents Grow in Groups,’ ‘Primitive Government,’ ‘The Red Badge of Courage.’ Sunlight drifted through high windows on the west wall. A cow mooed somewhere. The dust was so deep that it was as though the desert itself was creeping through the walls, burying the books in fine sand.”

Reformation Today

Today, still only 30% of children are in school.  Religious leaders, business people, and youth group leaders are a few examples of people who have worked together to launch Community Education Committees to help finance schools and track children to make sure they are attending school regularly.  UNICEF is working with these people to train them in school management and administration.  UNICEF has also worked to establish a curriculum for primary schools and has provided some funding to purchase textbooks for students.  

A big concern for Somali people is the limited amount of women who are being educated.  The war caused many adult women to have to take over the jobs of their husbands who were forced to enter the military.  This resulted in young girls being needed in the home to take care of the household.  The society has placed very little value on educating women and Somalia currently has the lowest primary school enrollment rate for girls in the world at just 7%.  Another contributor to the low numbers of girls in school is safety concerns.  It is not uncommon for Somali children to have to walk 5 or more miles to get to school and many parents fear for their daughters' safety.  For this reason, girls are often pulled out of school by their parents as early as 4th of 5th grade to be married.  Girls are often forced to marry young because they are worth more if they are virgins and once they are married off, the parents are no longer financially responsible for them.  The lack of schools in close proximity to many villages and the lack of transportation also leads to many families needing their children to stay at home and work on farms as spending so much time walking to and from school each day would greatly hurt family income.  

In recent years, a local terrorist group, Al-Shabaab has been recruiting dozens of male children each day to be child soldiers.  This Islamic group has trained thousands of children for combat.  While many countries including the United States have tried to step in and help by killing off Islamic terrorist leaders, this has done little to change the situation in Somalia.  A more long-term way to help would be to focus on providing funding to adequately educate the children who are the future of Somalia.  Students in this country not only need to learn how to read, write, and do arithmetic, they also need to be taught how to respect the beliefs of others who differ from themselves.