"The more you pay, the better the education you get in West Africa."

Let's start at the end of my story with "my general conclusion": "The more you pay, the better the education you get in West Africa."

From the age of 4 to 14, as a Togolese national, I had the opportunity to live in France. When I came back to Togo in 1991, the difference was not quite perceptible as I was attending a private school. The only difference could be found in the number of foreign languages available. In France I was already learning three different languages: German and English plus the so called "dead language" Latin. Whereas in Togo they only proposed one foreign language at this level and most of the time that language was English. The same situation could be found in Benin, the neighboring country of Togo.

Ivory Coast, where the courses are generally granted in a much more "relaxed" atmosphere, is the pleasant exception.

In comparison, public schools there were the more performing ones as education was one of the top priorities of their late president Félix Houphoet Boigny (1905 - 1993). Public schools were the more equipped in terms of facilities (laboratories, gymnasium, tennis court, etc...) with the most skilled and well paid teachers.
As a vivid example, in 1995 my high-school, a semi-private, semi-public school was forced, due to our repeated and constant poor performances in physics and chemistry, to invest in hiring a teacher from the public school system. He turned a classroom full of spoilt, sleeping teenage students into a vibrant classroom of individuals to whom prior nuclear physics was merely a matter of ways to forcedly loose or acquire electrons! It was an everlasting experience.

To conclude, good can be achieved in any "latitude". Education, as many other fields, is merely a matter of political involvement towards achieving what is good for the population governed. Let's be proud of our educational systems as it is the key to any other improvement. And let's copy what has been achieved in Ivory Cost and provide access to an effective education to all children, regardless of their parents’ "wealth".

Sent by: Franciska, Africa
Edited by: Kerstin Boljahn