THE BARBAROUS CYCLE OF POVERTY AND BACKWARDNESS AS DETERMINED BY EDUCATION.

 THE BARBAROUS CYCLE OF POVERTY AND BACKWARDNESS AS DETERMINED BY EDUCATION

Let the offspring of the peasantry be peasants till their 100th descendant.

The general determinant of wealth in society is to the effect that those who attain a proper education are mostly the candidates for wealth creation and prosperity, while those who attain poor or no education are the greatest candidates for poverty, holding other factors constant.

The Cycle of poverty in developing countries, and specifically in Uganda stands as;

Owing to the fact that education is commercialized, the poor can not afford their children a decent education. Eventually, these children either do not go to school or go to very poor schools and most do not complete school as to acquire substantial skills. These illiterates and school dropouts later settle to a life of peasantry and in turn become poor parents, who produce poor children and educate them in poor schools, and then the cycle continues.

On the other hand, the virtuous cycle of prosperity has it that the rich produce children, send them to acquire a decent education, join tertiary institutions, obtain skills in their trade, join the labor market with high-paying incomes, become rich, produce children and send them to acquire a decent education, and the cycle continues.

In due consideration of the above cycles, it is quite imminent that the poor will remain poor and so will their descendants, while the rich shall continue to be wealthy and so shall their future generations. It creates a situation related to the one that was documented in the Constitution of South Carolina; Let the children of leet-men be leet-men and so to all generations. The difference is that whereas in the South Carolina case the constitution framers deliberately intended so and wrote it down, in our case it is dictated by the poor institutions and unconcerned policymakers who decide the structure of the nation's education system.

If the cycle continues, the income gap continues to widen, and this brings an undesirable duo economy; where one class is inherently wealthy, rich, and classic, while the other class is languishing in poverty, lack & want, backwardness, ill health, and starvation. We acknowledge that we already have such classes though the gap is still manageable. However, further inaction may worsen the class division. At the height of such generational income and social inequities, comes absolute despair among the poor disadvantaged class, and civil strife may arrive uninvited. In short, the poor will 'eat the rich'. 

Besides, having a society predominantly illiterate is no good move to the development path. It is a good stimulant to economic stagnation and sluggishness, and so efforts must be focused on education.

In Uganda, there is income inequality at both individual and regional levels. As a matter of fact, some regions are badly off in terms of poverty, and worse than other regions. The Karamoja sub-region taking the lead in poverty, famine, ignorance and disease. This lead is partly orchestrated by the geographical setting of the region that does not favor agriculture which is the back bone of every region, but mainly due to the failure of the government to provide the much needed institutional reforms to facilitate development in this region. Of course we have not ignored the fact that the cultural strings and practices are also responsible for the overwhelming backwardness in the sub-region. 

In light of addition to the above, the region has the worst education structure. This is because the government provides inadequate resources for education, and yet the parents in the region are generally too poor to afford facilitating improvements in academic institutions. The academic institutions are too weak and can not raise their fees structure lest the learners will quit school. As a result, these institutions lack the essentials of providing an average education required for a takeoff. If this problem is not sorted in this particular region, it is evident even in the next 20 years, Karamoja will still be faced with famine, ignorance, disease, and general backwardness.

And yet Karamoja has just been singled out, the rest of Uganda suffers the same problem though other places suffer a slightly 'friendly problem'. Areas that have a better economic backbone are able to facilitate this education, especially in the Western part of the country, while those with a poor economic back lack adequate education facilities.

Bearing it in mind that education is the ultimate guarantor of prosperity and wealth accumulation, and considering the fact that Education in Uganda is commercialized and the poor & marginalized have limited or no access to quality education to acquire skills, there is need to address the problem of acquisition of knowledge and skills.

This calls for a direct state intervention to break the barbarous cycle of poverty and backwardness, by ensuring equal opportunities in acquisition of knowledge and skills.

 

Prosper Ahabwe.