Beating the Odds Providing Education for Women and Girls in Africa by Wilma Jean Emanual Randle In sub-Saharan Africa, girls’ dreams of getting an education at the university level are just beginning to become a reality.

As a young Muslim girl growing up in northern Uganda, Barbara Wakooli knew the life planned for her. “I would be given away in marriage early,” she explains. “Maybe around 12, but certainly no later than 15. I would have many children. I would live in my village and be a good wife and mother.”

For herself though, she harbored other dreams: she wanted to go to school and maybe even become a history teacher. Until very recently, these would have been almost impossible ambitions for Wakooli and countless other girls like her growing up in sub-Saharan Africa. But today, because of recently initiated affirmative action programs aimed at increasing female student enrollment at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, as well as at other institutions across the region, Wakooli’s hopes for her future have even begun to surpass her childhood dreams. Now 24, she is completing her third and final undergraduate year of study at Makerere. “I’m looking forward to receiving my degree in philosophy and history,” she reports, “and I’d like to go on for my master’s degree.”

And she’s not the only one who’s ready to realize her dreams.

In neighboring Tanzania, a dozen young women sit in a large, half-moon-shaped lecture hall on the lush green campus of the University of Dar es Salaam. They, too, are talking about their dreams. In a few months, they will complete their undergraduate studies: some plan to teach; others want to go on for further study—maybe even a Ph.D. These pioneering students are members of the first class admitted to the University of Dar es Salaam’s Faculty of Science Pre-Entry Program which was initiated in 1997 to help increase the number of women majoring in the sciences. Admission is open to female students who are academically qualified overall, but who don’t have the scores needed for entry into the science division. Program participants are admitted conditionally and enrolled in a six-week remedial science course; if they pass an exam at the end of the course, they are granted regular admission to the university.

Given the odds against them, the fact that these young women—most of whom come from families of modest means—even made it as far as the university level is a major feat. For many of them, from the time they reached school age, the path to education was blocked by poverty, a lack of resources and by cultural attitudes holding that education is wasted on girls because their ultimate place in society is as a wife and mother. Traditional practices such as marriage at an early age and discrimination against unmarried pregnant teens (once a young girl gets pregnant she often is required to quit school) all serve to push girls out of the education system early. For many girls, even if they are allowed to go to school, attitudes about “a girl’s place” and her “duties” may require attention to housework and child care that leaves little time for studying.

Another, equally daunting barrier is that there simply are not enough school placements for students in general, which results in severe overcrowding and competition between boys and girls for the spaces that are available in classrooms and for teachers’ attention. And since schools often lack the resources necessary to provide quality education to their students, there is not much extra available—materials, facilities or curriculum—to specifically promote girls’ educational success. A lack of female teachers who might serve as role models also contributes to the problem.

Under these conditions, says Bertha Koda, chairperson of the University of Dar es Salaam’s Gender Dimension Programme Committee and a lecturer in the Institute of Development Studies, “Many African girls and young women never even get the option of trying to explore their potential.”

In an attempt to create new educational pathways for women, since 1993 the University of Dar es Salaam has been revamping its policies and programs to help boost female enrollment and to improve opportunities for women throughout the university system, all part of what it calls its “Transformation Programme.”

The Faculty of Science’s Pre-Entry Program is one of the initiatives launched in conjunction with this endeavor. Others include a university-wide affirmative action program aimed at female students and the creation of a faculty task force to examine a broad spectrum of gender-related issues at the university.

The underlying intent of the University of Dar es Salaam’s Transformation Programme—its first-ever attempt to create a comprehensive operating blueprint—is to frame a strategic vision for the university that it can follow well into the 21st century. In grappling with ways to upgrade the overall quality of the university, the Transformation Programme proposes plans to improve the status and participation of female students and teachers, with the goal of achieving equity in staffing and enrollment at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.

These changes are already having a noticeable impact. Female students at the university now comprise 27 percent of the total enrollment of 7,000, in comparison with about 15 percent before the Transformation Programme was put in place. In some departments, increases in the number of female students have been dramatic: in the 2000-2001 academic years, the enrollment of women in the Faculty of Arts increased from 13 to 51 percent; in Law, it’s up from 28 to 48 percent; and in the Faculty of Medicine, enrollment has risen from 8 to 25 percent. In many of the science-based faculties, however, the same types of gains for women have not been realized.

Next page: Given the odds against them, the fact that these young women –most of whom come from families of modest means–even made it as far as the university level is a major feat.

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