Title:
South Sudan Works to Rebuild Higher Education
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
On July ninth, South Sudan becomes the world's one
hundred ninety-third nation. In January, almost
ninety-nine percent of voters chose independence
from the north. South Sudan will also be one of the
world's least developed nations. This follows years
of war and neglect by the Sudanese government in
Khartoum. South Sudan is about the size of France.
Yet it has only fifty kilometers of good roads and
almost no public electrical power or other basic
systems. Illiteracy rates are high. There are
estimates that more than eighty percent of the
population cannot read or write.There are five
universities. Three of them moved their operations
to the north during the war. The southern government
has brought most of the students back. Officials
estimate that about twenty-five thousand students
have registered at the five universities. Classes
were supposed to start in April. But the Ministry
for Higher Education in the south has now moved the
opening date to the middle of May.The government
pays for food and provides housing for students. But
higher education minister Joseph Ukel says finding
enough space was one reason for the delay.Another
issue is money. The government in Khartoum will pay
for the schools until July. Mr. Ukel says the
southern government's proposed budget for this year
does not include any money for the universities.Then
there is the problem of teachers. Almost
seventy-five percent of the lecturers are from the
north. They are not likely to travel to the south to
continue teaching for their schools.Mr. Ukel says
his ministry has asked southern Sudanese teachers
outside the country to return. William Deng heads a
commission supervising the return of ninety thousand
former fighters to civilian life. He says most of
the soldiers who have come out of the southern army
need education and training. He said: "The skill
they only know is soldiering. Now, you must train
them with life skills, such as carpentry, making
bricks and also small agriculture, or
micro-financing."Only four percent of good land in
South Sudan is being farmed. Millions of people need
food aid to survive. The head of Juba University,
Aggrey Abate, says his school can play a big part in
training agricultural specialists.For VOA Special
English I'm Alex Villarreal. You can find
transcripts and MP3s of our reports and other
programs at voaspecialenglish.com.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
