Manifestoes nip ECD in the bud

People, not natural resources, are nation’s prime asset. It is people, in 1765, who tilled the land, grew cotton, created machines and build factories—a process that led into the Industrial Revolution in Britain.

If you want to develop, then, you need to turn people into assets that can create wealth out of natural resources.

But the journey of turning people into national assets does not, like in Malawi, begin at the age of six. Research shows that 80 percent of brain development takes place between conception and three years.

“By the time we reach the age of eight, brain development is almost complete,” says Dr Symon Chiziwa, a child psychologist at Chancellor College.

To mean, what happens to a child between 0 and 8 years is critical in defining the kind of people to lead Malawi’s future. Unfortuenately, in Malawi, of the 2 700 000 million children under the age of five, 65 percent of them do not receive formal early childhood education (ECD). They receive informal training through informal pre-school outlets like Sunday schools, Madrassas, Nutrition Rehabilitation Units and Paediatric Wards, among others. Other, escpecially in rural areas, recieve it through Community Based Child Care Centres (CBCC)

“The challenge with these informal outlets,” says Chiziwa “is that they are not holistic in approach. They only cultivate few aspects in the child.”

Unfortunately, even the 35 percent that receive formal ECD training, few receive quality one as advanced in the National Policy on Early Childhood Development.

In the past years, through the Association of Early Child Development in Malawi (AECDM), there has been increased advocacy on the need for Malawi to consider ECD as a national priority.

The ECD policy, of course, was adopted in 2003.

In fact, the policy ‘promotes a comprehensive approach to ECD programs and practices for children aged 0-8 years to ensure fulfillment of the rights to fully develop their physical, emotional, social, and cognitive potential’.

However, there is a great divide between policy and practice.

ECD services, especially those provided by CBCCs, are facing serious coordination and funding challenges at the national level—something responsible for Malawi’s failure to increase access of quality ECD services to every child.

Being challenges born out of disconnect between policy and action; there was hope that, with May 20 elections on the corner, political parties—in selling their suitability for office and also considering the importance of ECD in national development—would come out strong on ECD.

Unfortunately, an analysis by AECDM of how major political parties have carried ECD in their manifestos shows that ‘ECD is offered mere lip service’.

“The scanty promises and weak commitments, and even absence of any ECD commitments in some manifestos entails that the parties have little recognition to the significance of ECD,” says Charles Gwengwe, AECDM executive director.

He adds: “General statements and sweeping promises only confirm the low levels of political will to ECD, a situation which threatens to continue relegating ECD to the periphery of policy priorities.”

The analysis also shows that although some parties have made reference to ECD or pre-school education, there is a glaring lack of depth and a remarkable absence of cogent strategies which may reflect the lack of interest and deliberate machinations towards shallow understanding of the importance of ECD.

Gwengwe argues that such low interest in ECD in party manifestos could be misunderstood as lack of interest in children of age groups who are not yet of voting age and therefore of no political significance.

In response to this, the AECDM has developed an ECD Manifesto which it request political parties to adopt.

The manifesto includes: translate the education sector policies, laws and international conventions for ECD into the annual budgets; meaningfully translate the MGDS II and its successor strategy into annual budgets; and political parties should make a clear commitment to extend the network of ECD centers to rural areas while also ensuring that urban centers are not neglected. The manifesto also call on political parties to agree with the democratic principles where citizens can hold them to account based on the ECD commitments made and that they should embrace the ECD Manifesto and jealously safeguard the ECD interests and support the call for all children to be enrolled in ECD centers. Apart from calling on political parties to consider increasing ECD budget for implementation, the manifesto also calls on reduced overhead expenditures at ministry headquarters.

Gwenge says that AECDM considers the May 20 elections as an opportune moment for delivering the interests of the children of Malawi.

“Political parties taking part in the elections hold the keys to the future of Malawian children and to the success if ECD programs. ECD is at the very core of our national development. It forms the bedrock of our economic prosperity through consolidation of human capital development.

“AECDM calls upon all political parties and all political candidates to endorse the agenda for ECD and support the ECD Manifesto. While the current manifestos may not have incorporated all the necessary ingredients on ECD, it is still possible to integrate ECD in campaign messages, and the ECD Manifesto offers that basis for bringing hope to the children of Malawi,” he says.