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Education for Rural Development: a Discussion of Experiments in Botswana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Jennifer C. Ward
Affiliation:
Division of Social Sciences, Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York.

Extract

Botswana, a country of some 648,000 people unevenly distributed over more than 600,000 square kilometres, is an extremely poor nation whose estimated income per capita is less than $100 per annum. It is land-locked and dependent upon transport routes through neighbouring South Africa and Rhodesia. Frequent droughts cause major losses in Botswana's cattle herds, whose meat provides the country with its major export earnings. According to the 1964 census, almost 228,000 of the 250,000 workers were in agriculture, forestry, hunting, and fishing, and a 1967–8 survey found only 28,148 in salaried employment. During 1967 an additional 22,735 Batswana were working in the mines of South Africa. Of the present number of jobs (estimated at 2,000) requiring the minimum educational standard of School Certificate, less than one-quarter are currently filled by Botswana citizens. In 1967 some 258 students – 55 per cent of those who sat for the examination – received the Junior Certificate (after three years of secondary education) and 66 students - 80 per cent of those who sat – received the Cambridge School Certificate (after five years of secondary education).

Type
Africana
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

Page 614 note 1 Callaway, Archibald, ‘Unemployment among African School Leavers’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), I, 3, 09 1963, p. 362Google Scholar. Callaway discusses various efforts in Nigeria to establish large farm settlements on Vacant or unused land, and others in Dahomey and the Ivory Coast where farmers are advised on improved techniques for use on family land.

Page 615 note 1 Committee on Education and Human Resource Development, Nigeria Project Task Force, Nigerian Human Resource Development and Utilization (New York, 1967), p. 52Google Scholar. See also Moris, Jon, ‘Farmer Training as a Strategy of Rural Development’, in Sheffield, James R. (ed.), Education, Employment and Rural Development (Nairobi, 1967), pp. 322–65,Google Scholar for a discussion of agricultural syllabuses in primary schools in Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.