Ethiopia: Empowering Future Generations Through Quality Education

Needless to state, quality education plays an important role in human development, as the more educated a person is, the higher responsibility and commitment they develop towards serving their respective nations.

Human development encompasses development in several dimensions of social wellbeing in terms of socially, economically, spiritually, and even politically framed life scenarios. Social development rooted in education, referring to the quality that would potentially serve individuals, groups, or communities, cumulatively contributing to forming a nation. This dimension is important to create a stable and economically muscled nation.

Cognizant of the fact that quality education does have the power to shape a sustainable future and a better country, the Ethiopian government has attached due emphasis to quality education and other related factors in one way or another, contributing to it.

Taking this fact into account, The Ethiopian Herald interviewed Mulualem Tsegay, a private secondary school teacher in Addis Ababa, who graduated from Kotebe University of Education. He said, “Investing in education has individual, country, continental, and even global level reimbursements. At the individual level, education can improve people’s employability, earnings, and health outcomes. Countries that have invested heavily in primary, secondary, and tertiary education have been able to contribute to advances in science and knowledge and create new products and technological innovations. Globally, investments in education underpin social cohesion, economic growth, competitiveness, and modernization.”

According to Mulualem, Ethiopia and other developing countries have made significant gains in increasing access to education, which means there has been huge progress in enrolling more children in school, though a lot remains to expand educational opportunities and enhance quality, thereby supporting them getting the advantage they deserve.

As to him, in the era of rapid social, technological, and economic changes, investing in education is also important for building the resilience of countries. That is why Ethiopia has been attaching due emphasis to quality education as much as it can. It has to do more on enhancing quality than on expanding educational access.

No question about it, investments in human capital can be a source of resilience over the long term and help ensure the well-being of future societies, especially in countries with large youth populations like ours, he underlined.

He said, “Education will definitely remain a fundamental enabler of opportunities for individuals and innovation and growth for economies. The successful messaging that brought the global education community to where it is today is not going to be enough to advance education to the next level. A new narrative is needed to refocus on the topic of quality education, which is instrumental in fostering development, security, social progress, communal proliferation, among others.”

He further elaborated that investing in quality education should be linked to various policy decisions, including peace matters, women’s empowerment, generation building, responding to social, economic, and cultural yarn. By stressing quality education’s implications for progressing human well-being and ensuring security, countries like Ethiopia can solidly work to garner the benefits of education, thereby coming up responsible and capable posterity in the years to come.

“Education serves as the foundation of social, economic, and political development, and the success of schools and universities directly influences Ethiopia’s social and economic progress. Patterned education quality requires cooperation, commitment, and accountability from all stakeholders as a single-handed effort leads nowhere. It is also essential to verbalize effective policies, implement innovative solutions, and ensure that the education system meets both national and international standards,” he stated.

Without a shadow of doubt, an educated populace is needed now more than ever before in Ethiopia and in other developing countries, in particular to protect and advance gender equity, combat climate crises, build a country, continent, and universe, too, that is safer and more prosperous for the generations to derive.

According to Amanuel Eromo (PhD), Instructor at Kotebe University of Education, investing in education is necessary to protect economies from sudden shocks and to acclimatize effectively to rapidly changing labor markets.

The importance of education for achieving the United Nations’ sustainable development goals is really unmentionable for everything requires education, especially quality, that helps the nation produce competent, ethical, productive, and responsible citizenry.

As vast interactions at continental and global levels would have it, education is a fundamental conduit for global peace and security objectives beyond the societal and economic benefits. Thus, education is pivotal in steering society toward a path of economic development, peace, and stability, he added.

It is quite obvious that beyond the labor market, educational institutions like the elementary, secondary, and even tertiary ones can foster the effort geared towards creating a more open and democratic society. The younger generation needs to have the capacity to address complex problems at the family, community, national, and global levels. That is why it is recurrently heralded that educational institutions, referring to all levels, are instrumental in shaping the generation and well equipping them, who would be in a position to take over the country with its future via teaching children and adolescents civic education, use of technology, socio-emotional competencies, innovation and inventiveness and all the required lifelong skills, he elaborated.

No doubt, in an era of rapid technological change, it is imperative for the youth to learn to use basic digital technologies safely and appropriately. Digital literacy can also help citizens engage via tools such as the internet and mobile applications, contributing to building stronger democracies, Amanuel stated.

He said, “Not only is quality education just about increasing registration numbers, but it is also about fostering creativity, problem-solving, innovation, competent human development, creating scientists and future leaders. This requires well-trained, motivated and responsible teachers as well as a curriculum that bring into line with community needs, sufficient educational resources, and a governance structure that prioritizes long-term educational excellence and a system focused towards producing an equipped posterity.”