Dr. MOHAMUD HUSSEIN
ASH Executive Director.
“ Learn or eat: tough allocative choices faced by poor and low income Somaliland families between schooling their children and affording food “
Photo Courtesy: PHCM TERRY C. MITCHELL
Education sector is thriving in Somaliland. There are now a large of number of privately-owned institutions providing service across the schooling age. Choice for education has in particular widened considerably over the past decade as hundreds of new private schools with increasingly diverging fees and quality of education have emerged. This raises concerns about access and affordability of the education system given the low or little regular incomes received by the majority of the households. A particular aspect of the allocation of what increasingly appears to be a substantial proportion of household income to education is that parents may be forced to make pecuniary choices between feeding their children adequately and sending them to school perceived to be providing a good quality education. Such a trade-off may necessitate a public policy intervention in the education sector to ensure that this market functions efficiently in terms of value of money for users, but also that low income or poor households unable to afford access to good quality private education have alternative public choices.
To gain more insights into how education system works in Somaliland, the Redsea Cultural Foundation, in collaboration with Agribusiness Solutions Hub is undertaking a research project. The aim is to identify workable solutions that will promote access and quality education for all in Somaliland.
.
