Population Education in Africa. English Version.

Overview & Synopsis

National conferences on population and development have recommended the integration of population issues into development planning by national governments. This book presents several ideas of practitioners in the field of population and family life education. Five articles in Part I focus on solutions to problems of introducing population education into school programs. Population education as a "foreign" concept in Africa must be overcome for effective education to occur. The problems of personnel training, using innovative educational procedures, and the technologies of population education are discussed. Part II deals with the progress made in various African countries. In Sierra Leone, a curriculum in population education was integrated with social studies in secondary schools and secondary teacher colleges. Since the introduction of family life programs in the Republic of Seychelles, the rate of teenage pregnancies has decreased and venereal diseases are more controlled. The National Programme of Population Education in Somalia is now in its fourth year. The school programme is a resource unit for other agencies concerned with population education. The population program in Nigeria attempts to ensure inclusion of population concepts into secondary education curricula and textbooks. Programs available to individual countries from UNESCO and a summary of each country's programs are provided. Part III presents three sets of recommendations for development of population education programs in sub-Saharan Africa. (SM)