By Chinenye Anuforo
Former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Muhammad Sanusi II has said that girl child education is key to unlocking many of problems around Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This is even as Muhammad Sanusi II Sustainable Development Goals Initiative (MSII SDG Initiative) is calling on all teachers across sub-Saharan Africa to apply for this year’s MSII SDG Challenge.
Highlighting the importance of the challenge because of the rate of out-of-school children in Africa, Nigeria in particular, Sanusi said he believes in girl child education in Africa, as it is key to unlocking many of the problems around SDGs. “Nigeria in particular has the problem; we have one out of every five of the world’s out-of-school children in Nigeria, even though primary education is officially free and compulsory. About 10.5 million of the country’s children are not in school. Only 61% of the 6-11-year-olds regularly attend primary education and only 35.6% of children between 3-6 years receive early child education,” Sanusi said.
As evident from the success of the first Cohort, the MSII SDG Challenge is a project committed to empowering highly competent and enterprising education changemakers who are taking action to develop learning outcomes in their communities; especially for girls and women.
The 10 finalists from COHORT 1 were selected based on the inventiveness and originality of their ideas and were given grants to help achieve their individual educational projects with a goal of incubating and scaling up over 150 projects within the next 10 years which has the potential to impact the lives of millions of children across the region.
For this Cohort 2 Incubation Program, selected teachers will get the opportunity to network with a large community of like-minded teachers, and have access to an array of resources including mentorship and required training to refine and scale up their ideas. All teachers selected will receive $2,000 with the chance of being selected to the accelerator with up to $10,000 follow-on funding.
The goal of the challenge is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities. The MSII SDG Challenge hopes to achieve gender equality and bridge the education gap by helping Africa achieve quality education.
To apply for the MSII SDG Challenge Cohort 2 Incubation Program, teachers are asked to visit the website. Fill out the form and submit and will receive an email confirming the application.
The application is open from the June 7, 2022 till the June 28, 2022.
