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15CCEM Africa-Europe Region Mid-Term Review Meeting, Sierra Leone

Date: 14 Nov 2005

Welcome Address by Commonwealth Deputy Secretary-General Winston Cox, 13 November 2005

Your Excellency the President of Sierra Leone, Ministers of Education, other Ministers and Members of the Parliament of Sierra Leone, members of the diplomatic corps, heads and representatives of Commonwealth agencies, observers, senior officials, other distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

I extend to you all a warm welcome to this important meeting. I know I speak for all of you when I say thanks to the Government of Sierra Leone and the Ministry of Education for offering to host this meeting. The Commonwealth Secretariat is very grateful to Sierra Leone for this contribution to Education in the Commonwealth.

There are a few individuals that I must welcome specially to this meeting. First, a special welcome to Hon. Naledi Pandor, Minister of Education of South Africa who will be hosting the 16th Commonwealth Conference of Education Ministers in Cape Town in December 2006. Second, I welcome the Hon. Tevita Hala Palefau, the Tongan Minister of Education, who has travelled farther than any one else to be here.

A special welcome is also due to the Mr. Steve Sinnott of the Commonwealth Teachers Group who, along with Sir John Daniel of the Commonwealth of Learning, will be speaking at the Commonwealth Public Lecture on Tuesday evening. We are particularly grateful to them for their role in this event.

I am pleased on behalf of the Commonwealth to welcome as observers to this meeting the representatives of Liberia and Guinea, the other Mano River Union states. I interpret your presence here as a clear indication of your desire to strengthen cooperation and improve relations among the members of the Union. We are aware of your shared ideals and commitment to peace and democracy and will be happy to explore with you ways in which the Commonwealth can contribute to your efforts as you strive towards your ideals.

Your presence here honourable ministers is evidence of your desire to address the education needs of the region and it is also a vote of confidence in the progress of Sierra Leone's post conflict reconstruction efforts.  Nowhere is that progress more evident than in education. The hard work of the Ministry of Education, with the support of the international community, has produced a remarkable increase in primary school enrolment rates, we applaud this progress.

Sierra Leone has a proud history, renowned across Africa, for its excellence in education. It was therefore natural and not unexpected that the Government of Sierra Leone has been quick to recognise the critical importance of education in the rehabilitation of individuals and communities.  We are pleased Minister, to see the practical steps the Government and its partners have taken to address special needs in education. The Commonwealth Secretariat has been able to play a supporting role in this recovery process in education through its programme on Citizenship Education in Sierra Leone. 

This is a landmark year for international development and for Africa. We have already had the ten year reviews of a number of global conferences held in the last decade. We have the recommendations of the Report of the Commission for Africa and the important decisions of the G8 Summit on debt forgiveness and increased aid, focused particularly on Africa. We have a new white paper on Africa from the European Commission and we have the World Bank Group's Africa Action Plan. All of these are designed to support African countries in their efforts to increase growth, tackle poverty, and achieve the MDGs. 

Such support for Africa is vitally necessary because in September when the World Summit considered progress against the MDGs the commitment remained evident but progress was not encouraging. The target for the elimination of gender disparities in primary and secondary education should have been reached this year but 27 countries in Africa will not achieve it and of these 16 are not on course to reach gender parity by 2015.  In October a progress report on the EFA presented to the UNESCO General Conference revealed here too that African countries are not on track to deliver universal primary education to the people of this continent by 2015.

This has also been a busy and important year for the Commonwealth. This meeting is the last in our series of regional mid-term meetings of Ministers of Education called to monitor progress on the six action areas that you identified when you met in Edinburgh in 2003. Later this month the Commonwealth Heads of Government will meet in Malta and, Mr. President, we look forward to your contribution to that meeting. In the Commonwealth Secretariat our aim is to ensure that this round of global and Commonwealth activities will have a positive outcome for the 115 million children currently out of school, the majority of whom live in the Commonwealth.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to look back on 2005 and see it as truly a year of landmark events that moved us towards a better, fairer world; and a year of landmark decisions that improved the quality of life for the people of the African continent.

I wish you a productive and enjoyable meeting in Sierra Leone.


Thank You

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