Africa-Press – Tanzania. TANZANIA and South Africa have signed a drafted Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on cooperation in basic education, especially Kiswahili teaching in South African schools.
The signing of the drafted MoU is part of the implementation of the directives issued by Minister for Education, Science and Technology Prof Adolf Mkenda for the two countries to have technical team that will facilitate the teaching of the language in South Africa.
The minister issued the directives last month during the first celebration of the World Kiswahili Language Day which was marked on July 7.
Witnessing the signing of the drafted MoU recently, Prof Mkenda said the document provides guidance on how the programme will be executed.
Prof said the MoU provides cooperation guidance in education issues, including curriculum so that each country can learn from one another although the main issue is to help develop Kiswahili in South African schools.
Prof Mkenda said that he was happy to see officials from South Africa met with their Tanzanian counterparts for three days to prepare strategies for implementation of the agreement signed on July 7 this year.
Prof Mkenda said that before working on the agreement, the draft agreement signed by both parties will be scrutinized for review and approval.
“The main thing in this agreement is to spearhead the development of Kiswahili in our continent not for commercial or employment purposes only but also uniting people in the continent,” he said.
“Tanzania is the origin of Kiswahili. We have a great responsibility to take care of this language and spread it across Africa”, he said.
He said South Africa is the country with the largest economy in the continent and the country is more advanced in technology thus learning Kiswahili will also attract other countries to know the language.
On her part, South Africa Basic Education Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ms Simone Geyer said they have agreed to share experience and find teachers to teach the language in their schools.
Ms Geyer said they visited Uhuru Mchanganyiko School and were so excited to see how students with special needs can learn together with those who are not physically challenged.
She said they want to establish something tangible in South Africa that will have an impact on the current and future generation, especially in education curricula.
Ms Geyer, adding we are happy that on the first day we visited two schools to see for ourselves, and our interest is to see how they use Kiswahili in their studies which we can apply to our country.
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