A high proportion of youth have failed to continue with their schooling, and many have resorted to betting (sports gambling) and local board games. These energetic youth with great intellect and innovative ideas are reduced to becoming beggars, pick-pocketers, drug addicts or alcoholics, because they lack positive and constructive reference points which show them how to do something meaningful with their lives.
Education services in the rural areas of the Tanzania are still lagging behind, and a high dropout rate is still registered for children in primary school. Until recently, the government gave no support to early childhood development.
In the rural parts of Arusha, like Monduli, where Masai culture is still dominant, girls as young as 12 - 13 years are married off to old men in exchange for cows given to the parents. A girl, still a child, will become a mother without knowledge of basic nutrition and healthcare for her baby. Furthermore, female genital circumcision is still a practice that the Masai uphold.
In Tanzania, according to the law, once a girl gets pregnant, her right to education then ceases. The SDGs clearly stress that we should leave no one behind in development. All girls deserve the chance to have an education regardless of their circumstances. Monduli, like Singida, has people still relying on traditional farming methods for their livelihoods. With the current effects of climate change, these people have no chance at achieving a sustainable income unless something is done about it.
Interventions include:
Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE), which provides conducive learning environments for children through the development of teachers’ competencies, strengthening of government structures, and parental involvement alongside infrastructural development.
Technical Vocational Education Training Programme (TVET) and the Adolescent Empowerment Programme - Bonga: youth are equipped with life skills (hygiene, rights etc.) and enhance their literacy and numeracy while vocational skills training enables them to gain employable and marketable skills. These in turn can help to set them up for life, improving their household incomes and the economies of their communities.
Through the Community Managed Savings Groups (CMSG), people in rural communities are organised into small savings groups from which they can take up loans to start income-generating activities (IGA). They are also equipped with different, climate smart farming techniques that enable them to withstand climate change in the hope of boosting food security and building sustainable villages.
Read more: http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/TZA