Briefing Note: Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures
A stark assessment of Somalia/Somaliland’s education system argues that incremental reform is insufficient, calling instead for systemic transformation aligned with global sustainability challenges.
Introduction
Education systems in Somalia/Somaliland need to be transformed for two fundamental reasons. First, they are failing to meet the basic needs of most of the population never mind the ambitions of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Indeed, education is not even accessible to most of the population. Second, the situation facing Somalia/Somaliland does not exist in isolation. It is deeply influenced by, and bound up with, the future of the wider world.
Vast numbers of people around the world are struggling just to survive while the natural world we all depend on is being destroyed. Part of the problem is that many people do not have access to education, and even when they do, and when that education is high quality, they are often learning ways of living and working that make the problems of unsustainability worse. The situation in Somalia/Somaliland is a specific version of this shared problem.
If the world is to have sustainable development – ensuring that current and future generations can live the lives they value in ways that allow nature to flourish - education will have to change fundamentally. Simply providing more education or improved education is not enough because that education will be undermined by the wider failure to meet human needs within the earth’s limits. The path the world is on not only threatens future generations, it is doing enormous harm to the current generation and threatens even those whose lives are relatively comfortable.
The need for systemic transformation has been underlined by COVID-19. The evidence that we have suggests that this deadly disease is caused by the most recent of a series of zoonotic coronaviruses – that is, coronaviruses which jumped from other animals to humans. Such jumps are made much more likely by human abuse of wild animals by mixing them close together in unnatural combinations in meat markets or by humans encroaching onto animal habitats. To minimise the chances of this huge threat recurring, we must treat non-human animals properly and treat each other properly. We must learn this lesson, as part of the even bigger challenge of addressing the accelerating biodiversity and climate crises if we are to have a sustainable future.
Keywords
- Somalia; Somaliland; education systems; sustainable development; SDG 4; education inequality; post-conflict education; system transformation