The ETF has seen all primary schools in the country receiving truck loads of books to improve the quality of education and to cultivate a culture of reading.
In an interview on the sidelines of a US$10 million grant signing ceremony between the European Union and the United Nations Children’s Educational Fund in support of the Essential Medicine Support Programme in Zimbabwe last Monday in Harare, the UNICEF Country Representative, Dr Peter Salama, emphasized that the country was the only one in Africa to have successfully stocked its schools with textbooks.
“About 10 children were sharing a single textbook and an average of 20 percent of the schools in Zimbabwe had no textbooks, but now that has changed,” he said.
The country representative said 17 million textbooks had been distributed to all urban and rural primary schools, making Zimbabwe the only country in Africa to carry out a massive textbook printing and distribution exercise at the same time.
Dr Salama added that the country was already working on distributing around 8 million books to secondary schools.
“Yes it is a fact. The ETF is now moving ahead working on distributing advanced textbooks to secondary schools in six subjects: Mathematics, Geography, Biology, History, Science and English,” he said.
Post published in: News