Silent classrooms: Surge of teacher strikes across Africa
Teacher strikes across African countries including Morocco, Cape Verde, Ghana, Sudan, Nigeria, Togo, and Swaziland have been on the rise. Among their demands are unpaid and low salaries and unfavourable working conditions.
More than 90 percent of teachers in Cape Verde recently resorted to strike action and protests in front of the National Assembly as the government debated its 2024 state budget.
The strike action was due to the government’s unwillingness to increase teachers’ salaries and the resolution of pending demands.
The teachers who were still on strike as of November 29 in Cape Verde protested for a 35% increase in their basic salary of around 970 euros.
However, the Cape Verdean government said it had not considered it because it would have over 20.4 million euros impact on the 2024 state budget, local media Asemana Online reported.
Budgetary strain does not seem to be an issue only in Cape Verde but also in Sudan. Sudanese teachers in October this year embarked on a three-week nationwide strike over unmet demands. More than 16,000 schools in Sudan participated in the strike representing a total shutdown of more than 90% of schools in the country.
Their cry was concerning the economic conditions in the country that allow a teacher who has spent 30 years in service to earn a monthly salary of about USD 120. According to local media Dabanga Sudan, the government's response to the strike was that there was no space for an increase in the minimum wage in the 2023 budget. This was amidst their unmet demand.
Dating back to April 2019, hundreds of Moroccan teachers protested right in front of the Morocco education ministry for the sixth consecutive week of their strike demanding to become government employees to enjoy the benefits of the civil service. Contract teachers are not entitled to privileges like better pensions and the mobility of work.
Not only were these teachers being prevented from protesting, but the Moroccan Education Minister Said Amzazi threatened to sack them if they did not return to the classrooms. This was the government's response knowing that 7% of Morocco’s 7 million students had been affected by the strike.
The government said it had increased the education budget by 5.4 billion dirhams, equivalent to USD 561 million in 2019 to 68 billion dirhams, equivalent to USD 7 billion in the quest to boost access to education.
In September 2016, Ugandan school teachers went on strike over its government’s failure to grant their demand for a 20% salary increment. The strike took place when Western donors cut off direct budget support from Uganda over corruption allegations, international media Reuters reported.
Teachers in Uganda had not been paid for months and these 160,000 teachers are among the worst-paid workers in East Africa.
Primary school teachers earn an average of USD 97.16 a month.
Swaziland government in June 2012 repeatedly told its striking teachers it had no money to pay them a 4.5% increment. Instead, the government threatened to fire all teachers who took part in the strike, referring to them as "delinquents and criminals".
In the last decade, the continent has recorded teacher strikes in several countries including Cameroon, Guinea, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Libya, Central African Republic, Malawi, and Togo, among others. The trends over time raise concerns about prioritization of education on the continent or perhaps it could just be an issue of funding.
