‘Keep under-fives clear of harmful technologies’

Representing President Samia Suluhu Hassan, the Community Development, Gender, Elderly, Women and Special Groups minister Dr Dorothy Gwajima, yesterday asked African countries to invest more on childcare and upbringing.

She was opening a four-day international conference on early child care, upbringing and development, themed: ‘Investing in early childhood; building human capital along the life course,’ underlining the need for the continent to invest in a healthier productive workforce.

A healthy workforce can help to transform socio-economic development, thus African governments need to ensure more investment is directed at childcare and upbringing.

A healthier workforce that is productive and ultimately transforms economic activity in each country is possible with increased investment in early childcare and development,

This is supposed to be spread over health, nutrition, learning and early stimulation, responsive nurturing, child protection and safety can help make the child smart, ready to be a productive adult, she said.

“Various studies in Africa show that investment in child upbringing and care is still low. The ratio between child care and investment is not in synchrony with the science of child care,” she said.

“If this continues, we will prepare children who are unproductive and create unproductive human capital for our nations,” she said, urging the representatives of the various countries to use public funds to whatever extent possible to bolster early child upbringing.

The four-day meeting will help to chart out a roadmap for implementing agreements reached by Heads of State during the African Union’s human capital summit back in July last year in Dar es Salaam, she elaborated.

Investment in bolstering human resources needs to focus on young children as the foundation, she said, appealing to conference participants come up with effective strategies to strengthen interventions for early child care.

Upbringing adhering to good customs and traditions was vital, she said, laying emphasis on good customs because some of them have negative effects on children, citing female genital mutilation (FGM).

Children should not experience such practices which are detrimental to their development, she said, pointing out that child upbringing is nowadays affected by many things like family conflicts where children comes out unavoidably as victims.

“Parents and guardians have no time to care for the children as they are busy with other activities. Hence, children are left alone to look out for themselves or remain under the care of housemaids. We need to rethink and take action. These are some of the obstacles against our children’s upbringing,” she argued.

Information and communication technology poses many challenges such as improper and immoral use of online platforms exposing children to online child exploitation and abuse, the minister added.