CDE: Emperor Roy 🇿🇼🇬🇧

This is such shocking news because it isn’t just about the money. The failure to pay the US$292 million due to BEAM means that hundreds of thousands of children are out of school and have been for years. This is a significant portion of an entire generation who have been denied an education and who will now battle to ever catch up to their peers. Almost inevitably amongst the hundreds of thousands of children out of school there will be brilliant children whose potential skills are now lost to our Nation. Furthermore this money should have been used to maintain school buildings and purchase education materials, which has undoubtedly not happened. The result is that even for those children still in school their education will be suffering due to deteriorating buildings and shortages of education materials . The trouble is that these factors are not readily visible. We see it through poor children on the streets (rather than in school) during the school term and dilapidated schools. But neither have a voice. This is a major national crisis. Zimbabwe can never become an upper middle income country by 2030, or any other time, if our education system is so seriously undermined.