About a fifth of Ugandan children between the ages of 6-11 are out of school, whereas for children between 12-14 exclusion is about 33%; and an estimated 60% of youth between the ages of 15-17 not in school,84% in the age bracket 18-24 years lacking skills to be gainfully employed, with girls more negatively affected.Thus, despite availability of Education Technology , access and lack of skills remain significant challenges at different levels.
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Uganda is home to over 20,000 legal community credit cooperatives with several operating as savings and credit cooperatives (SACCO)to help improve their livelihoods and access to finance .
But until now, these Ugandan SACCO's have never organized themselves to address a critical and often overlooked issue of community Education Financing of vulnerable out of school population utilizing Ed Tech Franchises, an opportunity presented by the SWEET Africa .
The development hypothesis underlying the SWEET Africa Model is that connecting excluded educational and skilling financiers via Savings credit cooperatives to local skilling mentors (Franchises) in low- and middle-income communities in order to reduce education access costs and payment barriers , will help tackle current global education crisis hard hit Covid-19, by facilitating and increasing the number of out of school vulnerable children to re-enter and either complete formal school or acquire vocational skills.
