By Andrew Cawthorne
The Kenyan watchman works a 12-hour shift six nights a week guarding a Nairobi home for $125 a month. He then spends well over half that income keeping seven children in state schools.
Taking a holiday, even buying a beer, are distant dreams.
"I do it so they can have a better life than me," Alumasa says. His regret is that he does not have enough money left over to buy fruit for his children when they return from school.
Alumasa's tale would hardly raise an eyebrow across Africa where millions of parents make proportionally huge sacrifices to give their children a basic education.
Experts reckon a poor family in Africa spends between a quarter and a third of income on education.
Perhaps because of, rather than despite, the hardships of daily life, many in Africa prize education above all else -- and go to unbelievable lengths to ensure their children receive the schooling they often never had.
Take Somalia, for example.
Despite 15 years of anarchy, and this year's new threat of civil war, a recent survey of 7,000 Somalis showed that what they most crave was not peace, reconciliation or law and order -- but schooling for their children.
The dividends are obvious.
"The benefits are in job chances and prosperity," British Chancellor Gordon Brown, a keen anti-poverty campaigner, said recently, adding that each additional year of an African child's education adds an average 11 percent to his earnings.
Sadly, however, in the Somali case, only one in five children get the opportunity to go to primary school: far worse than sub-Saharan Africa's already low total of about 59 percent.
Of the world's nearly 115 million school-age children out of primary education, more than a third are African.
MILLIONS MORE PUPILS
Yet the picture is far from entirely gloomy.
School enrolment figures have shot up across Africa in recent years, thanks mainly to a wave of fee abolitions.
In the last four years, the United Nations says Ghana, Mozambique, Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania, Madagascar and Burundi have all abolished school fees.
Others, like Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), have enshrined free primary schooling in their constitution, but are struggling to implement it. In war-shattered DRC, parents even have to chip in to ensure teachers are paid.
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki's introduction of free primary schooling in 2003 won international plaudits and saw the number of pupils jump by 1.2 million in just weeks.
But parents like Alumasa still have to fork out a relative fortune for food, uniforms, textbooks and other materials.
"Abolition of fees is moving us in the right direction, but it is no magic wand," said Aster Haregot, an education adviser for the U.N. children's agency UNICEF in Nairobi.
Indeed, the sudden surge of students has seldom been accompanied by a major expansion of facilities or teachers.
"Our classes are huge now. The sharp ones do well, but we don't have time to attend to the slow pupils," said Ezric Muniu, a teacher at a school in Kenya's rural west whose numbers rose from 375 before 2003 to 914 now -- with no extra staff.
"Free education is indeed beautiful, but the challenges are endless," headmistress Jane Obinchu said. Classroom numbers at her small primary school sometimes top 100.
In Ghana, the end of fees in 2005 also saw a rush to school.
Elizabeth Mensah works in an old, dilapidated government school in central Accra, where there are 11 teachers for 800 students. Pupils are taught in shifts: morning and afternoon.
"At first we used to take 40 in a class. Now it is about 60. We didn't get any extra resources," she said. "They provide them with textbooks. They don't provide them with pens and paper."
GENDER DISPARITY
Groups of children huddled around a single book or sharing a pencil are a common sight in African schools.
And, experts are quick to point out, free primary education does not address the lack of opportunities for disadvantaged groups like AIDS orphans, the disabled or street children. Nor does it go to the heart of the problem of gender disparity.
West African nations Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau, Benin and Guinea are among the 10 worst-scoring nations in the world for boy-girl pupil ratios, according to UNICEF.
Niger has just 67 girls in primary school for every 100 boys. "For most parents, a girl's place is at home, learning chores from her mother," teacher Mariame Abdoulaye said.
Around Africa, however, there are at least a couple of encouraging reversals of the trend.
"In Lesotho, more girls than boys go to school because the boys are traditionally out herding and labouring," Haregot said.
"In Rwanda, it's the same, because of affirmative action."
Africa's numerous conflicts deprive many children of any chance at all of getting to school. And in some countries like Ethiopia, authorities are committed to free education but just do not have enough schools to accommodate everyone.
In wealthier north Africa, free and compulsory school education up to the age of about 15 is the norm. Nevertheless some children, particularly girls, do not attend primary school in some poor areas as parents tend to put them to work.
Secondary school really is but a dream for many on the continent: only one in five sub-Saharan African children attend.
(Additional reporting by William Maclean in Algiers, Orla Ryan in Accra and Abdoulaye Massalaki in Niamey)
Source: Reuters, Nov 16, 2006