Girl Education: The Single Most Important Driver to Global Change Al Gore, the former US vice president and

the technocrats that drafted the UN Millennium Development Goals seem to agree on one thing, educating and empowering women is the single most important driver to global change, the same can be said when it comes to forward national change. In Gores book, The Future: Six Drivers to Global Change he describes girl education as the only way to keep in check a population that is spiralling way out of control- one that is increasingly straining the already scarce resources. So what relevance does this information have to Uganda, you might ask. Uganda, of course has made great strides in empowering the Ugandan women, and has put in place several incentives and structures that ensure the representation of women in all sectors within the country, socially, economically and politically The score card on Ugandas performance as far as girl education is concerned is amazingly impressive, with a ratio of girls to boys in both primary and secondary schools of 0.99, compared to the 2015 target of 1. However, with a high population growth rate, and an equally high ratio of average number of children per woman, it is evident that theres significant loophole in providing girls and women, in particular with the very essential reproductive health and family planning education. So yes, more and more Ugandan girls are getting an education, at least a secular one, but whose teaching these women about the strain having big families/ many children is having on themselves, and more importantly on the economy. Its a cultural thing of course, the more the merrier- stop at one child and well-meaning relatives will pester you for a second, a third, and hell yeah, why not even have a fourth, and if its all-boys, you can as well keep on trying till you get a girl! But times have changed, and perhaps we need a mind-set that programmes us to think, the less, the merrier- a controlled population, means better access to social services and the little wealth that Uganda has, can perhaps do us more good if its not overstretched as a result of a skyrocketing population growth rate. But changing our mind set on having smaller families will not only take persistence, but will involve streamlining reproductive health education at all levels of education, right from the beginning. Its high time that little girls know what the stakes are, so that when they grow up into young women, who are looking to have a family, they will be able to make better, informed decisions on the size of the family. So ultimately, whatever way you look at this, Al Gores deduction was right, The single most important driver to global change is girl education, and not just any kind of education, but one that streamlines the very pertinent issue of reproductive health and family planning; one that will ultimately lead, to a change in mind-sets, a change that will see a more controlled population growth rate that will foster social, and economic change, if not in our generation, at least for the future generation of Ugandans to come. Doris Acheng