The education system in Namibia still faces many stumbling blocks including high repetition and drop-out rates. News reports noting inequality of teachers and schools in rural and urban areas as well as a lack of skills development. The challenges in government schools are underscored due to lack of a reading culture among learners, which compromises learning, learners academic progress and in raising that child in its totality. Overcoming this problem requires everyone's input. And it is also worth noting that thousands of children across Namibia in their early childhood years do not have access to books at home or own a storybook of their own. Owning a book is integral to encouraging the Namibian children to get into regular reading habits and for increasing literacy levels. The UNIC Windhoek children’s storybook ‘Frieda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’ remains a campaigner for the fulfillment of the SDG4 (Quality Education). Dissemination results with the support of the Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture noted that more than 6000 books were delivered to regions across the country, especially reaching marginalised communities and children with disabilities. The Centre’s 2022 educational outreach programmes have extended the number of learners reached to an additional 3000. Despite limited resources, the Centre remains committed to their bi-monthly educational outreach programmes and reading sessions at school in helping children reach their full potential and to secure a greater understanding of the SDGs. A child who can read can make a difference in his / her own life, not only in improving their general comprehension and vocabulary, but in improving his or her decoding skills as well. The start of a new school year provided a fresh opportunity in reaching learners at after school tutoring centres. In support of the UN's 2023 communication priorities on the SDGs, the Education Company, Edu-Com in Windhoek received about 90 copies of the children's storybook of 'Frieda and the SDGs,' 50 sets of the Swift 30 SDG games, notebooks and environmentally friendly promotional items. Edu-Com strives for a 100 % pass rate of learners, providing educational discipline support e.g., in homework assistance, test and exam preparation, project and research assistance, one on one tutoring and Afrikaans classes for beginners to intermediate. The Head of Academic Affairs, Mr. Brian Sacco noted: "Handing-over of the UN-donation to our learners today was such a joyous occasion... When you create a conducive learning environment, you create a platform for happy learning. Happy learners tend to produce great academic results."  

Education is a fundamental human right, a public good and a public responsibility. The fifth International Day of Education will be celebrated this year on 24 January 2023 under the theme “to invest in people, prioritize education”. Building on the global momentum generated by the UN Transforming Education Summit in September 2022. The UN chief call for action in maintaining strong political mobilization around education and chart the way to translate commitments and global initiatives into action. Education must be prioritized to accelerate progress towards all the Sustainable Development Goals against the backdrop of a global recession, growing inequalities and the climate crisis. Transforming Education is essential, listen to the Secretary-General António Guterres video message on International Day of Education here:  https://youtu.be/7pSePoW0aJ4  

Omuji attends the Christ Apostolic Church Secondary School, Makurdi and hails from the Benue State in Nigeria. Hunger is a state of eating far less than the required quantity of food. It is also the state of a lack of food when there is a craving for it. "Mummy I want to eat!" "Aunty, the food is not enough!" "What will the children eat?" "I have not eaten since this morning.". These statements dominate too many homes and communities in Nigeria. This simply shows abundant hunger, or lack of food. Zero hunger is just the opposite of this. A situation where everyone does not just have enough to eat but the required food to eat. consider the scenario below. Mr. Eze married two wives, Ngozi and Chioma. Ngozi has seven children while Chioma has five. With this family of twelve children and their parents, Eze is a wheel barrow pusher in the market, though he claims to have owned a provision store that gradually collapsed due to circumstances. As at the time I packed into Mr. Ezes neighborhood his situation was already very pathetic. There was this incident that brought the whole thing to my knowledge. Ngozi and Chioma were seriously quarreling over who gets the larger share of Mr Eze little proceeds from the wheelbarrow business. The quarrel was prolonged and neighbors had to intervene. Moving closer to them, I heard Chioma saying, "For the past five days I have not gotten up to a thousand naira from my husband, the whole money goes to Ngozi". “What about me?”shouted Ngozi. "Do you think he gives me millions? Tell us the truth. He gives you all the money. If it is the five or six hundred he gives to everyone you want to die for, eh, just go and die." While this drama was going on, I took time to observe Mr. Eze’s children. They were all looking unfed and sick. Chioma’s last three children, age 2, 4, and 5, were gathered round a cup of garri, fighting amongst  themselves as well. Ngozi’s children meanwhile were lying around helplessly. You didn’t need anyone to tell you that they had not had anything to eat. As the women argued with each other, dragging their children from all sides, they became so frustrated that they began to beat their hungry children. It took a long time to console the dejected, unfairly treated children and to calm the frustrated women. Eventually, I was able to ask them what the problem was. "My husband came and gave her all the money and went away", said one of them- I can’t remember which. “This is what has always happened in this house.” The other woman said, "The only problem here is that I don’t know what she and my husband do with all the money he makes. Last night I got nothing at all." After a series of accusations and counter-accusations, I was at last able to ask them where their husband was. “He came and went back,” answered one of the women. Why did he go back? I asked. Ngozi quickly answered that he had given her the money na! Chioma interjected, “Which money? Is it the 250 you mean? Tell us how much he gave you?” “Nothing”, Ngozi retorted. “If he had given me anything, would I send the children to him? Would I quarrel with him?” At this time I was the only person left there. The others probably only came out of concern for the children and may have become used to these dramas by Mr. Eze’s wives. I waited patiently for Mr. Eze, hoping he would come back and find me in his home.  He returned 30 minutes later. By them I had stopped the wives from quarrelling. He entered the house looking as though he had been waiting for the quarrel to be over. He looked miserable and frustrated. You don’t need to ask if the dread of the troubles at home kept him away or if he had been waiting for the women to stop their quarrel. I took him aside to discuss with him. Mr. Eze narrated how he had worked all day to make the N250 he gave to Chioma.  That was all he had made that day. As a father, he felt for his hungry children and  wanted to stay with them, but their mothers would not understand. All they were ever after was money for food for the children. He said he had not eaten all day because he wanted to make sure he could bring some money home. This happened often and at times he was even hungrier than his children. Whenever his wives began to quarrel, he felt miserable and defeated by life. In tears he said, "I know that my wives must be hungry too. I know that they may not really want to quarrel but a hungry man they say is an angry man." Mr. Eze told me the situation had been going on for the past three years. When he told me how much money he owed just to make sure his family was fed, I was shocked. He told me about the kind of harassment he has received from creditors who sell on food stuff. He said that matters would get worse when he wanted to buy on credit and they refused. The worst part of his story were the health problems the children continually suffered as a result of malnutrition.  What he didn’t understand was that those who refused to help his family with money to feed well, were prepared to pay their hospital bills and buy drugs for the children when they were sick! He really didn’t understand it. Whenever he tried to focus on the children, the other responsibilities like house-rent, would come up. He didn’t want to talk about school because paying school fees meant that his family would not eat  for weeks. I am familiar with the story of the Mr. Ezes of this world. At school we have course mates that eat garri every single day and nothing else. Some steal other people’s food to survive. Others break-down before exams. Others break-down during exams. Some fall sick and get hospitalized. It is always a very pathetic situation to watch very intelligent students fall victim to hunger. Hunger has caused a lot of damage in our society. You can’t think right when you are hungry. You lack patience and tolerance when you are hungry. You can’t focus on anything when you are hungry. Hunger has caused a lot of broken homes, accidents and fights and hunger has wrecked a lot of potential and has even led to death. Message to Nigerian Government I hereby call on the Nigerian government to focus on the crisis of hunger. I suggest that jobs should be created and agriculture invested in so that we can grow more food. I also believe that hard work should be appreciated and rewarded.   ABOUT THE 17 STORIES PROJECT The 17 STORIES project is an SDG Action Campaign designed to engage and motivate children towards taking action for the SDGs through the literary art of storytelling. The 17 STORIES project is an initiative of the Nigeria Volunteers Network (NVN) led by Vincent Odigie. Founded in 2020, with a headquarters in Edo State, NVN aims to empower the Nigerian volunteer with necessary and up to date information, skills and resources towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.    

Libraries exist within the formal and the informal sector of the learning ecosystem. They play a fundamental role in learning within educational institutions and in different communities where they exist all over Africa. They are critical for achieving inclusive, equitable and quality education where no one is left behind including those who are in employment and cannot attend school fulltime and/or are taking online courses. They are critical also for those who have fallen through the cracks of the educational system as school dropouts at various stages of their educational journey or out-of-school-children. Before School Age Public libraries introduce pre-school children and late school starters to the world of books and learning. Early literacy development is expected to start from the home. However, in communities where parents and caregivers do not have sufficient funds to buy age-appropriate books for their children who are yet to start school and/or may not be literate, the public library serves the children adequately by providing age-appropriate books and running story hour programmes where children learn and begin to understand words. In a survey for English speaking countries in Africa recently run by the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA), it was discovered that public and community libraries in Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone run programmes targeted at helping children learn to read in order to read to learn as it is clearly understood that it is the necessary foundational building block for inclusive and quality learning in school, future academic achievement, and lifelong learning. This has the potential of reducing the rate of children who drop out of schools due to inability to keep up with what is taught in the classroom. Some libraries such as the City Library Abuja, have gone further to run a programme for out-of-school children. The library staff read to the children, help them to be comfortable around books and provide writing and painting materials for them. This invariably leads to their acquiring basic literacy skills such as  recognition of letters and words. In Schools Libraries in tertiary institutions serve not only the students but also the faculty members who need to be kept up-to-date on current best practices in the various disciplines. This drives quality education as the library assists lecturers to update their knowledge so that they do not depend on their old lecture notes year in and year out. The library in tertiary institutions also provides online and offline materials that drive research for all members of the academic community. As the concept of openness and knowledge equity become more accepted in sub-Saharan Africa, academic libraries in the West African region are establishing open access institutional repositories where lecturers openly share their lectures notes and articles published in different journals for easy access by students and their professional colleagues. This makes learning more collaborative, richer and equitable as all within the community especially the students have access to the library’s repository and resources even when they cannot afford textbooks or need to search research projects in order to build on already existing knowledge. Such repositories which can be found in https://www.internationalafricaninstitute.org/repositories exist in Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) http://dspace.knust.edu.gh/, Asheshi University, Ghana https://air.ashesi.edu.gh/home, Afe Babalola University, Nigeria, http://eprints.abuad.edu.ng/ Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria, http://repository.fuoye.edu.ng/, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, http://ir.library.ui.edu.ng/handle/123456789/243, Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar, Senegal, among others. In secondary schools and primary schools all over Africa, libraries provide curriculum based texts and supplementary reading texts for all those who cannot afford the important learning materials. School libraries also serve as study spaces for those who wish to read during free times. The libraries in these schools help to grow the reading culture among young adults so that they can achieve more academically. Libraries in these schools also provide literature and fiction resources that open the eyes of students to a better understanding of the world. The UN SDG Book Club African Chapter plays a role in this aspect as the Book Club recommends books that children can read to sharpen their understanding of the SDGs and of how the Goals can be achieved at different levels by all. Libraries make the children aware of the  books recommended for every SDG and make these books available whenever possible especially to  parents who cannot afford them. In the formal education sector, libraries are also used as learning laboratories for students who need to be taught research and information literacy skills that will enable them navigate adroitly and safely in online spaces as they search for needed information for their studies. This boosts the quality of education as students are equipped to search for more knowledge and to not only depend on what is taught in classrooms.   In the Community   Public libraries have a standard non-discriminatory policy that allows everyone irrespective of status, age, or creed to come in, access learning and informative materials that lead to lifelong learning which has been recognized as being essential for a productive workforce, improved quality of life and a high sense of self-worth. They also offer conducive learning spaces for those who need to study independently for school and external examinations. Since 2012 when NITDA provided computers and internet access to the National Library of Nigeria and some public libraries across Nigeria, these institutions have been the go-to places for those who wish to acquire basic digital skills and/or access e-learning platforms for further studies. The Ghana Library Authority also has a learning app that allows its members to read e-books, listen to audio books and watch educational videos. The library also runs a Read2Skill programme through which one can study courses in Project management, UI/UX Design and Data Analytics amongst others. These initiatives by public libraries make learning more inclusive and closer to people who cannot afford the time or who do not have the opportunity to be in the formal education sector. Public libraries excel in driving informal education for all within their communities. In the Greater Accra Library, children’s section, one can walk in and learn embroidery, patch-making, collage, paper craft and poster design for a token fee. The Enugu Library Board, Nigeria, teaches young people how to make shoes without charging although the learners are encouraged to come with the materials. This was introduced as a project by a participant in AfLIA’s Leadership Academy. The Sapele Public library, Delta State, Nigeria, brought learning and education closer to fish farmers in the community by teaching them how to have higher yields, by introducing them to online resources for their field and by showing them how to access credit from banks. This was another project by a participant in AfLIA’s Leadership Academy which was carried out in collaboration with a bank in the community. Finally, libraries of all types in West Africa have come to realize that education is a lifelong venture and that they have definite roles to play in ensuring inclusive, quality and equitable education for all.   ABOUT NKEM OSUIGWE   Nkem Osuigwe PhD is the Director, Human Capacity Development and Training African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) with headquarters in Accra, Ghana. She has served as the Head of the public library system in Anambra State Nigeria, and as a Director of Nigerian Book Foundation. She is an ardent advocate for open knowledge as a pathway for inclusivity and boosting innovative solutions to development challenges that bedevil Africa. She sees the continuous development of human capital as the key to the progress and prosperity of Africa and believes that libraries of all types as core institutions that provide access to life-changing knowledge, opportunities and 21st century skills development are the future of Africa and should be in forefront of advocacy, provision of services and skills for the transformation of Africa. She has been the project lead for AfLIA’s projects with OER Africa, NBA South Africa, and Wikimedia Foundation. She represents AfLIA in the management team of the UN SDG Book Club, African. She recently won the global award of the Wikimedian of the Year 2022, (Newcomer category). She has been Chapter Chair, Nigerian Library Association as well as a 2nd Vice President of the association at the national level. She had also being Vice Chair and Chair, Public Libraries Section, AfLIA. She has served as mentor for Cohort 1 & 2, International Network of Emerging Library Innovators, sub-Saharan Africa (INELI-SSAf) and AfLIA Leadership Academy (AfLAC). She schooled in University of Benin, University of Ibadan and Abia State University. She has published articles in academic journals, in blogs and magazines and book chapters. She has also edited a book as well as served as the editor of an academic journal. She tweets through @librarian_nkem on Twitter and shares her views on LinkedIn and Facebook as Nkem Osuigwe. Nkem Osuigwe represents AfLIA on the Management Committee of the African Chapter of the UN SDG Book Club.