 Thank you. Hi. My name is C. Z. Mathis Butzine. I'm a South African based in Ghana. I'm an educationist, education activist, and inclusive education enthusiast. I also consider myself a pen-Africanist. And in my opinion, I strongly and firmly believe that there's a dire need for a revolution in the field of education, particularly in Africa. I mean, I have taught in South Africa after 14, Kingdom of Bahrain, the Arab Republic of Egypt, and currently teaching in Ghana. And I came to a realization that in Africa, our curricula is not designed or written for us. So if I may give an example, when I was in high school, I had to learn about the French Revolution. I mean, I could not comprehend, I could not relate. I did not know who the French are or what is located geographically. And then I was very fortunate or unfortunate that, you know, I studied teaching and I specialized in history. And, you know, I actually thought of having a different approach to make sure that my students understand the whole concept of French revolution. So when I started teaching, I first contextualized, so I explained to my students what a revolution is and make some practical example from our communities. For example, if people are dissatisfied or they are disgruntled, you know, and then, you know, they revolutionize it slightly to come up. So, and that made me realize that, you know, we are not doing justice to African children. And to this day, you know, we are still teaching the curriculum, which is not for us or by us, which is not relevant. So I strongly firmly believe that as African states, we need to come together and design and write a curriculum which speaks for us, which is what myself and other education activists we are doing. We have brought teachers last, actually this year, we had our first international teacher training where we brought teachers from, you know, Ghana, South Africa, Botswana to come together and discuss, you know, issues around, you know, around education and how we can best, I mean, okay, we can share our best practices. So, yeah, and then, and then this is also scar-folded. I believe that if we teach children from like an Afrocentric perspective, it will help them, you know, to innovatively and creatively solve the problems or the challenges that are in Africa. And that is scar-folded by what Dr. Kwame Kuma said that it's only Africans that can solve African problems. Wow. Fantastic. Sizi, you know, every time you talk about education, it just really gets me thinking. That's, I mean, amazing perspective. I agree with you a thousand percent, you know. Very often I question myself, you know, I question, so usually when I go to my children's school, you know, maybe they have an open day, I don't look at the books, you know, because I'm not really interested in the books. I'm not interested in character development, you know, leadership, social, social skills, social communication, because these are things that people need in the real world. You find, if you look around you, most of the time, the best student in your class, many times, is not usually the most successful if you go back 10 years after, right? Right. So that's say something about the educational system, right? Right. If you look at it, so the truth is we're almost educating ourselves for the West. Well, as you said, by the West and for the West, you know, we're not educating for Africa's problems. Africa's problems are not American problems. And we're not educating for, you know, problem solving, because if we were, and we understood that the problems we're solving are African problems, then our solutions or the solutions that we prefer, you know, would generally be different. So I think we should decolonize just our education, but we should decolonize Africa, you know, holistically, you know, generally. He was talking about the history of Guamankruma, Patrice Lomuba, we again did you mention them? Yeah, yeah. Tomosankara. Tomosankara, very important, very, very important. Tomosankara. You know, I mean, you know, we're not learning about your Lenin and Steli and, you know, the Cold War and World War, but I mean, we have really the beautiful history in Africa. I mean, you know, the ideology that those men you mentioned carried. I think they were the one that was, you know, meant to take Africa forward and unite, you know, dismantle, you know, what, what colonialism has brought, the division in Africa. Well, I agree with you, but I'm going to come from this angle. I still want to seek for a balance. For me, I'm a globalist. I have a globalist ideology, also a pan-African. I believe in Africa and also believe in globalization. I think people should be well educated enough to appreciate their background and also have global views. So you need to understand what happens in, or happened in other climes and also what happened in your own area. Now, we are talking of Nigeria here, where this government was saying they want to scrap out history from the education curriculum. I don't know whether you're aware because of some so called... I think they have already... Because of so called controversies, they think it's a way of ensuring peace. How can you have lasting peace and unity and national cohesion when you don't even understand your history? So I think as much as possible, it's true we need to understand our culture as Africans. We need to be educated in African sense. At the same time, too, it's not a wrong thing to learn what happens in other climes. It should be a balance between both. That's my opinion. I still go back to the system, systemic. Reason why a minister of education will decide to scrap history from education is because he's probably not supposed to have been there in the first place. It was just a political appointment. So this man is not thinking straight. And then the reason why we have the problem, CZ, the reason why we have the problem we're having with education is basically the development of Africa like that rap group was arrested. So it's arrested development. Something happened. We were progressing in a certain way and somebody just stopped it and brought in something new. So the concept of education we have is not progressive. It is... It's not necessarily aggressive, but it is static. So what they brought, this is what they say is education. So we took it and we put it in a box and then we stayed within the limitations of that box, which is why, for instance, if you're studying literature, you're going to see that contemporary poets, what if they're teaching you contemporary poets in literature in university today, you're going to see poets that are not alive. Yeah. And I'm wondering, but you're teaching literature and you're saying contemporary and you show me people who wrote poetry. How is that contemporary? This is all poetry. This is not contemporary. So that's the problem. We took the thing and then we put it in the box and we're unable to open the box or erase the lines and expand the lines we'll fail to do. That's the thing to me, that's the problem. So I agree with you. There's need for a revolution, need for a change, need for things to move forward. Absolutely, absolutely agree. And just to... So I always crack this joke. So if you go to the universities in Nigeria, lecturers have taught there for 20 or 30 years, they've used the same curriculum, they've used the same scheme. And they're very proud about it. They said, I've had this thing before you were born. That's the exact reason why you should throw it in the bin or get it born. But that's what we brag about. Or add to it. Or add to it. Expand it, evolve it, reinvent it. And that's the whole point about education. That's the whole point of education. But these guys, anyway, that is where I'm going to present this PNKK and all these other men, this physics. The world was in secondary school. We did physics, we have M Neocon, M Neocon and Parker. This we are British writers. Okay, British writers, they wrote physics textbook. But they are low KK and M Neocon. They came, they wrote it, but they use it much more applicable to our localities. So if you are studying physics with M Neocon, it's not as easy as studying with PNKK. That's right. If you want to explain the concept of viscosity. We had both. We had, you know, we had, we had something that a foreigner wrote and we had something that, you know, so it was like, I just didn't. So I mean, so it's nice when it's balanced, right? That's the whole point of education. It must be balanced. But you must ask yourself, does a 14-year-old child in America, does they care about African culture? But what I learned is the American guy, does he even care about what's happening in the next county? He's just really, he's just some of them anyway, to some extent. But if you are groomed from leadership, if you are groomed for leadership in the US or this country, you must be a globalist. Let me tell you what I mean. I remember I've been involved in some conferences. You must have a global agenda. Yes, what I mean, global idea, global perspective. Yes, global perspective. I have been opportune to meet with some of these young persons from mostly the western world in conferences. When I see them, they know a lot about your country. Yeah, they know. Most times because they come in and do some research. Yeah, they do research. They want to learn. So when they are talking about Nigeria, Africa, they will meet me and we'll start talking about it. But you know, so it's not wrong to have the answer. If you go to OCD and you call any boy, he might be able to recite to me the names of all the American states. In many cases, yes. So those are the only those who are supposed to be leaders. I'm talking about normal everyday people. It's interesting that all the conversation today is going around education. I think it's very, if we can get education right, you know, I mean, children have been at home for 10 months or something like that or nine months or something like that. It just shows eight months plus. It just shows, you know, the posture and the position of this government and the attitude towards education. Don't value education, right? So anything that, say it again. You don't value education or anything else or anything else. You know, so if you can even get education right, if that's the only thing that we can get right, I think that we can start to make some progress. Education is not only building Red Bruce, Red Bruce, Classroom, all things in the university. We are talking about quality things, infrastructure and other things. The material that you are putting is policies are not as simple as allowing university students to work in firms and learn from them. Not when you want to apply for IT as an engineering student. So I completely will not accept you. No, we don't accept IT students. That's what they would say. Clearly, I mean, if we start talking about this education, we will not exhaust the topic. All right. Thanks, gentlemen. Elijah Felix is next after the break. Please stay with us.