Absenteeism is one of the main problems affecting education in Africa. To address the problem, DRC is betting on technologies. 

Last Thursday, Tony Mwaba Kazadi (photo, left), DR Congo’s Minister of Primary, Secondary, and Technical Education, inaugurated a digital attendance tracking system in Gombe. The system will allow the government to check the daily attendance of teachers under the Ministry of Primary, Secondary, and Technical Education. 

According to Minister Mwaba Kazadi, the attendance system is “part of a positive sanction scheme that comes after punitive sanctions, which are still necessary to rehabilitate the education sector that once lacked strong leadership and exemplary governance.”  

“You are now invited to use this tech system [...] which helps the Ministry [of Primary and Secondary Education] end absenteeism. It will provide credible data on the active workforce for an improved school administration. The human resource management department will also have to send us credible attendance rates to help us improve work performance,”  he added. 

Henceforth, teachers and administrative staff will use their biometric cards to certify their presence in classrooms and offices. The system is implemented to fight problems like absenteeism and duplicate records (by ghost workers) that affect the country’s education sector. It will also modernize the administration by capitalizing on modern technologies. 

It is initiated to stabilize the formerly unstable public administration. With that digital attendance system, the country hopes to significantly reduce teachers’ absenteeism rate which is one of the reasons students’ achievements have dropped in recent years.  

Samira Njoya