‘Daily News’, UCSAF seal education material deal

ROSE ATHUMANI

TANZANIA Standard (Newspapers) Limited (TSN) and Universal Communications Service Access Fund (UCSAF) have entered into an agreement in which the latter will provide education materials that will be distributed to schools.

Speaking during the signing ceremony at the UCSAF premises, the fund’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Engineer Peter Ulanga, said provision of education materials was vital for pupils and students as the fund linked primary and secondary schools to the internet.

“As a public institution, our target is the public ... critical point is building an educated society that will be in a position to address life’s challenges in areas they are living in. We see this project as very important and we believe this is among the critical projects that we have,” Eng. Ulanga noted.

TSN publishes the ‘Daily News’, ‘Sunday News’, ‘HabariLeo’, ‘HabariLeo Jumapili’ and ‘SpotiLeo’.

The CEO said the initiative was in line with the Fund’s important projects, noting that the education initiative was among their most important projects.

He noted further that the initiative was also in line with one of UCSAF projects to provide laptops to teachers on loan system, who will use them for teaching and for their own personal use. Eng Ulanga said the laptops will enable teachers to manage and operate technological facilities and in turn impact the knowledge to students.

“This is very critical to build a society focused on its own development but this will only be possible by providing them with the right educative content, that will assist them address challenges they face in the societies they live in,” he explained.

“As you can see .... we are heading toward a big picture ... you provide the content, while we provide the computers and empower the teachers. So we are building a big picture that will bring positive changes in the education sector in the future,” Eng Ulanga explained.

Representing TSN, the company’s Head of Research and Publications, who is also the project’s manager, Ms Ichikaeli Maro, expressed gratitude to the Fund for accepting to work with TSN in the education initiative, which is aimed at providing education materials for revision purposes.

Ms Maro said through the government newspapers’ company educational pullouts – ‘Academy’ in the ‘Daily News’ and ‘Elimika’ in ‘Habari Leo’, students in primary and secondary schools will be able to access education material on various subjects, including Mathematics and Kiswahili.

She noted that UCSAF agreed to pay teachers who contribute mathematic content in the ‘Academy’ and Kiswahili material in ‘Elimika’. “The main objective is to assist primary and secondary schools access extra education reference materials that will broaden their understanding of the different subjects,” she said.

She added: “Every time we publish these pullouts, we have noticed that our sales go up because schools buy our newspapers to access the educational publications.’’

Ms Maro added that TSN has also been receiving pupils and students asking for the educational pullouts for revision during exams, enhancing the need to expand circulation of the publication to schools.

UCSAF is focused on, among others, issues ensuring access to communications in rural and urban areas where there is no communications and promoting involvement of the private sector in providing communication services in rural area and areas where access to the service is low.