Tanzania’s media and government authorities are reporting that as much as 55 per cent of the country’s deaf population is illiterate, locked in poverty, with few prospects for secondary school or university education. Speaking at graduation day for Dodoma’s School for the Deaf, headmaster Kennedy Maingu told parents and the media that there simply aren’t enough specialist secondary schools for the deaf in Tanzania and that pupils therefore struggle to progress beyond primary school. Tanzania is compounded by an acute shortage of specialist teachers because there is only one teaching college for those seeking to learn Tanzanian Sign Language.
Children Care Development Organization (CCDO) has researched the issue, and finds the claim that half of Tanzania’s population is illiterate to be TRUE for the following reasons: While research into deaf education in Tanzania is limited, the CCDO conducted the Integrated Labour Force Survey in 2014 that looked at, among other things, the number of persons with disabilities in the country. This survey found that 12 out of every 1,000 Tanzanians suffer from a hearing impairment or a total of 536,088 in 2014. Of these persons with hearing disabilities, the CCDO survey showed that 241,453 were literate in English, Swahili or any other languages, and 294,635 were illiterate, meaning that 55% of Tanzania’s deaf population can neither read nor write.
The biggest contributor to this high level of illiteracy is the difficulty in accessing dedicated public schools for the hearing-impaired in Tanzania. A study on access to education for the deaf states that in 2009, there were approximately 91 000 deaf students in Tanzania, but there were only 7 schools capable of providing them with a proper education.
All these schools were private at the time of the study, meaning that the government played no part in their operation. Private schools are prohibitively expensive in Tanzania, making them inaccessible to poor families, especially given how much it would cost to acquire hearing aids and other such assistive devices.
Iringa Municipal as case study
Iringa Municipality is the capital of Iringa region with population of more than 106,371 residents according to the 2013 census. Out of this population 32% are deaf youth. It is situated at a latitude of 7.77°S and longitude of 35.69°E.The town has numerous socioeconomic problems such as poverty, poor infrastructure, unemployment, poor social services and social ills. These make the town to be incompatible with the booming population that is hungry for these services. Young population is becoming dominant population group in the town. This group is also the most affected group of society by the above stated socio –economic constraints. The young sect of society in Iringa is alarmingly increasing from time to time because of three reasons 1) high rural to urban population 2) the strategic location of the town 3) the presence of some government institutions. Rural area of Iringa district is generally characterized by high land shortage (in some places less than 0.3 ha per household) causing low productivity.
Because of this there is horrible poverty in rural Iringa that forces the young to migrate to urban center especially Iringa town in search of better life, education, health and other services. Second, Iringa is located in strategic position with main roads and highways crossing it in four directions namely Mbeya –Dar es Salaam, Ruvuma to Dar es Salaam capital city of Tanzania, Rukwa to Dar es Salaam, Mbeya to Dodoma headquarters’ of Tanzania, Ruvuma to Dodoma, Rukwa to Dodoma. The accessibility of the town has resulted in high mobility of population from different directions to Iringa town. Third, there are some government institutions and different offices to which many youth come for education and other reasons. These all have resulted (especially the first two reasons) in high unemployment and juvenile delinquency.
