Search Page

Fifteen of the 80 students enrolled with the Namibia College of Open Learning will not write their end of year exams after a teacher allegedly misappropriated their examination fees. It is suspected he used the money to settle personal accounts. The students will not be able to sit their exams this year as the fraud was discovered too late.

Malawi's Education Minister has been arrested for using public funds for his wedding. The minister, now dismissed from his job, has denied the charges of having used a cheque meant to be spent on a cancelled official meeting to pay for the wedding reception at a hotel.

The legal advisor to the Eduardo Mondlane University has denied that there was anything improper in giving scholarships to people who do not work at the university. In 2003 alone, over 147,000 US dollars, money that should have been used to send teachers to take further degrees abroad, in order to build up the institutional capacity of the university, were allegedly spent instead on the Vice-Chancellor's daughter, two children of the head of the universities public relations and 16 others.

An official in the Ministry of Higher Education, who was apprehended on suspicion of theft from a government safe, is still in police custody, while investigations involving about N$98,300, which disappeared from a government safe, could reveal other suspects.

A spokes-person at the World Bank refutes that 100 million dollars were embezzled but acknowledges the problem of corruption.

Funds allocated for teaching and public services are often embezzled in Sub-Saharan Africa by corrupt officers, to the detriment of development.

The children know that they can pay to get better marks. Other methods are also familiar such as sale of diplomas, « correction » of the mark report or embezzlement of school money by the teachers.