ADB FUNDS PRE-UNIVERSITY SCHOOL IN SOFALA 03-09-2004   Mozambique`s literacy rate increased from 39 percent to 48 percent between 1997 and 2003, a Maputo official has announced.

The African Development Bank (ADB) has approved funding of two million US dollars to build a pre-university school in Caia district, in the central Mozambican province of Sofala. Construction has been under way since mid-August, and is in the hands of a Chinese building company.

The school should be complete in the first quarter of 2005.

The Sofala provincial education director, Francisco Itai Meque, told AIM that the school will have 20 classrooms, and a hostel with the capacity to accommodate 120 students. The complex also includes eight houses for teachers, offices and a laboratory.

Itai Meque said the school will draw its students from the northern part of Sofala - which covers the districts of Chemba, Marromeu, Maringue, Cheringoma, Muanza, Gorongosa and Caia itself.

Previously pupils from these districts who wanted to study for university entrance had to attend pre-university schools in Beira or Dondo, a long way from their homes.

This is one of the largest public education projects undertaken in Sofala in recent years. Itai Meque claimed that, once this school is operating, it will open new development prospects for the whole northern part of the province.

This is an area severely damaged by the apartheid-backed Renamo rebels during the war of destabilisation. Renamo destroyed most of the schools in northern Sofala, but since the end of the war in 1992 they have been rebuilt, often with the use of local materials and the involvement of local communities.

Fonte: AIM