Posted on 08/08/2012 9:20:08 AM PDT by Steve Peacock
Five-and-a-half million textbooks destined for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders in Ethiopia are being provided through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which today revealed that it awarded a $5.9 million contract to a South African company for the material. Kadimah Education, an affiliate of the Cape Town-based Kadimah Trading Corporation, within 90 days must deliver the books -- whose covers and inside jackets are to be adorned with the Ethiopian flag as well as the logos of USAID and AAMU (Alabama A&M University). AAMU in 2009 received a separate $13 million grant for an Ethiopian literacy project, which the university touted at the time as "part of USAID's broader $600 million Africa Education Initiative."
Source document: Contract award #AID-663-C-12-00010.
FOR ADDITIONAL REGIONAL COVERAGE, SEE THE MONITOR'S AFRICA PAGE and ETHIOPIA PAGE.
FOR FURTHER COVERAGE OF THE U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, PLEASE VISIT THE MONITOR'S USAID PAGE.
ALSO SEE THE MONITOR'S EDUCATION PAGE.
As long as the books don’t teach them to hate Jews, this doesn’t seem so bad to me. And at least we get credit on the cover.
Maybe we should provide free textbooks to the palestinians and other Muslim countries. It’d be a way of taking some of the hate out of what they teach their kids.
Would those include “Heather Has Two Mommies”?
5.5 million textbooks at a cost of $5.9 million? Am I reading this right, or is the cost about a dollar a textbook?
Why can’t we get textbooks for American students at a dollar a textbook?
I leave it to the reader to decide whether it’s: (1) a wise and humanitarian investment of their tax dollars or: (2) a liberal waste of funds that could be better used here (whether for US schools or for taxpayer relief). The article/news brief simply states the facts.
You are correct in that estimate. The company that got the contract is a South African corporation with an Education division. There is a link to the company website via the original article that may or may not shed more light on what they are all about, whether they are a wholesaler, a publisher, or simply a reseller of outdated textbooks with new covers.
Probably “A People’s History of the United States”
This means the publishers lobbied for the program and charged the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. The Senators involved will claim we provided aid to Africans.
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