By Eric Opa Doue with New Narratives
YARPAH TOWN, River Cess–Betty Miller is a single mother of six children aged six to 13. She is also a farmer, one of many here have struggled to feed and educate their children in the past four years because of poor harvests.
Miller says her three oldest children dropped out of school because she could not pay the fees. The three others are in school, from kindergarten to grade three.
“I was used to make farm to send the children to school, but now when I make the farm no good thing can’t come out,” says Miller, 52, who grows bitter ball and other crops. Miller says she began selling prepared food at the local market here for extra money, but there was still not enough.
Subsistence farming is the most prevalent occupation in Liberia with some estimates saying as many as four in every five Liberians survive on what they grow. As climate change gathers pace farmers are seeing their livelihoods hit by flooding, unpredictable temperatures and rainfall, soil erosion and an infestation of pests. It is a big factor in the massive 20 percent jump in the number of Liberians living in poverty in 2023, according to the World Bank. There are many knock-on effects: increased migration, drug addiction and men leaving families to go to artisanal mining sites. But one new troubling harm, say experts, is the impact on education.
Liberia introduced free and compulsory education until grade nine in 2001 but allowed schools to charge fees to cover expenses. Those extra fees made education too expensive for a growing number of farm families. Many also needed their children to work on the farms. Public schools here report that up to a fifth of students have dropped out this year.
The Education Reform Act, reaffirmed in 2011, was intended to encourage school enrollment and to fulfill the constitutional provision that obligates government to develop the minds of Liberian children. No child can be denied an education, because of fees such as grade entrance examinations, transportation, and food. Schools are allowed to charge fees like the ones Miller says she must pay – for volunteer teachers, the Parent Teacher Association (PTA), and food.
Miller says she pays L$3000 for her child in kindergarten and $L1000 for the other two annually, or about $US31 in total. She says the money she earns from farming and from selling rice and fish snacks barely covers those fees.
“I bless God that I able to send three, but it can’t send all the children,” Miller says.
Miller says four years back she was able to generate enough, sometimes L$5000 in a single week, from the sale of farm produce to pay for all her children’s school fees and other bills. Now she says she is afraid that her girls might end up in a child marriage, or her boys in drug abuse.
“When the children [do] not go to school, mostly the boy children, the way they can turn to Zogos (youth vulnerable to homelessness and drug addiction) can really worry me,” Miller says.
“Climate change is generally responsible for most of the losses and the challenges that farmers are facing right now,” says Jonathan Stewart, executive director and chief executive officer of Agro-Tech Liberia, a consultant to farmers and farm co-operatives. “There is so much of an environmental situation influencing crop production or animal production, whatever it is, in agriculture.”
An informal survey in River Cess by Front Page Africa/New Narratives, found Miller’s situation is typical of most farmers here. Parents say they cannot cover the costs of their children’seducation anymore. Children, like Miller’s, either work on farms with their parents, leave the county for work in the city or in illegal gold mines, or become street vendors, parents say.
Emmanuel Smith, 35, a well-known farmer in this area who has had large farms and profits from his harvests, says the past five years have been a nightmare. Smith and his wife, Saydah, have four sets of twins aged 3 to 14. To help with the farm work, the 14-year-old twins have stopped going to school.
Emmanuel Smith, a well-known farmer with a history large farms and sizeable profits from his harvests, says the past five years has been a nightmare: Photo by Eric Opa Doue/NN.
Smith says the many fees charged plus the required fees are too much for him, because he no longer generates much money because of poor harvests.
“The government school not free because those that in ABC (kindergarten) I think we pay about three thousand for them. Then the ones in first grade to second grade we pay one thousand,” Smith says, “But every month they have their volunteer teachers. Each child, one hundred dollars, and again their eating fees. All those things you calculate before the semester, not small money.”
Gwald denies the school charges fees for volunteer teachers. But he told NN/FPA that more than 20 of the 187 students who enrolled at the beginning of this school year have dropped out because their parents could not afford the fees. More are expected to drop out before the end of the school year.
“Parents complain a lot they don’t have one or two thousand to pay for their children,” says Gwald. “We are expecting them to be able, by right, they should pay, have their uniforms set before entering the school. Elementary, from first grade to six grade, you will pay just one thousand per that school year.”
At Sayouh Public School, also in Timbo district, Principal Daniel Druzon, says about 20 students of an enrollment of 200 have dropped out. He claims parents of students in both kindergarten and elementary are asked to pay just L$1000, even though the government has approved L$3000 for kindergarten.
This farming season, Smith cultivated another big plot of land where he has started planting corn and cassava. In the morning, he and the older twins – staying home from school – work in the fields, while Saydah, prepares food for them. On Miller’s farm, she and her three oldest children are planting bitter ball and cassava, but not much optimism abounds in River Cess for a good harvest.
S. Alberto Dixon, chairperson of Agri Liberia Incorporated, a local farmers’ cooperative in Yarpah Town, agrees complaints from parents about school fees have greatly increased as crops have failed.
“Some will tell you I’ve noticed that the crop is not actually coming up well,” says Dixon. “I’m watering them, but I will see the mekey (pests) getting on them eating up their leaves.”
Liberia has had a dry season that runs from mid-October to mid-April and a rainy season that extends from mid-April to mid-October for as long as anyone remembers. Farmers say they can no longer depend upon that.
“March one, we received heavy downpour of rain,” says Dixon, who is also a teacher at Yarpah Public School. “On the third, we also experienced another heavy downpour of rain. That alone is climate change.”
So-called “smart agriculture” solutions that are helping farmers in the country to adapt to more climate resilient practices have not reached most people here. Until they have other options desperate parents here say they have no option but to sacrifice their children’s future to survive.
This was a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the “Investigating Liberia” project. Funding was provided by the American Jewish World Service and the Swedish Embassy in Liberia. The funders had no say in the story’s content.
