By Vincent Gunde

District Commissioner for Dowa Stallichi Mwambiwa, has called on chiefs in the district to be in the forefront of protecting girl child for them to be in school so that they take part in the development of their areas, communities, district and the country as a whole.

Mwambiwa asked education stakeholders in the district to review what they have done from 2020 to this date on the protection of girl child observing that a number of girls are getting married with some getting early pregnancies thereby increasing the number of drop out from school girls in the district.

He said the laws are now changing to favor girls to be in schools as leaders of today and tomorrow the same as Land Act saying government is doing this to make sure that girls are protected from early marriages and pregnancies.

Speaking during the Dowa district commemoration of Day of African Child held at Mnkhamanga primary school in the area of Inkosi Mponela in the district, Mwambiwa said the district thought of commemorating the day at Mnkhamanga because the area has a campsite for construction workers for the M1 Road project.

Mwambiwa said government is implementing school block construction projects in the district to make sure that all the children are learning in a good environment saying Mnkhamanga school is one, benefiting from the project.

He said in Dowa, government is constructing 175 school blocks across the district so that no child is left behind in receiving quality of education assuring the communities that 860 new primary school teachers to employed will be deployed to all the schools in the remotest areas of the district.

The DC lamented that beside government and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) providing all the support to keep children in schools, there are many children that are not going to school describing this as a worrisome development.

He called upon all stakeholders in the district to work together in sensitizing the rural communities on the importance of sending girl child to school saying educating girls, is educating the whole nation hence a great need to join hands with the government to make sure that girls are safeguarded.

Mwambiwa then, called on girls not to look down at themselves as not important in the society assuring them to work hard in school and refraining from early marriages and pregnancies because these two things can destroy the country.

“Government alone cannot keep girls in school, let us all work together to ensure that girls are in schools for them to be productive citizens of this country,” he said.

Dowa district commemoration of the Day of African Child was conducted as a replica of the same function which was held at the Bingu International Conference Centre (BICC) in Lilongwe on the 16th June, 2025 under the theme ´Planning and Budgeting the children’s rights,”.

African countries commemorate the Day of African Child on 16th June of every year to honor black South African children that were massacred by the white apartheid government when they went into the streets protesting demanding for equal education rights.

The Day of African Child commemoration in Dowa was spiced up by traditional dances, poems, drama and the Children’s Parliament and to mark the day colorful, children, chiefs and education stakeholders carrying placards marched through the M1 road to Mnkhamanga school ground where the function was held.