EP: Africans should adopt a national service
Photo: Last week’s military and academic graduation at Sawa.
25 Aug 2021 – (EP) Sawa is located in inhospitable, isolated terrain near Eritrea’s western border with Sudan, where temperatures in summer can reach up to 40°C. It is divided into educational and military areas and, in total, can accommodate up to 30,000 students.
The two principal objectives of the national service in Eritrea are to consolidate harmony and social cohesion among different Eritrean ethnic new generations and deliver formidable and well-disciplined defence forces.
By law, every single student in Eritrea must spend their final year of high school at Sawa’s Warsai Yikealo Secondary School and Vocational Training Centre — no matter where they are from or where they attended classes before.
Sawa is a kind of egalitarianism designed to level the educational playing field, ultimately ensuring that all students have equal access to higher education.
At the beginning of each school year, grade 12 students are bused in from all over the country. Most, but not all, are the age of 18 and over.
The year at Sawa is divided into two months of physical fitness training and military discipline; four months of military training, which includes weapons handling and a three-week “war-like simulation exercise”; and six months of academic teaching.
The size of Eritrea’s population is small (3.6 million, according to President advisor Yemane Gebreab), particularly when compared to its neighbours. However, according to the Human Rights Watch (HRW), during peacetime, the military of Eritrea had numbers approximately 50,000 with a reserve force of approximately 250,000.
Since its establishment in 1994, over half a million Eritreans have received military training programs at Sawa.
If Eritrea is dragged suddenly into an untimely war, you would have active (pictured), well-trained soldiers ready to defend their country within 48 hours.
Via Ep