Students’ Life under Africa’s Strictest Lockdown
A survey of Ugandan students suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected their mental health and future plans.
This post, written by UC Berkeley graduate student Livia Alfonsi, details the results of a recent phone survey of Ugandan students as a part of a CEGA-funded project with co-investigators Mary Namubiru (BRAC) and Sara Spaziani (Brown University). This is part of a series of posts highlighting COVID-19 related research conducted by CEGA affiliated faculty and CEGA-funded PhD students.
To curb the spread of COVID-19, Uganda implemented one of Africa’s strictest lockdowns. With all educational institutions closed indefinitely since March 20th, students, and in particular, those attending boarding schools, found their daily lives in total disarray. To understand how the pandemic affected students’ mental health and future plans, as well as how they spend their time during the lockdown, we conducted a phone survey with students enrolled in the National Certificate Course at five Vocational Training Institutes (VTIs) across central and eastern Uganda. In previous work, we collected data on these students’ socio-economic background, mental health, and labor market expectations.
We find that students are physically uprooted, many have no access to instructors, find it difficult to distance learn, and face high uncertainty about their future.
ADJUSTING TO A NEW LIVING SPACE:
VTIs are a common route through which workers acquire skills in Uganda. They are usually boarding schools where students between 16 and 22 years old live for two years while studying to become vocational workers — plumbers, welders, hairdressers, tailors, etc. School closures forced all students to find new accommodations. The vast majority of students returned to live with family members. Roughly half have less access to power, 53% have worse access to the internet, while 50% of the respondents consider their new accommodations worse than their boarding school residences. These figures are significantly worse for students with lower socio-economic backgrounds.
WORKING FOR THE FIRST TIME:
While all VTIs respected the lockdown, 23% of the students reported that, in their area, some non-essential businesses remained open. So it is not surprising that since the beginning of the lockdown, over 30% of the students have been working — and not sporadically (between April 1st and June 15th, students who worked did so for an average of 32 days, mostly for pay). Interestingly, less than half as many of the female students as male students worked, and those who worked did so for fewer days. One explanation could be that female students were required to help with domestic work and childcare. Another explanation could be that the sectors characterized by a stricter lockdown are female-dominated (hairdressing, hotel services, teachers, and catering/restaurants).
For roughly half of the students who worked, this was their first-ever employment. This is likely to affect these students’ placements and thereby geographical locations following graduation. Indeed, 55% of these working students will consider going back to their new jobs after training (half of those with a higher wage or better role).
KEEPING UP WITH THE SYLLABUS AND THE VTI COMMUNITY:
Immediately before the lockdown, VTIs’ management and teachers prepared materials to help students continue their studies remotely. But these resources only covered 3–4 weeks of class time. To supplement, teachers created WhatsApp groups through which to share new material, but WhatsApp penetration is not very high among students in the sample and only 26% of them have used teacher-prepared materials to catch up with the syllabus. This is important because syllabus completion is critical, as these students need to take national examinations that follow a predetermined syllabus. The rest have either practiced through self-prepared or online material (54%) or have not practiced (20%), and roughly half of the students have not heard from a teacher at all. Students have instead maintained contact with their classmates: some have communicated through the school-arranged WhatsApp groups (23%), while most communicate independently via phone, Facebook, or WhatsApp (69%). Only 8% of the students have not been in contact with any classmate.
WORRYING ABOUT THE FUTURE:
Mental health has worsened over the course of the pandemic. Almost all students reported experiencing feelings of anxiety since the start of the outbreak. For 75% of students, the cause of anxiety is not related to health concerns, even though students have a good understanding of the effects of COVID-19. Anxiety is largely tied to economic conditions worsening for their households, or fear of not completing the vocational training course. This is not surprising considering that 30% of households had to sell livestock or other household assets to make ends meet as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.
Additionally, most of the students’ families included at least one member who lost their job temporarily (56%) or permanently (7%), experienced a reduction in working hours or hourly wage (30%), or closed down their business (44% temporarily and 6% permanently). Even though students’ expectations over their job prospects after graduation have grown significantly more pessimistic, almost everyone is committed to finishing the course. Families will likely do whatever it takes to allow their children to complete the course in order to get the certificate, given that 3/4 of the program has been paid for already. However, only once the schools reopen we will know the magnitudes of drop-out rates. These findings, paired with two follow-ups to be conducted in the next 12 months, will be useful to understand how the COVID-19 shock exacerbated pre-existing inequalities in learning opportunities and access to jobs.
