Q: Can you introduce yourself?

A: My name is Envy Baptist. I am a teacher and I am here now working in the embassy at the Cultural Department. We coordinate mostly the cases of all our students, making sure that they are admitted to Egyptian public universities. We have around 8.500 South-Sudanese students at Egyptian universities, some of them enter through scholarships and others study at their own expense. When it comes to the scholarship is a scholarship that was established a long time ago. Even our leaders like our vice-president graduated a long time ago with the help of this scholarship program for Egyptian universities. So once South Sudan became independent they still maintained it. There are two types of scholarships: On the one hand, we have the scholarship launched by the Egyptian government for South-Sudanese students. They give us every year 250 scholarships for undergraduate students and 50 scholarships for a Master’s degree or Ph.D. With this scholarship, you do not pay the fees. The other costs are on your own expenses. On the other hand, there are those scholarships given by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is the one that is fully funded. And then, apart from those, we have a type of scholarship that was launched at the time of President Mubarak. That is that all South Sudanese need to pay only  10% of the international university fee, so instead of paying 6.000 US dollars, they just pay 600 US dollars per year. 

Q: Which are the requirements for applying for the scholarship?

A: You must have South-Sudanese nationality, your exam certificate cannot be older than two years, birth certificate, original certificate of high school, and valid passport at least six months before the expedition date. We accept all high school certificates that are recognized by the Egyptian government, Khartoum, Uganda, and International. It doesn’t matter as long as you are  South-Sudanese. 

Q: So refugees cannot apply for this scholarship right?

A: No, because if you are a refugee, that means that you are under the protection of the UNHCR, and no longer under the protection of your government, so if anything happens to you it is the UNHCR dealing with that. There is a policy here that if any South Sudanese is arrested even if he is a refugee or not, we always go and try to help him or her, but if they ask for the documentation and he has the blue card, then we really cannot do anything. 

Q: What can you tell me about Wafidin? 

A: Wafidin is a department of the Ministry of Higher Education in Egypt that is dealing with international students. This office facilitates the coordination of students that want to study at a public university in Egypt, and international students from any country. They have an online platform, so even if you are abroad you can apply for it online. Now they have digitalized everything. The Wafidin procedure is the same for all. The Sudanese pay the same fees in Wafidin as others. This is the 2000 EgP for application, then they accept you or not. This 2000 EgP might vary depending on how old your high school certificate is, for example, if it is two years old you only pay 2.000 EgP, and then for every year of antiquity 1.500 EgP are added. So for example, if you did your high school diploma four years ago it is 4.500Egp. And then you pay through the bank or visa. If you go to the bank you need to pay an extra 60 EgP for fees. But you need to pass English in order to apply to any university in Egypt. 

Q: I have a case of an Eritrean student that did the Sudanese senior 3 exams and passed, but Wafidin did not accept his application as an Eritrean he was supposed to do the Eritrean exam. 

A: This is weird, in theory, everyone can access university with the same curriculum, but I think that might have been because of political issues with Eritrea and Ethiopia. But for any person, you have the right to sit for whatever certificate in the world. 

Q: Do you have Sudanese children in public Egyptian schools?

A: Sudanese children can join public universities. The problem is the attitude of the Egyptian children and teachers towards our students. Me, myself, in the beginning, I put my students in an Egyptian public school here, called Modern School, most of them are Egyptian, and every day there was a problem with other students and the teacher that cannot play his or her role. They were suffering bullying because of their color. This made me decide to take out my children from there and put them in one of the learning centers. Like in Sakakini, in the very beginning we were doing the Egyptian curriculum because our intention was to integrate at the long-term our South Sudanese children into public Egyptian education, but what we saw is that the Egyptian government was not willing to cooperate. They were putting so many barriers, for example, the year like if the student was older than the expected age of that grade he could not enter the school. And you know refugee students come here and many of them are older. Here you are supposed to join primary at the age of 6 years, but we have even refugee students in K1 joining at the age of 12, so many of them even could not succeed to enter. And even those that succeed found a lot of difficulties like racism, and the teachers, and this is a reality. You just need to see the number of learning centers that belong to the South-Sudanese community, and then to this you must also add the ones that belong to the Sudanese community.

Q: If you are willing to join a governmental school, are there any barriers?

A: Not really as long as your documents are well, you have the age and you pass the placement test, your passports, birth certificate. And if you join the school from a very young age, there is no problem at all in terms of procedure. 

Q: Does this also apply to refugees?

A: Yes, this also applies to refugees, they also recognize the UNHCR card, even though there are students under the protection of the UNHCR studying at public universities in Egypt. 

Q: How many South- Sudanese community centers are in Egypt?

A: There are actually 27 learning centers that are recognized by the South.-Sudanese Embassy. Because you know the thing is that especially from 2016 onwards, we had the civil war in South Sudan and many people came, so individuals started to rent buildings and open their own learning centers. And it was our duty to go there, see them and recognize them. You know in theory it is the duty of the South Sudanese Embassy in Egypt to provide its people these services, but as we were not doing that at least, recognize the learning centers that were doing the job that we were supposed to do. So we started to visit the learning centers and decide which ones we would give the green light to go ahead, with and which not. 

Q: What were the criteria? 

A: The center needs to be in a separate building, which means for example that if there is a building with neighbors on the other floors, and the learning center is on one of those floors, we cannot recognize that. Or if there is not enough space, enough bathrooms, furniture…Out of 32 centers, we just recognized 27, but those that we do not recognize are still functioning. And last year the ministry of general education in South Sudan came here and had a meeting with the Ministry of Education in Egypt, and he also mentioned these centers. In that meeting, the Egyptians recognized the problem and were willing to help, so they asked the South Sudanese Embassy to provide us with the details of those that supervise the school, and then the Ministry of Education in Egypt would try to help them with giving them formal recognition, training but most important, protection. So the problem is that those that are supervising these centers, most of them are refugees under the protection of the UNHCR, so we cannot deal with them, so we made another trick. We told them, okay you are the director of the school but you have the blue card so you cannot represent the center, but if you send someone who does not have the UNHCR card, he can represent the center as a South-Sudanese. So we asked them to come to the embassy, bring the documents, and then we would send them to the Ministry of Education in Egypt to start this whole procedure of recognition and protection. But they failed to do that, only 14 sent the documents because they do not trust the process, most of the directors that are refugees do not want to send somebody else because if something happens they know that they are responsible. 

Q: Do those 14 have recognition from the Ministry of Education?

A: Not yet, because after starting this whole process we actually realized that if the Ministry of Education in Egypt would recognize those 14 centers, all the others would be forced to close, even those that we do not recognize. And 14 learning centers are not enough to provide education for all the South-Sudanese and other refugees and displaced people that are in the learning centers. Even now some of the schools are being closed by Egyptian forces, for example, the Good Shepherd or another one in Ain Shams, this is because of the neighbors complaining. But it is a problem if those learning centers are closed. 

Q: Those learning centers under the teachers union?

A: If you want to open a school, you first go to the teachers union, then the teacher union will go to the place, see the vila if there is enough space, also the teachers, if they are qualified, if some training will be offered to them, then if the teachers union recognizes them, then the teachers union write us and send us an official letter about that school. Then, we go to that school and see if we can recognize it or not. If we recognize them, we give them a formal document that states that we recognize them and that this center is under the protection of the South-Sudanese Embassy. 

Q: Where are most of the learning centers situated?

A: In Maadi and Ain-Shams

Q: Why do the South-Sudanese learning centers not follow the South Sudanese curriculum?

A: You know, Khartoum is making a lot of money from it so it is not in their interest to get other curriculums introduced. It happened twice where some students sat for the South Sudanese exam in the Embassy for access to university, but a lot of them failed. The Ministry of Education in Egypt was willing to accept the South-Sudanese curriculum and exam, but if so many fail it makes no sense. 

Q: Does North Sudan have its own learning centers and teachers' union? 

A: Yes, Khartoum has its own schools that are opened by the government itself. They call these African centers, which are recognized by the Ministry of Education in Egypt and by the Ministry of Education in Khartoum. It is the embassy itself that opens the Sudanese schools and they also have their Sudanese teacher union. 

Q: Do your learning centers have the right to use the Khartoum curriculum?

A: Yes, our centers have the right to use it and have their students sit the exams. Everyone can do the Khartoum exam either if they have recognition or not. You know those exams are a big source of income for Sudan, so they want as many students as possible to do them. So even the learning centers that we do not recognize can go there, they just need to show their primary certificate and pay the school fees. 

Q: How many Sudanese students of schooling age do you think are just in South-Sudanese learning centers? 

A: I would estimate around 5.500 students, imagine I used to be a teacher in Sakakini and by then there were around 700 students.

Q: If the 14 schools are recognized what kind of protection will they get?

A: The most important is protection. They cannot be closed and none of the neighbors can complain or bother them, also access for training the teachers, partnerships with some of the schools around, minimum salary for the teachers, also we would be able to access the Egyptian schools and maybe do our classes there during the evening as Egyptian schools just do one shift.