The British Council’s track record of supporting peacekeeping through the development of English stretches back to the mid-1990s and has covered 40 countries.
In Ethiopia we have established a network of centres in collaboration with the Ministry of National Defence and Federal Police where we train future Ethiopian peacekeepers to reach internationally accepted levels of English.
We provide equipment and education materials for our twelve centres across the country, and extensive training for 60 Ethiopian civilian teachers of English, as well as EMOND and Federal Police officials. We also have regular monitoring visits to these centres where we observe the teachers and give them feedback.
Our success can be measured by the fact that over 80% of our trainees have been deployed since we started training in 2008, and that the standard of Ethiopian peacekeepers’ English has been increasingly recognised as good by mission partners.
We also have peacekeeping centres in Somaliland and Djibouti. We have two centres in Somaliland which are in Hargeisa and Berbera whereas in Djibouti we have one centre. The team in Ethiopia visits the centres in the above two countries and supports the teachers on a regular basis.