Minister of Education, Innovation, Youth, Sports, Arts and Culture Sanet Steenkamp has called for renewed commitment to learners' dignity, well-being and access to quality education as Namibia joins the rest of Africa in commemorating the Day of the African Child. 

The minister recalled the 1976 Soweto Uprising, when children were killed while demanding the right to quality education.

Steenkamp described the three critical elements in the life of the dignity and the well-being and the development of every child, saying that all children matter.

"All they did and all they wanted was the right to good and quality education. One that would uplift them as citizens." 

Dr Steenkamp said the ministry is taking an integrated approach that links water, sanitation and hygiene to school infrastructure and feeding programmes.

"We work very hard to ensure that we have sanitation programmes within our schools and that children from a very young age, even in underserved areas, learn about hygiene and how important that is." 

She gave reassurance to the nation that the government is working to ensure that infrastructure development is upgraded. 

The minister also urged Namibians to remember their own childhoods and to support children in homes, communities and across the continent.

"May we all remember that we all were once children and that we not forget what it means to be warm and uplifting and to believe in our children in Namibia, in our households, in the communities and, of course, on the continent."