Ediya Atiferaw, 32, is married and lives with her first born who is two years and three months old. Ediya works full time in a private company around Kera, in Nifas Silk Lafto District, and has been sending her daughter to a baby daycare named Parrot Nursery and Kindergarten since December, 2013.
“I first sent my child to the centre when my housemaid left me five months ago,” Ediya explains.
Even though Ediya managed to hire another helper at home, she still kept her daughter enrolled at the centre. This is due to the significant positive changes she has observed in her daughter after days spent at the centre.
“Previously, my child was afraid of people outside of the family, but in the last five months she has become more sociable and alert, with better communication,” says Ediya.
Parrot Nursery and Kindergarten, which is owned by Wagaye Taddesse and located around Sar Bet in Nifas Silk Lafto District, was established in 2007. Wagaye was an elementary school teacher for twenty years before opening up a daycare and remembers trying times in the earlier days of her business.
“There were only seven children in the first year, but I didn’t feel bad because I love spending time with them,” says Wagaye.
Currently there are 25 children in the centre, between the ages of one and a half and three years. There are five caregivers, who are each paid between a 1,000-1,500 Br in monthly salary, including a monthly transportation stipend. Among this five, only one of them has undergone formal training at a now defunct non-governmental organisation (NGO), according to the owner of the daycare.
The centre, which lies on a 500 sqm plot of land, includes safe playing grounds and basic facilities for children. The school provides its service in two programmes: one where the children stay until noon and the other where they stay until three in the afternoon, paying quarterly (every two and a half months) tuition of 2,200 and 2,700 Br, respectively.
The centre – whose capital has reached 100,000 Br – has many potential customers ready to register their children in the facility. However, due to the limitation of space in and a lack of trained caregivers, the centre is obliged to limit its services, disappointing the parents that come to its door.
The major challenge in the sector is the scarcity of equipped professional caregivers, according to Wagaye. Sister Nigatua Degefu, the owner of ‘Melkam Ejoch’ daycare and kindergarten, agrees with this. Nigatua has more than 20 years of experience as a nurse, specialising in maternal and child health, and opened the daycare centre at around the same time as Parrot Nursery.
Hiring professional and trained caregivers for the children has been identified as a key hindrance in the business of daycares, according to the nurse.
“Even if demand for daycares is still increasing, the involvement of the government and private investors in creating professionals is very low,” says Negatua.
The centre charges 1,200 Br a month for children less than one year old and 700 Br for those older, according to a mother who has a two-year-old son in the centre. A sociologist working at an NGO around Wollo Sefer in the Bole District identified the proximity of the centre as the main reason for enrolling her child in the institution two months ago.
Negatua started her business after noticing the growing need for working mothers to leave their children at a reliable place during office hours.
“I left my previous job to start this centre,” Negatua told Fortune.
Venturing into a new business, especially without prior business experience, is a challenge Negatua says was made easier thanks to her reliable landlord. The area she has secured for the daycare centre has reduced her concerns, as that in itself is a big handicap for businesses in the city, according to Negatua.
“Even though I don’t remember the exact figures, the major costs during the establishment of Melkam Ejoch were attributed to purchasing foams, carpets, pillows, dolls, tables and chairs,” says Negatua.
Both daycare centres, Melkam Ejoch and Parrot Nursery and Kindergarten, are operating with a kindergarten license, though the main activities of the two institutions extends their focus onto both parts of the business.
Hawaz Haile’eyasus wrote his undergraduate thesis paper on the quality of childcare services within daycare centres in Addis Abeba in 2013. This paper states that the majority of the daycare centres are operating without licenses or certification. There are a number of problems in the daycare centres in the city, according to his study.
The educational background and training of the majority of caregivers in the city was found to be subpar. The majority of them had only primary and secondary-level education; similarly, roughly half of them did not have any training appropriate for the job.
Limited material provision in the facilities was also another problem identified in the paper. The amount of equipment available to the number of children enrolled is disproportionate. The business demands sizeable investments that have thus far been insufficient, the study explains.
The majority of daycare centres are run in very confined and small places; some in condominiums. The implication of this in the development of the children can be negative. Children’s psychomotor development (relating to movement origination in conscious mental activity) can be affected by the lack of playgrounds and open spaces, according to the same research. Caregivers are more concerned and sensitive to the physical wellbeing of the children than to other developmental domains.
Standards of practice and quality should be implemented as a mechanism to control and enforce best practices, and to manage problems and challenges. This reform is urgent, according to Anteneh Meteku, Deputy Director of the Addis Abeba City Administration Food, Medicine and Health Care and Control Authority.
The Authority has registered and licensed 17 daycare facilities – a figure worryingly excluding the number of daycare facilities operating outside of the knowledge, monitoring and health and safety certificates of the appropriate government agency, according to the Authority.
Since the authority separated from the city’s health bureau two years ago, it is trying to enforce required registration of these kinds of services more strictly through the industry and trade bureaus of Woredas in the city, according to Anteneh.
The authority also has plans to delegate its power to districts for efficient management and regulation of the sector starting next fiscal year.
Mulualem Tefera, an expert on kindergarten education at the Addis Abeba Education Bureau, says children who enter into kindergarten after daycare perform better and will have better social skills and a sense of order. This is because they get enough preparation in terms of attention and support for the next cycle of education.
“Daycares are not the centre of education, but they are preparatory in the cognitive development, as well as the physical strength, of the child,” Mulualem elaborates.
For the current problems that are sewn in the fabric of these centres, Hawaz recommends that NGOs and private sector businesses need to get involved in establishing training institutions to fill the gap. He claims it is profitable since baby daycare services are in high demand in the city from the constantly growing number of working mothers.
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