DR PROFESSOR TRANSFORM AQORAU
I’m writing with a deep sense of urgency—and a heavy heart. Everywhere I look across our beautiful islands, I see resilience. Not the kind written about in glossy reports or preached in policy seminars. But the kind that’s woven into fishing nets at dawn, sung in lullabies, passed down by grandmothers, and practiced in the quiet genius of farmers, healers, teachers, and youth who make something out of nothing every day. So why, then, are we letting outsiders tell us what our children should learn?
Once again, we find ourselves staring down a donor-funded project where overseas consultants—paid millions—are flying in to design curriculum for lives they do not live. They don’t know our coasts. They don’t walk our bush tracks. They don’t hear our stories or taste the salt in our air. And yet, they’re hired to define our knowledge systems. It’s as if resilience can be packaged in PowerPoint slides and shipped over in PDFs. But those of us who live here know otherwise.
Follow the Money, Question the Motive
A new education project funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has earmarked over $26 million—yes, you read that right—for overseas consultants to develop a climate resilience for Solomon Islands. Not a cent of that is going toward building real curriculum design capacity in our national institutions. No training for our local educators. No support for teacher education reform. No plan for how we take ownership when the donors leave.
This is not just wasteful—it is insulting. It tells us that someone sitting in an air-conditioned office in Manila or Sydney knows better than our own lecturers, teachers, and parents. That imported technical expertise is somehow more valuable than the lived wisdom of our villages.
Knowledge Is Sovereignty
Curriculum is not neutral. It shapes how our children see themselves, their land, their future. When curriculum is written by people who don’t share our histories, who don’t speak our languages or understand our struggles, then it becomes a tool of alienation. Let’s be clear: this is not partnership. This is paternalism.
We must stop allowing education systems in the Solomon Islands—and across the Pacific—to be engineered from the outside in. We must reject the outdated logic that says knowledge must be validated by foreign consultants to be legitimate. And we must insist—fiercely—that the knowledge of our people is not just relevant. It is essential.
A New Proposal: From the Land, Not the Cloud
What we need now is a radically different approach: Let national institutions in the Solomon Islands and other Pacific countries lead curriculum design, drawing from their own educators, scientists, and cultural knowledge holders. Let local voices—women leaders, chiefs, teachers, and youth—co-create the content. Let development partners redirect funding to building our institutional capacity—not outsourcing our brains. We want curriculum that grows out of the land, out of our realities, our dreams, and our knowledge systems—not something copy-pasted from afar and “localised” as an afterthought.
A Colonial Hangover in Technocratic Clothing
This isn’t just a policy misstep. It’s a continuation of a deeply colonial logic—that others can decide what’s best for us. But the tide is turning. Across the Pacific, people are reclaiming their voices, their narratives, their power. It’s time our education systems caught up. We don’t need “parachute pedagogy” dropped in from above. We need pedagogy rooted in the soil beneath our feet.
So to ADB and all development partners: if you are serious about decolonisation, about resilience, about dignity—then step back and support us to lead. Don’t just fund our schools. Fund our sovereignty.
Reclaiming Our Future
This is not just about curriculum. It’s about control. It’s about who gets to imagine the future of our islands. We say: that right belongs to us.
Dr Professor Transform Aqorau is the Vice-Chancellor of Solomon Islands National University (SINU).
