health sectors. The underlying causes of absenteeism and abscondment should be thoroughly investigated. 4.4.4 Government should review the current ceiling on recruitment of primary school teachers and provide more resources for the construction of classrooms to reduce congestion and provide where they are lacking. 4.4.5 Government should devise mechanisms for incentives to enhance the motivation of staff and service providers in the education and health sectors in order to ensure retention of those trained and improve quality of service delivery in the two sectors. In the education sector, incentives should also target luring teachers to the hard-to-live-in and the hardto-reach areas. 4.4.6 Government policy on the retention in school of the girl child as stipulated in the Education Act of 2008 should be strictly enforced, through for example, instituting punitive measures against parents who marry off children below 18 years of age, and the men who marry them. 4.4.7 Government should, in collaboration with stakeholders, put in place mechanisms to address challenges of sexual violence including sexual harassment faced by girls in the school systems at UPE and USE levels. The Ministries of Education and Sports; Gender, Labour and Social Development; and Justice and Constitutional Affairs should put in place a law and policy on sexual harassment with punitive and compensatory measures that all schools must adhere to. Implementation of the policy should also be linked to the existing policy and regulatory framework on sexual offences. 4.4.8 Government should expedite the Ratification of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People‟s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (The Maputo Protocol). 4.4.9 Government should ensure that the broader Rural Development Strategy does not dilute mandates of, and priorities already identified by, constituent sectors such as agriculture, transport, energy, education, health, trade and commerce, community development, etc. The Rural Development strategy should be used to promote coherence in sector strategies, synergy between sectors and rationalisation of resource allocation but implementation responsibility should remain with individual sectors working in rural development.