At a recent TEDx event, hosted by the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group, Irene Khan (former Secretary General of Amnesty International) made a compelling presentation on gender and global issues. Ms Khan shared a statistic that over a week later still jars my senses:
70% of all girls who do not go to school are in Africa.
According to UNICEF figures from October 2009, about 101 million children are not in school. Of that 101 million, fifty percent are girls, so approximately 50 million. If 70% of those girls are in Africa, that is a whopping 35 million who should be getting an education that are not.
We have heard often enough that if you educate a girl, you educate a nation. Or you give a woman a micro loan and you change the economic outcome of that woman, her family, the community she lives and does business in, the region, and perhaps even the continent. You only have to read Half the Sky (or better still, join the movement) to understand how fundamentally important the education and well-being of women is for the well-being of all of us.
That 70% of girls who do not go to school are in Africa is tragic. That we bother to talk about Africa and its development while failing to address the big white elephant in the room, is insane.
As the Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED) says so well:
When you educate a girl in Africa, everything changes. She’ll be three times less likely to get HIV/AIDS, earn 25 percent more income and have a smaller, healthier family.
Educating Africa’s children is important. Educating Africa’s girls is critical because it can save nations and the world’s second most populous continent. You simply cannot talk about Africa’s development without talking about the education of the continent’s girls. The MDGs and other hopes we have for a better world will elude us and remain pipe dreams because
… if girls are left behind, those goals can never be achieved.
CommAfrica 