In his seminal book on why some
countries are poor and others rich, the Wealth and Poverty of Nations,
renowned historian David Landes wrote that the economic implications of
gender discrimination are too huge for nations who want to thrive.
“To
deny women is to deprive a country of labour and talent,” he said.
Landes argued that the best clue to a
nation’s growth and development potential is the status and role of
women. The more opportunities they get, the higher the chance for
economic success. “To be sure, any society will have its achievers no
matter what, if only because it has its own division of tasks and
spoils,” Landes, who was a Professor of Economics and History before his
death in 2013, said. “But it cannot compete with other societies that
ask performance from the full pool of talent.”
On Wednesday, which was International
Day of the Girl, ONE, an global campaigning and advocacy organization of
more than eight million people taking action to end extreme poverty and
preventable diseases, particularly in Africa, launched a report titled:
‘The Toughest Places for a Girl to Get an Education’. Out of the 10
countries that topped the list, nine were from Africa, with Afghanistan
completing the list.
“To improve girls’ education globally,
we need to pay special attention to Africa,” the report said. “No
African countries are among the best performing 25 per cent of all
countries ranked, and only four African countries (seven per cent) are
in the best-performing 50 per cent of ranked countries. Overall, African
countries had a median score of 52, compared with the Americas at 79,
Asia also at 79 and Europe at 87.”
The report highlights the paradox that
has puzzled economic forecasters about 21st Century Africa. On one hand,
with a growing young demography and the embrace of entrepreneurship,
there is a rising optimism that the continent is about to rise from the
backwater of economic history. But educational systems across Africa,
especially as it relates to the girl-child, as highlighted by the ONE
report, has no spine to support progress.
While most policymakers on the continent
agree that educating girls is important, there is little on the
continent that reflects such belief. In South Sudan, the country which
tops ONE’s notorious index, 73 per cent of girls don’t go to primary
school and its government spends just 2.6 per cent of its total budget
on education. In Burkina Faso, just one per cent of girls complete
secondary school. And, in Ethiopia, two in every five girls marry before
their 18th birthday, and nearly one in five marries before they clock
15.
“We are having an education crisis on
the African continent,” ONE’s Nigeria Country Director, Serah Makka,
told THISDAY. “These numbers say that there is a state of emergency
which, if we do not address, will kill all of us. My worry is that we
have not found a way to get everybody’s attention to treat this as a
dangerous epidemic that it is. This is why ONE has compiled this report,
to throw more light on the problem’s severity.”
Nigeria, perhaps Africa’s most promising
economic giant, is ranked 27th on the index, which collected and
analysed data for 122 United Nations member countries. However, the
country’s ‘kind’ ranking is masked by acute regional disparities. In the
country’s North-east region, for example, “the violent extremist group
Boko Haram (which translates as ‘western education is forbidden’) poses
increased obstacles to girls completing their education. Boko Haram
kidnapped 276 schoolgirls in Chibok in 2014. As of 2016, over 1,000
schools in the region had been damaged or destroyed and 1,500 schools
had closed. This means that while Nigeria as a whole doesn’t make our
list of toughest countries, at a regional level North-east Nigeria is a
tougher place for a girl to get educated than other regions in the
country. In Nigeria’s South-south geopolitical zone, five per cent of
girls have never been to school, whereas this figure increases more than
10-fold (to 52 per cent) in the North-east,” the report said.
“The problem with Nigeria is that we
have good policies but implementation is the problem,” Makka said. “You
cannot leave over 50 per cent of girls in the North uneducated and think
you are ready for the future. It does not make sense.”
One characteristic evident in every country in the index’s top 10 is conflict and poverty. But poor countries are not necessarily condemned to poor performance. Burundi has the world’s lowest national income per capital at $286 USD, but it outperforms 18 other wealthier countries. And, ironically, the benefits of educating the girl-child far outweigh the cost. “Our research shows a strong relationship between girls’ primary school completion rates and their literacy rates,” the ONE report said. “On a global level, addressing the gender gap in education could yield between $112 billion and $152 billion USD a year in developing countries.”
One characteristic evident in every country in the index’s top 10 is conflict and poverty. But poor countries are not necessarily condemned to poor performance. Burundi has the world’s lowest national income per capital at $286 USD, but it outperforms 18 other wealthier countries. And, ironically, the benefits of educating the girl-child far outweigh the cost. “Our research shows a strong relationship between girls’ primary school completion rates and their literacy rates,” the ONE report said. “On a global level, addressing the gender gap in education could yield between $112 billion and $152 billion USD a year in developing countries.”
It is almost impossible to exaggerate
the value of educating girls. When more girls are in school, a country’s
adolescent fertility rates are likely to dip. This, of course, extends
to the rise of more women who wait until adulthood to have children and
are armed with much more sophisticated knowledge-tools to make better
decisions for their health and future offspring.
However, ensuring all girls get the
education they deserve will take a global effort – and will require
increased financing and policy reforms, the ONE report said. The
advocacy group is advocating for “Governments to work towards allocating
20 per cent of transparent national budgets to education. Only two of
the 10 toughest countries for a girl to get an education meet this
target proposed by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE).”
Also, “donor governments should increase
global education financing. This includes fully funding existing
multilateral mechanisms such as the GPE and Education Cannot Wait, and
establishing the proposed International Finance Facility for Education.
GPE operates in all the 10 toughest countries and has a proven track
record of success.”
Still national governments have a part
to play as they are expected to “implement an education policy agenda
that will break every barrier to girls’ education, invest in every
teacher, monitor every outcome and connect every classroom.”
To create the index, ONE chose 11 factors that reflect girls’ access to and completion of school, the quality of education in a country, and the broader enabling environment.
To create the index, ONE chose 11 factors that reflect girls’ access to and completion of school, the quality of education in a country, and the broader enabling environment.
The factors selected with available data
are: rate of out-of-school girls of primary, lower secondary and upper
secondary age; school completion rate for girls of primary, lower
secondary and upper secondary age; mean years of schooling for women
aged 25 and over; female literacy rate for population aged 15–24;
percentage of primary school teachers trained; pupil– teacher ratio in
primary schools; and spending on education as a percentage of total
government expenditure.
Of 193 UN member states, ONE excluded
countries that were missing four or more data points (out of 11) to
allow for reliable comparison. This left them with a list of 122
countries. Data was primarily drawn from UNESCO’s Institute for
Statistics (UIS.Stat) database.
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