We all know that education is the main ingredient for success. Whether you need an advanced degree to practice law or medicine or simply the know-how for starting and running a successful business, there has to be a way by which you learn the skills you need to get started.
This is precisely the reason that women need access to quality education, especially in regions where they lack this kind of access.
Take the African continent for example, Zimbabwe has the highest literacy rate in Africa with 90.70. On the opposite extreme however is Burkina Faso with a literacy rate of only 21.80. Nigeria is somewhere near the middle of the list with a literacy rate of 68.00.
There are a multitude of positive benefits to educating women in general, and at least three of these apply specifically to the more impoverished and less fortunate nations in Africa. Women’s (girls’) education leads them to delay marriage and have fewer children, have healthier families, and reduce the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. All of these factors are conducive to improving living conditions for the women themselves, for their families and for society at large
But there are those who would rather women remain enslaved. A couple of months ago the world was shocked by the abduction of about 276 schoolgirls in northeast Nigeria. Boko Haram, an Islamic militant group, claimed responsibility for the abduction. The group is largely opposed to the “westernization of Nigeria”, including the education of Nigerian girls.
Many of us know about the mass kidnapping because of the recent media coverage, but Boko Haram has been targeting schools since 2010. Ten thousand students are unable to attend school, hundreds of students have been killed and many girls have been taken as cooks and sex slaves.
Most of the missing girls are still out there missing, many others are afraid that they’ll be next.
How then do we safely get these children the quality education they need to move forward? I don’t have all of the answers, but the world is ready for good suggestions. If you’ve got any, we’re all ears.
"P1020834" by Carla Gomez Monroy, used under CC BY 2.0
