Working for Women Worldwide - Embassy of the United States

Success Story
Providing an Education
to African Girls
Enabling women in the developing world to
participate fully in creating a modern society
is crucial to development efforts: No nation
can expect to reach its full social and economic
potential if half its population is marginalized.
A key first step in such empowerment of women is
extending equal educational opportunities to them,
beginning with their early years.
The nations of sub-Saharan Africa confront
many obstacles in educating women, including financial
constraints, competing demands for girls’ and
women’s time, unsafe school settings, a lack of trained
teachers—all exacerbated by the HIV/AIDS epidemic
that has depleted the teaching and school administrative
force in many countries on the continent.
At present, girls constitute more than 50 percent
of the 44 million children in Africa who do not have
access to primary education. In many countries, the
costs associated with schooling are an insurmountable
barrier for poor families trying to obtain an education
for their children. In African nations that have made
primary schooling free for every child, the sudden
influx of millions of new students has often led to individual
class sizes of 100 or more pupils, severely straining
resources and challenging the ability of teachers to
offer quality instruction.
The U.S. government’s foreign assistance programs
support a multitude of innovative projects to
improve education in Africa and help nations in the
region overcome the challenges to strengthening and
expanding their school systems, including increased
enrollment of girls.
A cornerstone of such U.S. efforts is the Africa
Education Initiative, launched in 2002 with an initial
budget of $15 million and an additional commitment of
$185 million over the subsequent four years through
2006. The initiative is managed by the U.S. Agency
for International Development (USAID), working
closely to carry out its programs with host-country
ministries of education and institutions of higher education,
the private sector, and local and international
nongovernmental organizations.
The principal objective of the initiative is to
increase both the access to quality basic education and
the number of teachers, especially at the primary
school level. At this time, only 63 percent of all children
in sub-Saharan Africa attend primary school,
and only 21 percent go on to secondary school.
To help improve this situation, the U.S. goal is to
provide 250,000 scholarships for African girls, train
more than 160,000 new teachers, and offer in-service
training for more than 260,000 current teachers. So
far, as a result of the initiative, more than 110,000
teachers have upgraded their skills through in-service
training and approximately 20,000 teachers have
received pre-service training; moreover, 770,000 textbooks
and other materials were distributed to students,
and 17,000 girls benefited from scholarships.
Another key component of the initiative is creating
partnerships between six historically black U.S.
colleges and universities and six educational institutions
in African nations to supply 4.5 million textbooks
to schoolchildren in Africa.
In addition to the Africa Education Initiative,
USAID manages bilateral education programs in 16
African countries. In the West African nation of
Benin, for example, education is a centerpiece of U.S.
foreign assistance efforts. USAID has worked closely
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