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CHAPTER ONE
It fosters leadership skills across society and empowers
communities to advocate for better services. It leads
to culture shifts and policy change. It also provides for
sustainable program delivery.
Camfed has created over time a well established,
integrated infrastructure around girls’ education that is
unique in rural sub-Saharan Africa. This network is an
invaluable resource that can leverage other partnerships
in the region dramatically to broaden the development of
poor rural communities.
The context of poverty as the barrier to girls’ education
The margin between subsistence and destitution in
sub-Saharan Africa is extremely narrow. Poverty and
seasonal hunger are particularly acute in cash-poor rural
economies, due to lack of employment opportunities
and infrastructure. In a context where 45% of people
live on less than $1 a day, and HIV/AIDS, malaria and
tuberculosis have reduced life expectancy to an average
of 46 years, girls and young women face massive exclusion
from education and the opportunities it affords. Their
predictable futures are of marriage, motherhood and
dependency.
Many initiatives supporting girls’ education still fail to
recognize poverty as the causal factor in parents’ failure
to act in the best interests of their children, especially
girls. Most families would prefer to send all their children
to school, as education is recognized as the path to
prosperity; but in the context of extreme poverty where
families struggle for basic necessities, parents favor the
education of sons because educated males are more likely
to contribute to the family income. Girls can be married
to older men who pay a bride-price and relieve the family
of her care. In Zambia nationally, 8% of girls are married
by age 15; 42% are married by age 18; and the age of
marriage in rural areas is almost two years younger than
in urban centers. 1 The ages of 15–18 for girls are therefore
crucial for intervention.
Girls are most at risk of dropping out of education at the
transition from primary to secondary school because
school fees are introduced at this level. Where girls are
able to start secondary school, many encounter later setbacks
— often the death of a parent or parents from HIV/
AIDS — which requires them to seek work in town or early
marriage, both of which carry a high degree of risk. Early
marriage to older (often polygamous and widowed) men
is sometimes arranged by parents to ‘protect’ a girl from
pregnancy outside marriage.
As cited in 2009, 61% of all those infected with HIV in
sub-Saharan Africa today are women; and young women
aged 15–24 are most vulnerable to HIV. 2 Where the high
numbers of deaths from AIDS is leading men to seek
younger sexual partners, girls are at acute risk. HIV is
around three times as likely to be present in girls as in boys
the same age in some of the countries in which Camfed
operates. 3
For those who look for ways to meet their school costs
themselves, sexual exploitation and the dangers of HIV/
AIDS and pregnancy are prevalent risks. Female poverty is
the common feature in all these scenarios of female sexual
vulnerability.
There have been improvements in primary school
enrollment across the region, in line with Millennium
Development Goal 2, due to the removal of primary school
fees in many countries, including Ghana, Tanzania, Malawi,
Zambia and Zimbabwe. However, the reality is that many
families still cannot afford the basic necessities such as
shoes, uniforms, and supplies, which children need to go
to primary school.
Only 36% of children are enrolled in secondary school in
the countries in which Camfed operates, and the number
of girls at secondary school is lower than this average;
completion-rates for girls are lower still.
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