UNESCO: No country in sub-Saharan Africa has achieved gender parity in education

Paris, France: A new Gender Report compiled by UNESCO’s EFA Global Monitoring Report (GMR) for International Day of the Girl Child, shows that fewer than half of countries – of which none are in sub-Saharan Africa - have achieved the goal of gender parity in both primary and secondary education, even though all were supposed to achieve it by 2005.

Irina Bokova, the Director-General of UNESCO said “Educating a girl educates a nation. It unleashes a ripple effect that changes the world unmistakably for the better. We have recently set ourselves a new ambitious agenda to achieve a sustainable future. Success in this endeavor is simply not possible without educated, empowered girls, young women and mothers.“