Educational exclusion in Africa

On Monday 30 April Barbra Chilangwa, Zambia's Deputy Permanent Secretary for Education, will give a talk at the University. Her lecture, The Challenges of Educational Exclusion: the Zambian Experience, will describe how the Zambian Government is working with Cambridge charity CamFed on an innovative programme of girls' education.

The lecture launches a new series of international seminars on development and education jointly run by CamFed and the African Studies Centre at the University of Cambridge. The launch coincides with the first anniversary of the World Education Forum, held in Dakar, Senegal, on 26 - 28 April 2000, when governments and international agencies made a commitment to work towards the creation of access for all children to primary education by the year 2015.

"Our new partnership with the University unites action and research to find practical solutions to the problem of educational exclusion internationally," explains Ann Coton, director of CamFed, the only British charity exclusively devoted to improving girls' access to education in the poorest areas of the world. "The target agreed at Dakar was a major step forward but it does not address the immediate problem of exclusion from education faced by many millions of the current generation. The problem is particularly acute for girls across rural sub-Saharan Africa, who form the majority of the 130 million children who are denied education globally."

The necessity of educating girls is now even more critical because of the devastating and rapid spread of HIV/AIDS throughout Africa. Young girls who have not had the chance to go to school are socially disempowered. When faced with the sexual advances of older men - who are targeting ever-younger girls - they lack the confidence and self-esteem to protect themselves. As a result, girls are dying of AIDS in their tens of thousands. Studies have shown that higher rates of female secondary education are associated with a much slower rate of transmission of HIV.

The lecture will be introduced by Amartya Sen, the Nobel prize-winning economist and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Professor Sen described the central role of education in ending poverty, and the significance of women in this process, in his recent book Development as Freedom: "Nothing ... is as important today in the political economy of development as an adequate recognition of political, economic and social participation and leadership of women. This is indeed a crucial aspect of 'development as freedom.'"

The lecture will take place on Monday 30 April at 4.45pm at the Mill Lane Lecture Room, Cambridge.

Further information
To find out more about the work of the African Studies Centre or CamFed visit their websites:
www.african.cam.ac.uk
www.camfed.org