Fatou is a 27-year-old housewife. At 15 years old, she decided to quit her education to get married to the love of her life, a man 8 years older than her, who had promised her a wealthy life in which she wouldn’t worry about a thing.
A few years into her marriage, her husband wasn’t doing well financially, and she found herself financially abused by him. All the promises went into vain and she was there begging for a penny to get the most basic goods she needed. Looking at herself, she found herself with no knowledge or skills to help her stand on her feet. With no education to support her, she felt like all the doors were shut, and her only salvation was her husband, who in turn belittled her for always being dependent on him, noting that it had been himself who stopped her from being an achiever.
This is not only the story of Fatou, but also that of millions of women living in disparity because they couldn’t be self-sufficient and independent. This story is yet another example of what the SDGs tackle, like Reduced Inequalities, among others as Quality Education and Gender Equality.
The contribution of women in the society decreases early marriage, and early marriage is linked to low education.
The graph shows the countries with the highest number of women who were first married by age of 15.
The top 3 countries with the highest number of women who were early married are Niger with 37.37% , Bangladesh with 32% and Chad with 29.25%.
Moreover, 76% of girls in Niger are married before their 18th birthday and 28% are married before the age of 15. Niger has the highest prevalence of child marriage in the world and the 13th highest absolute number of women married or in a union before the age of 18 globally – 745,000.
As a result, Awareness campaigns must be done to limit early marriage, and impose laws on marriage before 18.
In the time it has taken to read this article 39 girls under the age of 18 have been married
Each year, 12 million girls are married before the age of 18
Hussaini, 14, is one of the lucky ones. He escaped. In 2018, as terrorism by extremist groups crossed into Burkina Faso, his village was attacked while he was in school. First, he heard screaming, and then gunfire. “They shot at our teachers and killed one of them,” he says. “They burned down the classrooms.” Hussaini ran home and within a matter of minutes, his family set off. They left everything behind, including school. Since that day, Hussaini has not set foot in a classroom. “I used to love school, to read, to count and to play during recess,” he says. “It’s been a year since I last went…”
From the end of 2017 to 2019, the number of schools forced to close due to rising insecurity tripled. More than 9,200 schools closed across Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and others, leaving 1.9 million children without education. These children face a much higher risk of recruitment by armed groups, gender-based violence and targeting by traffickers. Most parents in Africa will tell you that their children’s education is the most important investment they can make.
Trouble Cycle
Education is the UN’s top priority because it is a basic human right and the foundation on which to build peace and drive sustainable development. Unfortunately, lack of education for the young generation remains highly present in the world.
The problem is a cycle: lack of education results in high child labor and low literacy rate thus increasing the world’s problems such as crimes. And in its turn, terrorism decreases education opportunities. Hussaini is among millions of other children that were deprived from quality education and had high chances to be part of child labor.
Evidence
Poor basic education can be identified by high child employment rate. So, what are the target continent and countries?
The map shows that the Average Child Employment Rates (ages 7-14) is highest in Africa.
Having a deeper look, Cameroon ranks first for having the highest average child employment rate of 52.7% for years 2006-2015, followed by Niger, Benin, and Burkina Faso.
Referring to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal number 4:
What if kids will get exposed to education in early stage?
Can we influence their perception?
Fulfilling the Dream
Education cannot wait, and our world had enough. It is time to increase the number of education programs targeting young generation, and specifically African countries as previously mentioned, with Cameroon being a major target.
Creating education programs would:
Have education camps with volunteering and non volunteering teachers all around the world
Use workshops and fun trainings to later voluntarily engage kids
Involve underdeveloped countries in globalization
Introduce the diversity of cultures
Work on making education a need and will for every kid and parent- representing a lasting impact environment
Many past programs were successfully implemented in Cameroon such as Open Dreams, which already funded more than 200 scholarships and mentored more than 1000 students.
Is it Time?
Targeting Cameroon, and implementing it as a first stage project, would be a start to then expand into other countries.
Finally, from another perspective, how about looking at equalizing educational opportunities as a solution to many other issues? and working on SDG 4 for quality education will strongly and positively affect other goals such as ending poverty and hunger?
“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” —Malcolm X
Asia, my helper at home is from Ethiopia and dropped out of school at lower secondary school age because of poverty,and she once told me “If it was up to me, I would choose to get educated. However, this is my life.”236 million children and youth in the world are Asia where 57 million are in the Central and West Africa region. These adolescent need all the help they can get in order to get out of the conditions they are living. They have the right like every child to have access to education.
Adolescents who can afford it are sent to private schools in several African countries. But many people in rural areas and poorer households do not have that option.
The above map shows the average of Adolescents out of school on all over the world from 2000 till 2021 where the African region has the highest average from all the others.
The increase in dropout rates is due to several reasons. According to UNICEF, adolescents dropout rates are influenced by child marriage, conflicts and disasters, and gender discrimination. Also, Poverty plays a major role in increasing the rates of adolescents out of school where they are forced into employment at a very young age to accommodate the living demands.
There is a positive correlation between Average % of poverty headcount ratio at national poverty line & average % of Adolescents out of school throughout the years for all countries. The highest average percentage of poverty is in the African region such as South Sudan having 82.3% which leads to have high average percentage of adolescents out of school (51.18%)
Also, there is a positive correlation between Average % of child marriage at the age of 15 & average % of Adolescents out of school throughout the years for all countries. The highest average percentage of early marriage is in the African region such as Niger having 37.38% which leads to have high average percentage of adolescents out of school (83.03 %).
All countries, especially those with low levels of education, should restrict early marriage.
Due to the several factors mentioned, Adolescents are forced in employment where Niger for example has the highest Average of Adolescents in employment (50.23% ) compared to other African countries as shown in the above graph.
Actions to be taken:
• Raise awareness on the importance of education
• Provide financial support for poor families
• Provide flexible, affordable, high-quality school options
• Improve the access to education
• Ensure that all adolescents complete free, equitable secondary education.
All the above factors are important in guaranteeing a better future for children. However, it is recommended that they be accompanied by the right laws that prevent child employment and provide equal opportunities for females to participate in the workplace.
We often tend to forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one. Millions of women and children spend 3 – 6 hours collecting water from distant polluted sources daily and 2.1 billion people do not have access to clean and safe drinking water. We live in a world where half the hospital beds are employed by patients who suffer from diseases associated with lack of access to clean water where 3.4 million people die each year.
Access to clean water in Africa on Non-Profit Organizations that offer the country a well to be used by every institution that surrounds it. Therefore, “How Can We Make Water Available for All?” is a very important topic that is being addressed through the Sustainable Development Goals.
In the heat map below, we can see that Europe and Central Asia in addition to the Arab World have more access to the least basic drinking water services in comparison to Western and Central Africa.
It is also evident in the visual below that throughout the years, countries from all around the world increased their intake of their basic drinking water services except African countries who show a slight improvement.
It is important to note that for you to be able to visualize the changes throughout the years, you need to press on the button at the bottom of the visual!
However, with the slight improvements in a few countries, we can still find that other countries (such as the Central African Republic) are still experiencing a decrease on the matter.
It is said that “Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.” – W.H Auden
With all these problems being evident, one has to call for action. One of the solutions that have been implemented and has to remain active is increasing the public private partnerships investment in water and sanitation throughout the years (in $US).
This solution has helped increase the access of countries to clean water throughout the years and will continue to do so if implemented more often.
HOW CAN YOU HELP
You can help by donating to NGOs that offer help on the matter. Some examples on the NGOs include: Just a Drop and Planet Water Foundation. Donations can happen through
The most important statistic for measuring population health is life expectancy. Life expectancy captures mortality across the whole life course, making it more comprehensive than the restricted measure of newborn and child mortality, which concentrates only on mortality at a young age. It provides information on the typical death age for a population.
Since the Age of Enlightenment, life expectancy has rapidly grown. Life expectancy began to rise in the early industrialized nations in the 19th century, but it remained low in the rest of the world. As a result, there was a huge disparity in the distribution of health throughout the world. Good health in the wealthy nations and continuously poor health in the developing nations. This worldwide inequality has declined during the last few decades. The nations with the highest life expectancy in 1800 are the only ones in the world with a lower life expectancy today. Many nations that were formerly afflicted by poor health are quickly catching up.
The world map below shows the life expectancy of the year 2000.
African nations have been struggling with health related issues for quite some time. One of them is that, when compared to other continents, such as Europe Africa has the nations with the lowest life expectancies. Why is that? Does government health expenditure play a big role disaster?
Government health expenditure plays an important role in guaranteeing people’s livelihood and in improving the quality of human capital, and it also plays an important role in affecting economic development.
In order to characterize the specific trend of government health spending affecting life expectancy in Africa, the dashboard below chart shows the expenditure in healthy sectors by the government, from years 2000 to 2018, of the top 3 countries (in terms of life expectancy) and the bottom 3 in comparison as shown in the map.
We clearly see that countries with high government expenditure have a higher life expectancy.
Even though African nations still have a low life expectancy in comparison to other countries, significant improvement has been made since the early 2000s as life expectancy within African nations has seen an increase of at least 10 years.This shows a positive relationship between government health expenditure and life expectancy.
What we can do to further help and develop Africa is to create a funded project by the UN or the WHO to help create more hospitals in the region that would be specialized in treating and aiding people with diseases.
Creating education programs would:
Finally, from another perspective, how about looking at equalizing educational opportunities as a solution to many other issues? and working on SDG 4 for quality education will strongly and positively affect other goals such as ending poverty and hunger?
