Why Focus on Education?

Education affects every aspect of economic development and global stability.

Research has shown that a single year of primary education creates a 10-20% increase in a woman’s wages later in life. Education also prevents disease: a young person with a secondary education is three times less likely to contract HIV. Education even leads to more efficient agriculture and improved nutrition.

Studies prove that investing in girls' education delivers huge returns for economic growth, womens' health, and disease prevention.

Girls who attend primary school in Bukoba, Tanzania, remain illiterate because after school they are expected to farm, cook, clean, and care for their siblings, while boys are encouraged to complete their homework. Every girl who has an education can help her family struggle less and help her community become more self sustaining through new ideas, knowledge, and perseverance. For every two or three years of education, a woman is likely to have one less child. Women with secondary or higher education also delay marriage. In contrast, male schooling has an insignificant or even positive effect on fertility.

Girls’ education key to cutting Tanzania’s HIV/Aids

Boosting girls’ access to education in Tanzania will help them to avoid HIV/Aids, new research shows.

Like many countries in Africa, Tanzania is facing a serious HIV/AIDS epidemic, which threatens this south-east African country’s development.  About 8% of the population is infected with HIV according to recent estimates, but between 2004 and 2008, the rate of HIV among Tanzanians who went to high school fell sharply. The rate fell even for those only attending primary school. However, among those with no formal education, HIV prevalence remained stable. What this suggests is that between 2004 and 2008 new HIV infections have been occurring fastest among those who have had the least access to school education. Tanzania’s most at risk groups are girls and women aged between 15 and 24 according to UN figures.

Increasing educational access for women would help empower them make the changes necessary to avoid HIV infection.