Malawi’s improved literacy could help sustainable development ...

Malawi’s Secretary for Gender and Child Development, Olive Chikankheni, said on Monday that there was a need for the country to improve the provision of adult literacy to effectively contribute to its sustainable development.

She told journalists in Lilongwe that adult illiteracy in Malawi was at 37.2 percent, representing close to 4.6 million out of a total of 12 million.

« The situation is consistently being compounded by the fact that many youths, more especially in the mainstream formal education system, are each year needlesly joining the pool of illiterates as they are dropping out school, » she said.

A worldwide estimate of 781 million adults live without basic literacy skills, of whom two thirds are women. Approximately 103 million children have no access to school and are therefore not learning, reading, writing or counting.

Malawi’s average literacy rate is at 62.7 percent, the rate among men is at 76.1 percent, while women is at 49.3 percent, she said.

She therefore urged the public and private sectors and development partners to create awareness to the public about the challenges of illiteracy to national development.