Niger Lack Of Education

Niger has several problems throughout the country right now, but one of the most noticeable issues is the lack of primary education. In 2012, children were only expected to persist through five years of primary schooling ("Millenium Development Goals"). That is akin to expecting all children to start school in kindergarten and drop out after fifth grade. Yet not everybody gets the chance to attend for this long—only 49.3 percent of Nigeriens have completed primary school, and in 2012, 978,723 Nigerien children were out of school (“Millenium Development Goals”). Clearly, this is not enough education. 23.5 percent of youth, or people 15 and older, are literate (Central Intelligence Agency). The good news is that primary school enrollment has …show more content…
This is caused by a variety of different reasons. As mentioned earlier, the French colonization caused some major issues for Nigeriens. The lack of focus on education resulted in illiteracy. After, once Nigeriens had gained their freedom, their government struggled immediately. This was partially because of a five-year drought that devastated their economy ("Niger Country Profile"), but also because the government had to be formed so quickly that there was little time to create laws about education, funding for education, and so on. In addition, the variety of coups and assassinations forced the government to prorititize fighting off the potential threats to the population rather than building schools. Furthermore, a major factor keeping girls out of school is early marriage (Plan International). When children, particularly girls, are not married off to the first person their parents can find, they often have to work all day. They pound millet, fetch water from faraway wells, and earn money for the family by selling crops. These factors have led to the lack of schools and the lack of children attending these …show more content…
In 2011, aid to low-income countries was cut by 9 percent, which means that each child gets about 16 dollars to support their education (AllAfrica). Nigerien schools need money to buy supplies as well, because in most schools, there are not enough supplies for the children to learn effectively. There is not sufficient furniture, and sometimes, there are not enough writing utensils for all the students. Worst of all, in some extremely poor classrooms, there is only one book per every five children (Oliver Buston). To solve this problem, aid organizations also need supplies to build the schools. One of the biggest problems with the current schools is that many of them are just built out of straw. When it rains, teachers have to spend so much time repairing the classrooms that the children barely get to learn at all. Also, straw is extremely flammable. If one of the huts catches on fire, the students will have to learn in the burning sun for several months, or miss school entirely (Oliver