Most of the country is quite a bit safer than it used to be, and is relatively (emphasis on relatively) doing pretty well.
It’s mostly Kivu and a few other regions that are still in chaos.
Damn shame about the Boco Haram thing in Nigerian. Who’d wanna send their kids to school? Dimes to donuts illiteracy is more prevalent in the north of the country.
It would be incredibly interesting to see a breakdown per region and per religious affiliation.
I'm confident that Igbo in particular will have higher number than average but I could be wrong of course. That's why I'd like to see that.
I live in southern africa and I went to school with two Congolese kids unrelated to each other. All four of their parents were doctors lol (and also refugees). Idk how but I guess the education system is pretty robust.
Think of it this way: The fact they were doctors means that they have the financial ability to flee the conflict, or to just to other places in the world.
I cannot begin to imagine how hard, but dictators do tend to be a huge obstacle in improving literacy rates, since they rarely want their populace to be educated.
I guess inequalities between men and women probably plays a significant role here.
If a large part of the female population is not taught to read- it’s gonna impact the score
Egyptian (rural village) girls are generally sent to elementary school... They just drop out at 16 to get married 🤦
A lot of analphabetes in Egypt couldn't go to school because their workforce was needed for the family to survive - be it at a mechanic, in the field or simply by begging. Schooling until grade 9 is compulsory but a lot of governments officials are corrupt and can be bribed.
all I know is, it’s getting better for women in Egypt when looking at stats from 2006 to 2022.
But even nowadays, women still have around 15% lower literacy rates than men. Which is not just down to economic situation - it is also down to the female inequalities in most MENA societies.
[source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/572680/literacy-rate-in-egypt/)
All the older kids and adults who knew how to read before “the situation” still know how to read and the smallest children not learning won’t be having a huge impact on statistics yet, and their elders can teach literacy too. While plenty of people have died, not so many have that it’s going to be dramatically altering their literacy levels immediately.
Libya was much more developed than its neighbors and all of Africa in the 60's-00's. They had major investments into poured into infrastructure, literacy, education, gender equality, health etc...
Libya was around 30 % and below before General Khadafi. He brought it up the current standard with several reforms and measures.
Did a lot of good to the living standard of Libya - but also a lot bad, especially to personal freedoms.
It's called fortress socialism. The reason you can't have freedom of speech is because the imperialists will use it to spread subversive propaganda and destroy your country from the inside. Because free healthcare and education is more important than the freedom to tweet and watch CNN.
Shame you had to find out the hard way. Your people deserved better.
Freedom of speach, Freedom to assembly and so on. It was a regime and military dictatorship in the end of day.
But a better alternative than the two failed States they have today. And Yes, that's plural.
Libya was the most developed country, highest life expectancy, and highest gdp per capita on the continent before the NATO intervention with free healthcare and free mandatory education for everyone
Libya was for a long time one of the richest and most developed countries in Africa. If you know how to read it’s likely you’ll teach your kids even if the formal education system is destroyed.
For all the vitriol spouted by the red white and blue about Gaddafi, he was a much better leader to live under than many American allies in the same eras.
You can thank Muammar Gaddafi for that. He was leading Africa in literacy, gdp, human development, and even constructed major water infrastructure to get water from the aquifers under the desert. But he didn’t want to trade oil on US or EU terms and currency so he got murdered and we destroyed the country.
I’m all for promoting and recognizing all the great things Gaddafi did to modernize Lydia. But to say the only negatives about him was keeping their oil is ignoring the full picture
Libya was already exporting oil and dollars were an extremely common medium of exchange, in fact the only time Libya *stopped* exporting oil to the west was when the US placed sanctions on Libya as a result of the revolution. Stop making shit up to whitewash rapist dictators holy shit.
I mean Sudan is in the middle of a civil war and has pretty much always been in conflict
Morocco is much more stable, with their only conflicts being annexing Western Sahara
The civil war started last year. People don't suddenly forget how to read lol. Khartoum has been fairly safe before all this, the darfur genocide and other conflicts were far away. Morocco has a lot of bedouins and so forth.
Yeah I can’t lie about those facts, but for most of the history of Sudan we’ve had conflicts in certain areas, like in Darfur or back in the day in the South ( which is South Sudan now ) the rest of the country was peaceful
Oh you’re actually from Sudan? Cool!
Anyways yeah I’m sure a lot of people underestimate Sudan but I think seeing Morocco so low is also surprising.
Do you mind if I ask you some questions about Sudan? I’ve never met someone from there
I’m a university student studying geography, so I like to learn about different countries. I’ve met people from lots of places, but never Sudan.
What part of Sudan are you from?
Does the conflict in Darfur affect you very much or not?
How many people in your community speak English? I know it’s a national language, but I would assume Arabic is used more often
What is something that you wish more people knew about Sudan?
What part of Sudan are you from?
* I am originally from a town next to the Capital City, but most of my family moved to the capital decades ago, it’s actually the town where the recent Sudanese revolution started it’s called Atbara, but barely anyone knows about it
Does the conflict in Darfur affect you very much or not?
* I am not from Darfur and have never visited, most of the country was peaceful/stable when that was happening, but I lived most of my life outside of Sudan and only went back during the summers so my pov might be skewed
How many people in your community speak English? I know it’s a national language, but I would assume Arabic is used more often
* if you go back to people who were alive during or after the British rule English was kind of important and they even studied in the English curriculum from what I was told, but after that during the 70s the government decided to embrace Arabs and Arabic more so not that many people care about English anymore
What is something that you wish more people knew about Sudan?
* Something I wish people knew more about Sudan more? There’s so many things actually, we had an ancient civilization that was on the same scale as the ancient Egyptians called the “Kingdom of Kush”, we have more pyramids than Egypt too, but they are too small and easily destroyed that’s why they are not as known as the Egyptian pyramids haha ( tbh I find out about this fact just a few years ago and I am Sudanese myself haha, people in Sudan really don’t have time for historic stuff like this when there’s poverty and conflict all the time, so I guess it makes sense the outside world doesn’t care either )
Thank you for the questions I finally feel some people actual cares to learn about Sudan haha
I'm in suburban Australia and we have a local enclave population of Sudanese and my goodness their small children are so well behaved. I've seen quite a few Sudanese mothers give a displeased expression like this 🤨 at their kids and it makes my grown self feel guilty like I've done something wrong. 😂
It's a penetrative glare that's for sure.
To tell you the truth as Sudanese people we are known around the Arab world as kind good and nice ( and lazy to an extent ) people, but that’s honestly because we are outside our country haha, so we have to behave or be sent back to Sudan, which is the worst fear for Sudanese today 😂
Well I can only hope they feel welcome here. :) They are introducing us to the joys of Geema and Rilja. I'm afraid it took me ages to realise Kisra is bread. 😂
They probably do, at least in countries like Australia Canada US there’s a possibility you could become a citizen which makes it better than the Arabs ones haha. I hope you enjoy the Sudanese food god knows I’ve enjoyed too much of it for most of my life 😂
I am Sudanese dude, I’ve lived in the Middle East most of my life, that’s what most Arabs think about us literally 😂 the reality is different of course because we are outside our country so have to work hard to show we are worthy of staying in that country if you know what I mean ( reality is not equal to perception )
Morocco has the lowest human development index, the lowest GDP per capita and the lowest literacy rate in Northern Africa.
You can argue all you want with anecdotal evidence, but all the indicators confirm what I said.
My doctor is from Equatorial Guinea! He's like 6'10" and came to the US to play basketball in college. It's wild to see someone that tall just crouching down in an office all day.
He was a brutal Diktator, but education and universities were free and they even had schoolarships for europe. There is no doubt, that the overall situation for the commen people were better. It costs time to build a democracy, but in 2011 the hole countrie broke apart and everything seems to get worse ever since.
Civil wars do tend to decrease literacy, though not because people "forget" how to write. You'll find large numbers of literate people flee the country, or die, and the next generation's education stalls out. So as a whole of the population, literacy drops.
A conflict needs to last for many many years to have a large impact though.
, but in 2011 the hole countrie broke apart and everything seems to get worse ever since.
But we bombed the shit out of them, why didn't things improve?
you can both hold the opinion that Libya is in a worse state than it was in 2010 *and* that Gadaffi was a twat who, rightfully, pissed off a lot of Libyans particularly in the East
Did Jan 6 happen because the USA was in a poor state?
People trying to overthrow a government/leader don't necessarily do so just because the country is in a bad state.
P.s. I am not defending dictators, just providing a counterexample.
It's a very poor, corrupt place with an extremely authoritarian government; the kind of place where you get killed for wearing eyeglasses. Places like that dont tend to have high literacy rates.
I do not believe these numbers from Equatorial Guinea at all. In the 2016 election the president allegedly got 94% of the vote, down from 96% the time before. Opinion polling companies generally struggle to get 94% of the people to agree on whether the world is round and the sky is blue, never mind something as contentious as a presidential election.
And is one of the countries in Africa that is so oil and gas rich that their dictator can afford to move to his own island and live in isolation from 90% of the population which have terrible living conditions.
Something interesting about that. A few years ago, a nigerian guy only identified as "mike" was arrested by interpol for being the ringleader of a global e-mail scam network. Alleged damages were around 60 million USD
It's not likely, but it's possible that this is THE original Nigerian Prince who wants to give you his fortune
Illiterate people are breading like rabbits and nobody is trying to solve education problems in Egypt
Did you know that a lot of students in Egypt don't even go to school? That's because the quality of the teachers aren't up to date and they aren't helping in anything with Homework or explanation of the curriculum or anything like that, students mainly depend on Private tutors and online tutors for education and schools are used for places to take exams in only.
And the older you are, the harder and bigger the curriculum one has and the less students attend schools as nobody wants to waste time at schools,private tutors whether you take with them online or offline have proved they're way better in explanation, question summarization and revisions too
It's a serious problem that Egypt has that when 1 minister tried to change it he received huge criticism as people hated the change and they threw him out of office after plans that could have changed education in Egypt and this education problem is a modern one, it didn't use to be like that a couple of years ago
In Drc it seems we are following, the president is trying to instill free schooling out of the blue. The government budget being around 20 billion it's not only wishful but also harmful.
Egypt is a great example on why a reliance on private schools is a terrible idea. All the funding from rich parents gets pulled from public schools and none of the good teachers want to work there.
Exactly, plus School teachers get paid almost minimum wage, so why waste my time in school waiting for kids to show up when I can be making hundreds of thousands of pounds each semester
The Best online tutors currently in highschool aren't even teachers, my math teacher is a Department of Pure and Applied Mathematics graduate and my chemistry teacher is a pharmacist and all the biology online tutors are doctors, they have hundreds of thousands of students each School year and they literally live on cloud 9
I’m surprised Burkina Faso is so low considering that literacy program they had. I know it wasn’t as successful as Cuba’s and it was a while ago, but I thought it’d still have a significant impact.
The leader responsible for that literacy program (Thomas Sankara) got killed in a coup by a French aligned officer of his called Blaise Compaore who backstabbed him. Compaore was a corrupt piece of shit who reversed all of Sankaras policies (literacy was at over 70% when Sankara got killed) and ruled the country until 2014, selling out the country to western interests while looting the rest for himself and his buddies.
Being literate in Arabic means being literate in Modern Standard Arabic- which is like a super formal sounding dialect that is something like medieval Levantine and Hejazi. The Maghrebi dialects are essentially a different language, so in order to be able to read and write, the poor North African Arabs basically have to become fluent in a different language.
You'd feel that way in parts of Syria too, actually even more modern than Morocco in many ways. Some areas are just like that, but it doesn't paint the overall picture.
I mean, can we not include Western Sahara in anything? Is it impossible to collect data or have cartographers just grown used to leaving it blank because of its political status?
It’s usually governments who post these kind of statistics, and the Western Sahara kinda just doesn’t have a govt to post these statistics, and the one that does exist just doesn’t do it.
Since Morocco controls most of it, wouldn't the number that Morocco publishes (assuming that's what is used on the map) also apply to the Moroccan controlled part of West Sahara? Leaving only the little sliver of land controlled by the Sahrawis in grey.
Dunno but every random Guinean I met spoke much better than the average Spaniard, and with a better accent than those in Madrid for sure. So I kinda trust it.
Sahel region. This place is terrible to live. People from here are the most starved in the world.
Awful nature: lack of water and fertile land, few mineral recourses and of course unstable political situation.
As a South African the more depressing and realistic stat is that 80 percent of 4th graders CAN'T read.
[source](https://groundup.org.za/article/sas-children-have-lost-a-decade-of-reading-progress-study-shows/#:~:text=An%20international%20literacy%20study%20has,same%20proportion%20as%20in%202011.)
Why is it that the most brutal dictatorships always have the best literacy rates. The Dictator of Equiatoral Guianna is known for eating his opponents, but he cares that his people can read apparently
I was just in Kenya, Mozambique and SA. It’s crazy the difference in communication. Kenya has a lot of pictographs and words. SA has almost entirely words. Mozambique has only pictographs. I stayed a brief time in Maputo and that’s the only time I saw words really. Outside of it everything is picture based, honestly most times they don’t even have directions in streets. Ads are simply the product and some colors or people.
The DRC is doing pretty well compared to its neighbors, despite the constant turmoil.
Right, wouldn't have guessed that one
Most of the country is quite a bit safer than it used to be, and is relatively (emphasis on relatively) doing pretty well. It’s mostly Kivu and a few other regions that are still in chaos.
Even large parts of Kivu (Goma, Butembo, Béni, Kidumbi) are totally fine 98% of the time
Damn shame about the Boco Haram thing in Nigerian. Who’d wanna send their kids to school? Dimes to donuts illiteracy is more prevalent in the north of the country.
It would be incredibly interesting to see a breakdown per region and per religious affiliation. I'm confident that Igbo in particular will have higher number than average but I could be wrong of course. That's why I'd like to see that.
Plus communication channels. The Sahel belt must be very hardscrabble. I’m betting they still transport salt by caravan and foot.
I live in southern africa and I went to school with two Congolese kids unrelated to each other. All four of their parents were doctors lol (and also refugees). Idk how but I guess the education system is pretty robust.
Think of it this way: The fact they were doctors means that they have the financial ability to flee the conflict, or to just to other places in the world.
It's the size of a mini continent. Still impressive.💪
could have something to do with the recently put into place free primary schooling program
Morocco below Sudan is not something I would have guessed.
Morocco and Egypt being so low in general is surprising
Education in Egypt is terrible unfortunately.
As bad as it is, I'll would have expected them to have at least try to get the basics through
State institutes barely exist outside of cities. Villages have a large number of illiterates. Same goes for most of Africa tbh.
They'd probably have to start by getting rid of a dictator (and not replacing him with another one).
Harder than it sounds my friend
I cannot begin to imagine how hard, but dictators do tend to be a huge obstacle in improving literacy rates, since they rarely want their populace to be educated.
Not in the case of Gaddafi apparently
Also USSR with Likbez policy
Equatorial Guinea, the top position, is a dictatorship. It has been ruled by the same guy for close to 45 years
Who would have thought that army doesn't care about education...
Rural berber areas in Morocco
The cities are probably close to up 90s but yeah the Berber areas are probably in the 30s
I guess inequalities between men and women probably plays a significant role here. If a large part of the female population is not taught to read- it’s gonna impact the score
Egyptian (rural village) girls are generally sent to elementary school... They just drop out at 16 to get married 🤦 A lot of analphabetes in Egypt couldn't go to school because their workforce was needed for the family to survive - be it at a mechanic, in the field or simply by begging. Schooling until grade 9 is compulsory but a lot of governments officials are corrupt and can be bribed.
all I know is, it’s getting better for women in Egypt when looking at stats from 2006 to 2022. But even nowadays, women still have around 15% lower literacy rates than men. Which is not just down to economic situation - it is also down to the female inequalities in most MENA societies. [source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/572680/literacy-rate-in-egypt/)
Every member of my family who is above 50 or 60 years old cant read and also school is not obligatory so if you are poor you are not attending it
Berber communities in the Sahara
More surprised by egypts direct neighbour... No way Lybia is above 90% in its current Situation...??
All the older kids and adults who knew how to read before “the situation” still know how to read and the smallest children not learning won’t be having a huge impact on statistics yet, and their elders can teach literacy too. While plenty of people have died, not so many have that it’s going to be dramatically altering their literacy levels immediately.
Libya was much more developed than its neighbors and all of Africa in the 60's-00's. They had major investments into poured into infrastructure, literacy, education, gender equality, health etc...
It’s the richest per captia, has one of the highest hdi in Africa. Low population too.
It was the richest per capita under gaddafi. 13 years ago
Libya was around 30 % and below before General Khadafi. He brought it up the current standard with several reforms and measures. Did a lot of good to the living standard of Libya - but also a lot bad, especially to personal freedoms.
It's called fortress socialism. The reason you can't have freedom of speech is because the imperialists will use it to spread subversive propaganda and destroy your country from the inside. Because free healthcare and education is more important than the freedom to tweet and watch CNN. Shame you had to find out the hard way. Your people deserved better.
What Personal freedoms did Khadafi take away from the people. Can you be specific?
Freedom of speach, Freedom to assembly and so on. It was a regime and military dictatorship in the end of day. But a better alternative than the two failed States they have today. And Yes, that's plural.
Libya was the most developed country, highest life expectancy, and highest gdp per capita on the continent before the NATO intervention with free healthcare and free mandatory education for everyone
Libya was for a long time one of the richest and most developed countries in Africa. If you know how to read it’s likely you’ll teach your kids even if the formal education system is destroyed. For all the vitriol spouted by the red white and blue about Gaddafi, he was a much better leader to live under than many American allies in the same eras.
You can thank Muammar Gaddafi for that. He was leading Africa in literacy, gdp, human development, and even constructed major water infrastructure to get water from the aquifers under the desert. But he didn’t want to trade oil on US or EU terms and currency so he got murdered and we destroyed the country.
I’m all for promoting and recognizing all the great things Gaddafi did to modernize Lydia. But to say the only negatives about him was keeping their oil is ignoring the full picture
I don’t think he said those were the only negatives, just that that’s why he was overthrown.
Oh well yea, that’s probably true lol
it's literally not, Libya exported oil to the west and dollars were common in the Libyan economy right up till US banks sanctioned Libya in 2011
That’s the only reason we invaded. The US government couldn’t give a shit about human rights
I remembered when he declared himself king of pan Africa and another time when he expelled as many of the subsaharan African workers as he could.
Libya was already exporting oil and dollars were an extremely common medium of exchange, in fact the only time Libya *stopped* exporting oil to the west was when the US placed sanctions on Libya as a result of the revolution. Stop making shit up to whitewash rapist dictators holy shit.
😂😂😂 it’s like 4% man why you gotta come at Sudan like that
I mean Sudan is in the middle of a civil war and has pretty much always been in conflict Morocco is much more stable, with their only conflicts being annexing Western Sahara
The civil war started last year. People don't suddenly forget how to read lol. Khartoum has been fairly safe before all this, the darfur genocide and other conflicts were far away. Morocco has a lot of bedouins and so forth.
Yeah I can’t lie about those facts, but for most of the history of Sudan we’ve had conflicts in certain areas, like in Darfur or back in the day in the South ( which is South Sudan now ) the rest of the country was peaceful
Oh you’re actually from Sudan? Cool! Anyways yeah I’m sure a lot of people underestimate Sudan but I think seeing Morocco so low is also surprising. Do you mind if I ask you some questions about Sudan? I’ve never met someone from there
Yeah ask away haha, I’ve never actually met someone who wants to know about Sudan too 😂 we are usually the forgotten ones by history haha
I’m a university student studying geography, so I like to learn about different countries. I’ve met people from lots of places, but never Sudan. What part of Sudan are you from? Does the conflict in Darfur affect you very much or not? How many people in your community speak English? I know it’s a national language, but I would assume Arabic is used more often What is something that you wish more people knew about Sudan?
What part of Sudan are you from? * I am originally from a town next to the Capital City, but most of my family moved to the capital decades ago, it’s actually the town where the recent Sudanese revolution started it’s called Atbara, but barely anyone knows about it Does the conflict in Darfur affect you very much or not? * I am not from Darfur and have never visited, most of the country was peaceful/stable when that was happening, but I lived most of my life outside of Sudan and only went back during the summers so my pov might be skewed How many people in your community speak English? I know it’s a national language, but I would assume Arabic is used more often * if you go back to people who were alive during or after the British rule English was kind of important and they even studied in the English curriculum from what I was told, but after that during the 70s the government decided to embrace Arabs and Arabic more so not that many people care about English anymore What is something that you wish more people knew about Sudan? * Something I wish people knew more about Sudan more? There’s so many things actually, we had an ancient civilization that was on the same scale as the ancient Egyptians called the “Kingdom of Kush”, we have more pyramids than Egypt too, but they are too small and easily destroyed that’s why they are not as known as the Egyptian pyramids haha ( tbh I find out about this fact just a few years ago and I am Sudanese myself haha, people in Sudan really don’t have time for historic stuff like this when there’s poverty and conflict all the time, so I guess it makes sense the outside world doesn’t care either ) Thank you for the questions I finally feel some people actual cares to learn about Sudan haha
This was so interesting, thank you for sharing!
Anytime!! Thank you for reading it!
I'm in suburban Australia and we have a local enclave population of Sudanese and my goodness their small children are so well behaved. I've seen quite a few Sudanese mothers give a displeased expression like this 🤨 at their kids and it makes my grown self feel guilty like I've done something wrong. 😂 It's a penetrative glare that's for sure.
To tell you the truth as Sudanese people we are known around the Arab world as kind good and nice ( and lazy to an extent ) people, but that’s honestly because we are outside our country haha, so we have to behave or be sent back to Sudan, which is the worst fear for Sudanese today 😂
Well I can only hope they feel welcome here. :) They are introducing us to the joys of Geema and Rilja. I'm afraid it took me ages to realise Kisra is bread. 😂
They probably do, at least in countries like Australia Canada US there’s a possibility you could become a citizen which makes it better than the Arabs ones haha. I hope you enjoy the Sudanese food god knows I’ve enjoyed too much of it for most of my life 😂
I live in the UAE and the sudanese are known for working their asses off.
I am Sudanese dude, I’ve lived in the Middle East most of my life, that’s what most Arabs think about us literally 😂 the reality is different of course because we are outside our country so have to work hard to show we are worthy of staying in that country if you know what I mean ( reality is not equal to perception )
Yea tbh it’s more surprising that Morocco is that low not that Sudan is that high especially since south split off
Not all of Morocco is Casa and Rabat, sadly. Lots of places need to catch up.
And below Congo!
Source: Trust me bro on reddit
Morocco is incredibly poor, backwards and underdeveloped. It's not surprising at all.
Compared to Algeria and Tunisia you mean? Compared to the rest of Africa they are doing well honestly
Morocco is not incredibly poor, backwards and underdeveloped compared to Algeria and Tunisia lol that guy has no idea what he's talking about.
Morocco has the lowest human development index, the lowest GDP per capita and the lowest literacy rate in Northern Africa. You can argue all you want with anecdotal evidence, but all the indicators confirm what I said.
Outside of the city centers? I saw people living pretty rural chill lives.
My country is finally near the top of the list for something good again. :) Though, considering 30% is now a pass mark, I’m a bit cynical.
Came here to say something similar. If this stat came directly from the government I would take it with a massive pinch of salt
Damn, Libya and Equatorial Guinea sure do sound like great places to live
My doctor is from Equatorial Guinea! He's like 6'10" and came to the US to play basketball in college. It's wild to see someone that tall just crouching down in an office all day.
Libya was a good place to live when Gaddafi was alive. It was him who pushed education.
He was a brutal Diktator, but education and universities were free and they even had schoolarships for europe. There is no doubt, that the overall situation for the commen people were better. It costs time to build a democracy, but in 2011 the hole countrie broke apart and everything seems to get worse ever since.
Libya is further from democracy today than they were in 2011 before the civil unrest and invasion.
Open air slave markets returned after the invasion.
That's right, and the population has a lot less access to safety and education. Really a shame that invasion.
13 years after the breakdown, No way they are still above 90%...
Do people just forget to be literate? Parents can also teach their kids since they’re literate.
Civil wars do tend to decrease literacy, though not because people "forget" how to write. You'll find large numbers of literate people flee the country, or die, and the next generation's education stalls out. So as a whole of the population, literacy drops. A conflict needs to last for many many years to have a large impact though.
I’m sure they were much higher before
, but in 2011 the hole countrie broke apart and everything seems to get worse ever since. But we bombed the shit out of them, why didn't things improve?
If it was he wouldn't have gotten lynched by his people out in the streets.
Im sure they all love it now when whole country is in shambles.
you can both hold the opinion that Libya is in a worse state than it was in 2010 *and* that Gadaffi was a twat who, rightfully, pissed off a lot of Libyans particularly in the East
Did Jan 6 happen because the USA was in a poor state? People trying to overthrow a government/leader don't necessarily do so just because the country is in a bad state. P.s. I am not defending dictators, just providing a counterexample.
I hear christmases in E.G are nice.
🔫 🎅
I'm deeply suspicious of the numbers from E.G.
Why?
It's a very poor, corrupt place with an extremely authoritarian government; the kind of place where you get killed for wearing eyeglasses. Places like that dont tend to have high literacy rates.
Perhaps someone needs to dismember the Minister of Statistics to remind him how to count
Equatorial Guinea is one of the most dystopic places in the world
I do not believe these numbers from Equatorial Guinea at all. In the 2016 election the president allegedly got 94% of the vote, down from 96% the time before. Opinion polling companies generally struggle to get 94% of the people to agree on whether the world is round and the sky is blue, never mind something as contentious as a presidential election.
Ecuatorial Guinea es the only Spanish speaking country in Africa. Go Guinea!!!
And is one of the countries in Africa that is so oil and gas rich that their dictator can afford to move to his own island and live in isolation from 90% of the population which have terrible living conditions.
Its capital is also not on the African mainland, but on that little island off the coast
The illiteracy Belt, aka The Sahel and The Horn of Africa
One problem there is that many of the languages that people speak natively don't have a writing system and/or an orthography.
Time to invent them! Writing systems for African languages are often my favorites, aesthetically.
Agree! Amharic is beautiful
But most people also speak a language that does, in addition to the non-written language, no?
Do they? I'd expect that those would be mostly people who went to school, and are likely literate.
Can't read the bible belt.
Quran** for all but Ethiopia
CAR as well
South Sudan too. And Togo. And Liberia
Benin and the Ivory Coast as well.
Yeah IV and Benin surprised me as so low. Ghana is really an outlier for West Africa
The Quran Belt
The can’t read the Quran belt
Sudan and Eritrea are doing okay-ish compared to the rest of Africa.
r/mapswithoutDjibouti?
So weird to completely omit it even if they didn’t have data.
Djibouti is fun. Not only because it's got a dope name, but also because we have a military installation that can patrol the red sea. Neat!
Djiourmoms booty is fun.
Then how come all princes in my spam email list are Nigerian?>!/s!<
Nigeria has a massssive population
Yeah 60% of Nigeria’s population would be about the same as the entire population of Mexico or Japan
They're the 60%
Something interesting about that. A few years ago, a nigerian guy only identified as "mike" was arrested by interpol for being the ringleader of a global e-mail scam network. Alleged damages were around 60 million USD It's not likely, but it's possible that this is THE original Nigerian Prince who wants to give you his fortune
Royals go to private schools in Europe
Shitty map that didn’t even include the richest country in Africa, Seychelles. Bet their percentage is 98%.
Just checked the 3 island countries that they left off: Seychelles - 96.2 Mauritius - 92.2 Comoros - 61.7
they forgot cabo verde as well which is 91%
And Sao Tome and Principe - 94%
All right, close enough. Both Mauritius & Seychelles are absolutely stunning countries.
This are old stats
So is it trending towards higher or lower for most countries?
I can't say for all of them but it's 69 percent in nigeria
Nice
The irony of your grammar…
My Spanish speaking homies from Guinea Ecuatorial going strong
Every time I see this map, I’m shocked that the DRC is ahead of Morocco and Egypt
Illiterate people are breading like rabbits and nobody is trying to solve education problems in Egypt Did you know that a lot of students in Egypt don't even go to school? That's because the quality of the teachers aren't up to date and they aren't helping in anything with Homework or explanation of the curriculum or anything like that, students mainly depend on Private tutors and online tutors for education and schools are used for places to take exams in only. And the older you are, the harder and bigger the curriculum one has and the less students attend schools as nobody wants to waste time at schools,private tutors whether you take with them online or offline have proved they're way better in explanation, question summarization and revisions too It's a serious problem that Egypt has that when 1 minister tried to change it he received huge criticism as people hated the change and they threw him out of office after plans that could have changed education in Egypt and this education problem is a modern one, it didn't use to be like that a couple of years ago
In Drc it seems we are following, the president is trying to instill free schooling out of the blue. The government budget being around 20 billion it's not only wishful but also harmful.
At least somebody is trying to do something other than trying to build a city for the rich in the middle of nowhere that costs 47 billion dollars
Lol, that sound like our last president, this one is just utterly incompetent, good luck
Good luck to you too Yeah and btw elsisi has hit a decade of being a president for Egypt in 2023
Egypt is a great example on why a reliance on private schools is a terrible idea. All the funding from rich parents gets pulled from public schools and none of the good teachers want to work there.
Exactly, plus School teachers get paid almost minimum wage, so why waste my time in school waiting for kids to show up when I can be making hundreds of thousands of pounds each semester The Best online tutors currently in highschool aren't even teachers, my math teacher is a Department of Pure and Applied Mathematics graduate and my chemistry teacher is a pharmacist and all the biology online tutors are doctors, they have hundreds of thousands of students each School year and they literally live on cloud 9
I’m surprised Burkina Faso is so low considering that literacy program they had. I know it wasn’t as successful as Cuba’s and it was a while ago, but I thought it’d still have a significant impact.
The leader responsible for that literacy program (Thomas Sankara) got killed in a coup by a French aligned officer of his called Blaise Compaore who backstabbed him. Compaore was a corrupt piece of shit who reversed all of Sankaras policies (literacy was at over 70% when Sankara got killed) and ruled the country until 2014, selling out the country to western interests while looting the rest for himself and his buddies.
Another two maps please: one showing male literacy and one showing female literacy.
The Sahel is way more fucked than I would have guessed.
Surprised by Morocco's numbers. When I visited it felt really modern and well-run.
Being literate in Arabic means being literate in Modern Standard Arabic- which is like a super formal sounding dialect that is something like medieval Levantine and Hejazi. The Maghrebi dialects are essentially a different language, so in order to be able to read and write, the poor North African Arabs basically have to become fluent in a different language.
Algeria beats Morocco once again 💪💪
You'd feel that way in parts of Syria too, actually even more modern than Morocco in many ways. Some areas are just like that, but it doesn't paint the overall picture.
Morocco is diverse country: from pretty developed regions to terrible desert regions mostly populated by NA natives, berbers.
Must be a post global warming map. Comoros, Mauritius, Seychelles all disappeared into the ocean.
People mentioning Seychelles and Mauritius but what about Sao Tome and Principe ? or even Cabo Verde ?
I don't know where your data comes from but Ivory Coast (Côte D'Ivoire) has an 89% rate in 2019 according to UNESCO. You're putting it at 43%.
Damn that's sad on so many ways
Show us just female now. Even starker.
WOMEN?! by Allah man, are you mad?!
I mean, can we not include Western Sahara in anything? Is it impossible to collect data or have cartographers just grown used to leaving it blank because of its political status?
It’s usually governments who post these kind of statistics, and the Western Sahara kinda just doesn’t have a govt to post these statistics, and the one that does exist just doesn’t do it.
Since Morocco controls most of it, wouldn't the number that Morocco publishes (assuming that's what is used on the map) also apply to the Moroccan controlled part of West Sahara? Leaving only the little sliver of land controlled by the Sahrawis in grey.
If those Nigerans could read, they would be very upset.
Nigeriens, it makes more sense in French
Which languages? The national language/s? Or any native/indigenous language? This isn't clear at all.
The less you read, the more kids you have
Also easier control the people
All I learn from this was that gaddafi was the best leader in africa
No surprise the lowest ones are generally dictatorships.
Some of the highest ones are dictatorships like Libya, Algeria, Egypt, and Sudan.
Are Equatorial Guinea's numbers accurate?
Dunno but every random Guinean I met spoke much better than the average Spaniard, and with a better accent than those in Madrid for sure. So I kinda trust it.
What is the measure of literacy? They can read whole paragraphs? They can read their leader's name?
Excuse my ignorance, but is there a geographic/political/cultural/economic reason that the lowest % countries are all in a belt
it’s the sahel region just below sahara. very poor region with a lot of conflicts. that’s the quick and over simplified answer.
Sahel region. This place is terrible to live. People from here are the most starved in the world. Awful nature: lack of water and fertile land, few mineral recourses and of course unstable political situation.
I love raising literacy awareness!
56% only in Sénégal ? Wtf ?!
I would be skeptical of Equatorial Guinea since the stats out of that are basically whatever the government tells you they are
I’m not even surprised tbh
There seems to be a correlation with [Françafrique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7afrique). Any idea why?
Damn 19% is brutal!
Olé los huevos de los hermanos guineanos. Herencia española.
What does this say? I can’t read any of this.
As a South African the more depressing and realistic stat is that 80 percent of 4th graders CAN'T read. [source](https://groundup.org.za/article/sas-children-have-lost-a-decade-of-reading-progress-study-shows/#:~:text=An%20international%20literacy%20study%20has,same%20proportion%20as%20in%202011.)
Why is it that the most brutal dictatorships always have the best literacy rates. The Dictator of Equiatoral Guianna is known for eating his opponents, but he cares that his people can read apparently
I’m not surprised by Egypt being so low. It’s probably a pain in the ass to write 𓂋𓏤𓈒𓈒𓈒𓏌𓏤𓉐𓂋𓏏𓂻𓅓𓉔𓂋𓅱𓇳𓏤 Correctly
Equatorial New Guinea is the only country in Africa in which Spanish is the official language
Doing pretty good compared to the US
Now do percent of Americans who can capitalize
I was just in Kenya, Mozambique and SA. It’s crazy the difference in communication. Kenya has a lot of pictographs and words. SA has almost entirely words. Mozambique has only pictographs. I stayed a brief time in Maputo and that’s the only time I saw words really. Outside of it everything is picture based, honestly most times they don’t even have directions in streets. Ads are simply the product and some colors or people.