Dr Lana Chikhungu

Dr Lana Chikhungu is a Senior Lecturer in International Development at the University of Portsmouth. Her research interests are in child and maternal health, gender and poverty alleviation in the Sub Saharan Africa. She has undertaken research in child under-nutrition, girls’ education, violence against women and FGM.

Gender inequality has a different face in developing countries despite being a global problem.  In Malawi, very few girls can read or write and even fewer finish primary education.  The numbers completing secondary and tertiary education are much less than those that finish primary school[1]. Indeed poverty has been cited as key contributing factor for why girls fail to achieve their basic education requirements in developing countries [2, 3].   Credit should be given however to the work of governments, the UN and charitable institutions in developing countries running numerous projects to help girls stay in school.  Recent research findings in Malawi support the key role played by bursaries in keeping girls in secondary schools, but girls that are not selected into the limited public secondary schools but have the ability to pursue secondary education miss out on this financial assistance [4]. 

The work of CAMFED (Campaign for female education) funded by DfID under the Keeping Girls in Schools (KGIS) Programme and other related projects have been influential in the provision of girls bursaries in Malawi and the sub Saharan Africa.  Data obtained from the Malawi Ministry of Education indicates that between 2012 and 2017 bursaries to girls in secondary schools in Malawi increased by 129% from 14,480 to 33,948.  During the same period the dropout rate for girls in secondary schools declined by 7.3%[4].

Although some parents may be compelled by financial limitations to consciously support boys’ education to the disadvantage of girls [5, 6], the general picture for rural Malawi where the situation is much dire reveals that a boost to a whole household’s socio-economic as opposed to merely targeting the girls may go a long way to improving girls’ education for the following reasons:

·      Girls bear the bigger burden of helping out in homes but socio-economically well-off households do not require their children to help out with a significant amount of household chores or small business to earn income;

·      In the early years of primary school the dropout rate is similar between girls and boys for both poor and richer pupils;

·      Urban schools (which tend to be relatively rich) have a lower dropout rate for both girls and boys compared to rural (relatively poor) schools;

·      Private (fee-paying primary schools) that are attended by socio-economically well-off pupils have a lower dropout rate for both boys and girls than public (non-fee paying primary schools) that are attended by relatively poor pupils.

·      Girls in senior primary school do not make plans to drop out of school for marriage but once they drop out for socio-economic reasons marriage is next in-store.

Governments, the UN and charitable institutions should therefore implement initiatives that do not only directly provide finance and resources to households with school-going kids but also engage in employment creation projects that boost incomes of households, especially in rural areas.  An improvement to households’ socio-economic status should, however, be augmented by extensive provision at the macro level that support an increase of public schools within walking distance easily accessible by all pupils, more schools with adequate sanitation facilities to encourage girls attendance even during their monthly periods, well-equipped and well-staffed schools with qualified teachers that help pupils make better academic progress and reduce class repetition. Continued support by all stakeholders and concerted effort by the Malawi government is therefore imperative to achieve improvements in girls’ education in Malawi and most developing countries.

It has been suggested however that aid to the education sector may undermine the long-term education system developmental agenda[7].  This may be linked to the common challenges faced by the utilisation of aid in most of the economically challenged countries but also the main agenda of the aid on the part of the aid givers[8, 9]. 

How can poorly resourced economies like Malawi maximise from its charitable donations and make a significant progress in education for all including that of girls in Malawi?

1.         Gondwe, C., Factors influencing rural femal pupils drop out from primary schools. 2016.

2.         Lewin, K.M., Access to education in sub‐Saharan Africa: patterns, problems and possibilities. Comparative Education, 2009. 45(2): p. 151-174.

3.         Orkin, M., et al., Pathways to poor educational outcomes for HIV/AIDS-affected youth in South Africa. AIDS Care, 2014. 26(3): p. 343-50.

4.         Chikhungu, L., et al., Tackling girls dropping out of school in Malawi: is improving household socio-economic status the solution? International Journal of Educational Research, 2020.

5.         Hunt, F., Dropping out of school: a cross country review of literature, in Create pathways to access. 2008, University of Sussex.

6.         Johnson, J., Female education in Africa. 2006, England: Longman.

7.         Riddell, A. and M. Niño-Zarazúa, The effectiveness of foreign aid to education: What can be learned? International Journal of Educational Development, 2016. 48: p. 23-36.

8.         Manning, R., Aid as a second best solution: seven problems of effectiveness and how to tackle them, in WIDER working paper 2012/024. 2012, UNU-WIDER: Helsinki.

9.         Moyo, D., Dead aid: Why aid is not working and how there is a better way for Africa. 2009, New York: Farrar: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.