Why 89% of African Children Can't Read: The Colonial Education Crisis Exposed

Why 89% of African Children Can't Read: The Colonial Education Crisis Exposed

Africa's education crisis is staggering: 89% of children in Sub-Saharan Africa cannot read and understand a simple text by age 10. That's nearly 9 out of 10 children sitting in classrooms for years—yet emerging unable to read a single paragraph.

This isn't a failure of intelligence. It's a failure of design.

Most African children are taught in colonial languages they don't speak at home—English, French, or Portuguese. They're expected to learn subjects in languages they're still trying to understand, from textbooks about places they've never seen, using concepts that don't exist in their mother tongues.

The result? The highest rates of "learning poverty" anywhere on Earth.

The Numbers: Africa's Education Crisis in 2024

The statistics paint a devastating picture of education in Africa:

Out-of-School Children

• Over 100 million children in Africa are out of school

• 1 in 5 children aged 6-11 are not in school

• 1 in 3 youth aged 12-14 are not in school

• Almost 60% of youth aged 15-17 are not in school

• Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for nearly 30% of all out-of-school children globally

Learning Poverty Rates

• 89% of 10-year-olds in Sub-Saharan Africa cannot read with comprehension (up from 86% pre-pandemic)

• 70% of children across all low- and middle-income countries are in "learning poverty"

• Africa has the highest learning poverty rate of any region in the world

Literacy Statistics

• Global adult literacy: 87%

• Sub-Saharan Africa adult literacy: 64%

• Number of illiterate adults in Africa: 225 million (increased from 196 million in 2015)

• Almost 1 in 4 youth in Sub-Saharan Africa are illiterate

Teacher Shortage

• Sub-Saharan Africa needs 15 million additional teachers—the largest shortage of any region

• This is the biggest teacher gap anywhere on Earth

Why Colonial Languages Are Destroying African Education

Here's what the research proves: children learn better in their mother tongue.

A landmark study of South African sixth-graders found dramatic differences:

That's more than double the achievement when children learn in languages they actually understand.

UNESCO research confirms this pattern across the continent: African students taught in a familiar language were 30% more likely to read with comprehension by the end of primary school than those taught in a foreign language.

Yet most African countries continue using colonial languages as the primary medium of instruction.

The French Colonial Education Legacy

French colonial policy was particularly destructive to African education.

France insisted on French-only instruction from day one—no transition period, no acknowledgment that children needed to learn French before they could learn in French.

One French official, worried that Haiti might teach Creole in schools, said: "If that is done, it will be a threat to French."

Another believed French would "eventually eliminate African languages to become a 'mother tongue.'"

The results were catastrophic.

A UNESCO report identified the five countries with the world's lowest adult literacy rates. All five were former French colonies that kept French as the official language.

Why Can't African Children Read? The Classroom Reality

The language barrier cascades through every aspect of education in Africa:

Teachers Struggle Too

Many African teachers aren't fluent in the colonial language they're required to use. They learned it badly, through the same broken system their students now experience.

A survey in Ghana found many teachers lacked confidence to teach in English because their own training was inadequate.

Learning Materials Are Scarce or Irrelevant

Textbooks in African languages barely exist. What materials do exist are often imported, written for European children, featuring European contexts.

A child in rural Mali learns to read from books about snow and apples and London buses—things they've never seen and may never see.

Time Is Wasted on Language, Not Content

Teachers spend so much time trying to teach the language of instruction that they can't teach actual subjects.

As one West African observer noted, instruction in French "left little room for instruction in arts and sciences: because the students' poor performance in those subjects was the result of an inadequate command of the language."

The child ends up learning neither the language nor the content.

The Hidden Cost: Epistemic Violence in African Schools

When you tell a child that their language is not suitable for learning, you tell them something about themselves.

When the language of success is foreign and the language of home is ignored, children absorb a message: your culture is inferior. Your knowledge doesn't count.

Scholars call this "epistemic violence"—the systematic devaluation of indigenous knowledge systems.

Colonial education didn't just fail to teach. It actively taught Africans to distrust their own minds.

In Francophone countries, children learn French history—the Revolution, Napoleon, the great kings—while their own histories are ignored. They read Molière and Victor Hugo while oral traditions that sustained communities for centuries go untaught.

The African child is educated out of Africa.

Who Benefits From Africa's Broken Education System?

The current system serves specific interests:

Former Colonial Powers

France created La Francophonie specifically to preserve French language dominance. French aid to African education has historically been contingent on French-medium instruction.

The language creates dependency: African elites educated in French are oriented toward Paris, not toward their neighbors.

African Elites

Those who master colonial languages benefit from a system that excludes the majority. Their children attend private schools with better instruction. The colonial language becomes a class marker.

International Institutions

English and French are the working languages of aid, diplomacy, and global commerce. Training Africans in these languages means training them to interface with existing power structures—not to challenge them.

The African masses bear the cost. Their children sit in classrooms learning little. Their languages are dismissed as "vernaculars." Their knowledge systems are excluded from formal education.

What Works: Solutions to Africa's Education Crisis

The evidence points toward real solutions.

Mother-Tongue-Based Multilingual Education

Children begin learning in their home language, building strong foundations. They then gradually add national and international languages as subjects before transitioning to using them as mediums of instruction.

Results:

• Ethiopia: Primary school dropout rates declined by ~20%

• Burkina Faso's bilingual program: Higher pass rates, less grade repetition, better school retention

Political Will Is Shifting

Since 1990, 11 of 19 former French territories have begun or expanded local language use in schools.

Today, 79% of former French colonies use local languages in education, compared to just 16% at independence.

Even France reversed course in the 1990s, recognizing that French-only instruction was failing to produce French speakers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is education in Africa so bad?

Africa's education crisis stems from multiple factors: colonial-era systems designed to produce clerks rather than thinkers, instruction in foreign languages children don't speak, severe teacher shortages (15 million needed), inadequate funding, and curricula disconnected from African realities.

What percentage of African children can't read?

According to the World Bank's 2022 report, 89% of children in Sub-Saharan Africa cannot read and understand a simple text by age 10. This is the highest "learning poverty" rate of any region globally.

Why do African schools teach in English or French?

Most African countries inherited colonial education systems that used European languages. At independence, leaders chose to keep these languages because: (1) choosing one indigenous language might favor some ethnic groups over others, and (2) colonial languages were seen as pathways to international opportunities.

What is learning poverty?

Learning poverty measures the share of children who cannot read a simple text with comprehension by age 10. It combines schooling (are children in school?) with learning (are they actually acquiring skills?). In Sub-Saharan Africa, learning poverty is 89%.

How can Africa fix its education system?

Evidence-based solutions include: mother-tongue instruction in early grades with gradual transition to additional languages, improved teacher training and salaries, curriculum reform to reflect African contexts, increased education funding, and reducing class sizes.

The Real Question

Africa is the world's youngest continent. 10-12 million young people enter the labor force every year. The continent creates only about 3 million jobs annually.

If those young people are educated—truly educated, not just processed through failing schools—they represent extraordinary potential.

If they're not, if they emerge unable to read their own names, they represent something else: frustration, wasted potential, instability.

The colonial education system was designed to produce subjects, not citizens. It was designed to make Africans legible to European administrators, not to develop African capabilities.

Sixty-plus years after independence, that system largely remains.

Changing it requires more than new textbooks. It requires a fundamental question: What should African children learn, and in what languages, toward what ends?

Until Africans have the power to answer these questions on their own terms, the miseducation will continue.