Let Girls Learn! West and Central Africa

Whilst considerable progress has been made, gender inequalities that disadvantage girls across the globe persist in West and Central Africa. Even before schools were forced to close in response to COVID-19, 41 million children and adolescents were out of school in the region – a third of the world’s out of school children – including 28 million girls.

Let Girls Learn! West and Central Africa sets out the scale of the learning crisis facing girls in the region. It provides governments, international and national civil society organisations with suggestions, recommendations and data that can assist in the design of education policy and programmes to enable all children, regardless of their gender, to receive a good-quality education and to be empowered equally in and through education.

This policy brief is based on Save the Children’s global theory of change for girls’ education, set out in our Girls’ Education Technical Package, which draws on evidence from our experience delivering education programmes with positive and transformative outcomes for girls. This package, which is available to Save the Children staff and partners, constitutes a comprehensive set of guidance on girls’ education programming and advocacy.