This chapter examines girls' education in Niger, one of the Least Developed Counties (LDCs) located in West Africa with one of the lowest literacy rates in the world. Hence, primary education is compulsory. The education system is open equally to boys and girls; however, the facts are that, the girls have fewer opportunities for primary school to six grades. Gender traditional roles and economic factors are a great set back to the girls' education in the country. This chapter tries to investigate the complex relationships around the objectives and visions of parents and Government toward girls' education.
TopBackground
Education is defined as one of the key strategies to improve an individual’s wellbeing and society leading to economic development. In Niger, access to education improves slowly, girls ‘education is linking within women traditional roles and other discriminations that continue to hamper girls’ education.
In these last decades there have been a number of encouraging trends in girls’ education by Government and Non-government Organizations as well as Civil society organizations. And there are many studies in this field conducted by Government and Non-Government Organizations such as, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), WORLD BANK, Human Rights Watch and others.
They fund the Government’s program and different researches toward education as well as community wellbeing and development and support the Government to offer equal education, leaning to girls’ education which is sometimes disregarded in the traditional society. There are also academic discipline researches such as Sociology, Economy and Education which explore female education and employment, and explain how investment in education especially of the girls can reduce poverty and provide enormous economic benefits.
There are several works which focused attention on girls and women rights as well as the social inequalities that emerged in the least developed countries, and continue to affect the development of these countries to the present day.
As such, Government of Niger every year reports about its “Full Poverty Reduction Strategy”, “analysis of child and women’s situation” that kind of research aims to explore how poverty handicaps girls’ education and women’s wellbeing in the country and the challenges to the development of the country.
There are United Nations’ reports about developing countries; there are those which deal mainly with the female’s situation in terms of different gender gaps and economy, female wellbeing and development.
There are other kinds of research on academics and independent researches which sometimes funded by Non-Government Organizations, with much emphasis like female education and roles in Developing Countries (King,1993; Herz, 2004; Greene, 2013; Anker, 1982).