To coincide with the 2024 Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers taking place in London today, the Justice for Africa campaign has released a new briefing exposing the education inequality crisis between Commonwealth countries and demanding urgent action to prevent an unequal future.
Download Transferring Our Common Wealth here:
(Picture above of young people in Malawi participating in the global Justice for Africa mobilisation in October 2023)
The gap between young people in the richest Commonwealth members and other Commonwealth members, particularly in Africa, is at breaking point.
A series of deliberate and discriminatory decisions by the Commonwealth’s richest countries in recent years has exacerbated long standing structural injustices and left many questioning whether the Commonwealth is not only failing to depart from its colonial history, but actively reproducing its power dynamics in the modern world.
The number of school-aged African children living in Commonwealth countries who are out of school has increased by 14 million since 2008. That is more than all the school aged children in the UK today. It has become so unequal that more is being spent on a child’s education in a few weeks in the richest Commonwealth countries than is spent in the lifetime of the average child in the poorest.
This report attempts to demonstrate how, as a result of these injustices, government budgets in African Commonwealth countries have been suppressed, leaving them unable to deliver the basic rights of their citizens, including the right to education.
TAKE ACTION:
Help amplify the briefing on social media during the Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers on May 16th and 17th 2024 , using #JusticeForAfrice, #CCEM and #YearOfYouth.
Click the graphics below to share the briefing directly on Twitter.
