By William Madouk<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
South Sudan is grappling with a significant literacy crisis, lagging behind its peers in the East African region.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n As the world observed International Literacy Day, United Nations data revealed that South Sudan has one of the lowest literacy rates globally, with only 30% of the population able to read and write.<\/p>\n The survey shows that 84% of girls aged 15 and older remain illiterate. This issue is compounded by an estimated 2.8 million children dropping out of school, according to the latest United Nations reports.<\/p>\n Literacy does not only enrich an individual\u2019s life, but it creates opportunities for people to develop skills that will help them provide for themselves and their families.<\/p>\n The U.S. embassy in South Sudan claimed that the government of national unity has radically failed to serve citizens\u2019 needs, and that prompted the U.S. government to funds in promoting basic literacy.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile the transitional government has failed to meet the needs of the people it purportedly serves,\u201d the embassy said in a statement on Tuesday.<\/p>\n \u201cThe U.S. government has provided more than $328 million to help millions of South Sudanese citizens develop foundational literacy and numeracy skills, advance their economic well-being, improve their health, reduce poverty, and increase their participation in the labour market,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n U.S called on the government to invest in education and literacy citing that as the centre of transformation.<\/p>\n \u201cTo mark International Literacy Day, we renew our call on the transitional government to invest public resources to meet public needs and take meaningful action to fulfil its obligations to the people of South Sudan,\u201d it noted.<\/p>\n To combat illiteracy, authorities launched thousands of adult-class education across the country.<\/p>\n However, this was short-lived as the decade of civil war eroded progress in the education sector and brought up the literacy figures.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s International Literacy Day (ILD) was under the theme “Promoting multilingual education: Literacy for mutual understanding and peace”.<\/p>\n According to UNESCO, there is a pressing need to harness the transformative potential of literacy for promoting mutual understanding, social cohesion, and peace.<\/p>\n That means multilingualism is a common practice for many, empowering people by adopting a first language-based, multilingual approach to literacy development and education is particularly effective for its cognitive, pedagogical, and socio-economic benefits.<\/p>\n The global celebration was be held on 9 and 10 September 2024 in Yaound\u00e9, Cameroon.<\/p>\n It includes; the award ceremony of the UNESCO International Literacy Prizes, and side events, such as the annual meeting of the Global Alliance of Literacy within the Framework of Lifelong Learning (GAL) and meetings of the Action Research on Measuring Literacy and<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By William Madouk South Sudan is grappling with a significant literacy crisis, lagging behind its peers in the East African region. As the world observed International Literacy Day, United Nations data revealed that South Sudan has one of the lowest literacy rates globally, with only 30% of the population[Read More…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":28518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Pupils-attending-session-under-a-tree.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28519,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28517\/revisions\/28519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}