Can Gender Equality be the Solution to African Development?

Young girl selling by road

by Nouredine Mama

My family and I live in a small locality in the biggest city of Cameroon called Douala. Muslims make up 70 percent of the population of Douala, myself and my family included. Education in the Muslim community here is considered useless by many. Although most of the parents know how to read, many don’t see the use in paying to send their children to school. Poverty is one of the contributing factors, but I think the main problem is that they don’t see the impact of it.

Waiting through three years of kindergarten, seven years of high school, and five to eight years of university? Paying all this money and making these sacrifices all in the hopes their children will succeed? This hesitation prevents most girls, and even boys, from going to school. Some boys struggle, and sell goods in the market to provide for their school needs when their parents will no longer support them. Girls, on the other hand, don’t go to school because of the common belief that a woman’s life in the future is to serve her husband. And, according to Islamic teaching, girls need to get married.

Sometimes girls will willingly get married at 15 years old. I think most of them are never exposed to a bigger picture of life and its objectives. The other girls out of school get involved in small scale entrepreneurship like sewing or selling jewelry or goods. While this might seem like a good alternative, the girls are only doing this because they believe they have no other options.

Education is a major issue to address as most of the children don’t even know how to read. It is not always poverty that stops them from continuing on, but most often their parents or even themselves. They may have lost interest because of a lack of follow up at home, or a role model. My uncle always told me that the solution to empowering kids in my neighborhood is to be a role model for them. “If a kid knows how successful you are, he will always think you have the solution to all his academic problems, and he will aspire to be like you in the future. So if we can give them this bigger picture and be their role model, I think these kids will be on the right track,” he said.

For a long time, I thought that education is only what you get from school, but this is not the case. I believe even without the “school” education, there is so much potential for girls to create an impact.

This piece has been edited for clarity.