- Enrolment rates for higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa are by far the lowest in the world. Currently, the gross enrolment ratio in the region stands at only 5 per cent. Moreover, gender disparities have traditionally been wide - and they remain wide. Young people are being deprived of the possibility to enrich their lives. Countries are losing out and wasting human capital. This is a drawback in the fight against poverty. By training physicians and other health workers, it can improve a nation’s health raising productivity at work. In the context of this EDCT-meeting - it is the way that enables the conduct of clinical trials in poverty-related diseases. Education is not a way to escape poverty – it’s a way of fighting it, said Mr Staffan Herrström, Ambassador of Sweden to Tanzania.
- I want to give special emphasis to one perspective too often lacking when discussing development in broader terms: gender equality – or formulated in another way: unlocking the potential inherent in women and girls. Many more of us men should much more often and much more energetically speak out on this. Why must at least one third of all women experience violence? Why must we over and over again see women and girls discriminated in all possible contexts? Politics, inheritance, land rights, marriage age? Why must married women in Africa be the group with the highest risk of becoming HIV-infected? Why must young girls over and over again become victims of sexual abuse by adults whom they should have reason to trust? Why cannot the right of girls and women to say no to sex be respected by boys and men? Higher education creates the potential, but governments and private actors must seize the opportunities. And women must be empowered, said Ambassador Staffan Herrström.