Africa has made significant progress towards achieving gender equality in education, but millions of girls remain locked out of secondary school, particularly in poor and rural communities.
This is according to a 2026 UNESCO Global Education Monitoring (GEM) report titled Gender Equity in Access to Education in Africa.
It is the first in the three-part Countdown to 2030 series, designed to take stock of education progress in access and equity, quality and leaning, and relevance.
The other two will be released in 2027 and 2028.Together, these three editions will assess how education systems open doors, nurture knowledge and prepare learners for a world full of uncertainties, and thus help frame the debate on the post 2030 education agenda.
According to the report, while the continent has reached gender parity in primary school enrolment and is close to doing so at lower secondary level, girls continue to trail boys in upper secondary and tertiary education.
The report says that in 2024 there were 93 girls enrolled in upper secondary school for every 100 boys, while tertiary education recorded 94 women for every 100 men.
“Despite significant progress, important gender disparities persist in terms of access to and completion of secondary education, particularly among rural and impoverished households,” the report states.
The disparities vary sharply across the continent. Northern Africa has surpassed parity, with more girls than boys enrolled in upper secondary education.
However, the situation is markedly different elsewhere. In Central Africa, only 79 girls are enrolled for every 100 boys, while Eastern Africa records just 71 girls for every 100 boys of upper secondary school age.
According to the report, geography and poverty continue to be among the strongest determinants of whether girls complete their education.
The report further says one of the biggest gains has been in reducing the number of children excluded from school altogether.
Between 2000 and 2024, the out-of-school rate for girls dropped from 47 percent to 28 percent, compared with a decline from 39 percent to 27 percent for boys.
“As a result, the gender gap in out-of-school rates narrowed dramatically from eight percentage points to just one, signaling steady progress in expanding access to education across Africa,” the report says.
The report also finds that girls are increasingly matching, and in some cases outperforming boys in completing school on time.
The eight-percentage-point gender gap in lower secondary completion recorded in 1990 had disappeared by 2022.
However, the report cautions that the apparent parity masks another challenge: boys are more likely to complete school later than girls.
When late completers are included, boys still maintain a five-percentage-point advantage in both lower and upper secondary completion. Late enrolment and grade repetition continue to skew education outcomes, according to the report.
In 2024, 37 percent of boys, compared with 23 percent of girls, were at least two years older than the official age for lower secondary education.
“Boys can afford to stay in education for longer, which explains why different conclusions are drawn for timely and ultimate completion rates,” the report notes.
The report identifies poverty and location as major drivers of educational inequality.
In countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Senegal, urban areas have achieved gender parity in upper secondary completion, but rural communities lag far behind, with fewer than six girls completing upper secondary school for every ten boys.
Similar disparities are evident in Angola, Mozambique and pre-war Sudan, where children from the richest households experience near parity, while among the poorest households no more than three girls complete upper secondary school for every ten boys.
The report notes that isolated interventions will not be enough to close the remaining gender gaps.
“No single policy will work on its own to close the gender gap. Governments must tackle the social, financial and educational barriers that continue to keep girls out of school,” the report says.
It recommends comprehensive policy packages that combine financial support for vulnerable families, measures to improve school safety, efforts to eliminate harmful gender norms and investments that make secondary education more accessible for disadvantaged communities.
The findings come as African governments work towards the Sustainable Development Goal of ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education for all by 2030.
While the report highlights remarkable gains over the past two decades, it warns that without targeted action to address inequalities driven by poverty, geography and gender, millions of girls will remain excluded from opportunities that education provides.
