In sub-Saharan Africa, one of the strongest advocates for girls’ education is the Nairobi-based Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE). Founded in 1992, it has developed a powerful network of top women government education ministers and women educators from across the sub-Saharan region who work along with the organization’s 33 national chapters in 33 countries, as well as with other nongovernmental agencies, to promote awareness of the importance of providing educational access and opportunities for girls in the region.

FAWE has been particularly visible in promoting primary and secondary school education, but, according to Penina Mlama, the organization’s executive director, “We are also involved in higher education. We have a committee of university vice-chancellors who meet to address the issues,” which, she explains, include efforts to expand the availability of higher education for women as well as support their success.

From the beginning, FAWE’s strategy has been to approach the problem of increasing girls’ participation in higher education from a number of different directions. At the governmental level, it lobbies for implementation of policies, including school curricula that support girls’ education. At the primary and secondary school level, the organization works to increase girls’ enrollment and, through some of its chapters, offers scholarship assistance to enable young women to continue their education. Parent and teacher training workshops sponsored by FAWE also help raises awareness about the need to provide educational opportunities for girls and young women. And by working directly with students through its Role Model Program, FAWE helps girls to interact with women who have completed their education and gone on to successful careers.

Recently, the organization has embarked on what is perhaps its boldest effort to date—a new project called “FAWE Centres of Excellence”—that aims to provide more hands-on involvement at selected primary and secondary schools in rural areas by addressing specific problems hindering girls’ access to school and to a quality education.

The goal of the effort, says Mlama, is to accelerate “the creation of enabling environments,” meaning school environments where students have the means as well as the will to learn and excel. Her hope, Mlama says, “is that these schools will serve as models of effective strategies aimed at enhancing girls’ education.” As part of the project, participating schools will benefit from an infusion of materials and support such as new textbooks and library materials, as well as access to computers and new technologies. And where necessary, even the schools infrastructure will be rehabilitated and improved through the construction of student dormitories and new classrooms.

The first three schools to be developed as Centres of Excellence, one each in Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda, were named in 1999 with support from Carnegie Corporation of New York. The program created for each school targets a problem specific to its community. For example, in Kenya, the Centre of Excellence is the African Inland Church (AIC) Girls Boarding Primary School, which is not only focusing on improving the quality of education it offers to its students but is also providing shelter for some two dozen young girls of the Massai tribe who have been “rescued” from pre-arranged early marriages. Some of these girls are as young as nine years old. Here, FAWE has not only brought in books, library materials and computers, but also helped to construct living quarters because many of these “rescued girls” cannot go home again. “Since they have broken with their family’s wishes for them to marry, many of the families do not want them back,” explains Priscilla Nangurai, school headmistress for the past 22 years who is also Massai.

“When we first started helping these girls, we made many people angry,” says Nangurai. But while the practice of early marriage still continues, Nangurai is sure that the combined efforts of FAWE and the school to increase understanding about the need for girls to get an education are making a difference. “We are beginning to see a change in attitude in the communities surrounding our school,” she says. “More and more girls are attending school with their parents’ blessing. And most of the rescued girls who are coming to us now are from outside this area.”

Helen Nkaissery, FAWE’s coordinator for the AIC school, is herself a graduate of AIC; she is also a former high school teacher and a Massai. She says that, “The school’s program is making education available to girls who otherwise might never have had any educational opportunities at all. It’s also helping to instill in them the importance of education and the vision to want to go further. That’s exactly the result we’ve been striving for.”

Penina Mlama agrees. Creating an open pathway for girls to participate in primary and secondary education, and to do well, is a first, crucial step toward a promising future for women’s education in Africa. “The reality,” says Mlama “is that you have to focus on all levels of education. Unless there are girls in school and excelling in the lower grades, we will not have girls who are ready for university in the future.”

It’s a daunting challenge, and one that sometimes has to be met one student at a time. But success is more than just a hope—it’s already in sight. Even among the “rescued” Massai girls at the AIC school, most go on to secondary school and some, to universities. What Penina Mlama and Helen Nkaissery and all the other parents, teachers, educators and policymakers involved with FAWE are working for is the day when that is not a remarkable story but just the general rule for girls and young women all across Africa.

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