While Botswana is celebrated across Africa for its free education policy and high primary school completion rates, a startling revelation from UNICEF suggests that the country does not know whether its children can actually read or do basic arithmetic.
In its newly released report ; “The State of the World’s Children 2025: Ending Child Poverty -Our Shared Imperative” UNICEF exposes a critical gap in Botswana’s education system: the complete lack of data on foundational learning outcomes for children aged 7 to 14, the very stage when most countries assess basic literacy and numeracy.
There's more to this story
But to keep reading, we need you to subscribe.
Investigative journalism is an indispensable part of a healthy society, but it's also expensive to produce. We are reliant on subscriptions to fund our work, and while you can enjoy most of our stories for free, a small number of premium features are reserved for subscribers.
You can subscribe for one week, a month or a full year - the choice is yours.
Save 77% on an annual subscription. Click here to find out how.
Existing subscribers can log in to keep reading here.
