Developing Lower Secondary Education: a Rural Issue and Challenge for Sub-Saharan Africa

The current development of African education systems focuses on the perspective of universal completion of six years of schooling. This perspective, targeted by the international community for the year 2015 (Dakar declaration, Millennium Development Goals), will no doubt be reached by a number of countries by that date, while for others this will probably be somewhat later. However, beyond the very positive aspect of this anticipated result, it is appropriate to highlight the fact that the growing number of young people completing primary education will necessarily create strong pressure for the expansion of enrollments in secondary education. (...)