Shams Ur Rehman Alavi
www.asiantribune.net
Asia has a population of nearly 4.8 billion that is 60% of entire world populace [8 billion] but illiteracy remains a big challenge for the continent.
On one hand, several Asian countries have approximately 99.5%-99.8% literacy, the region is also home to countries with extremely low literacy among women. In all, around 450 million people are not literate.
In South Asia, literacy is low, especially, among women. In contrast, a few other countries reached nearly cent percent [100%] literacy, and certain others were at 99%, but lot of other countries in Asia have poor literacy level—[30% to 50% above the age of 15, remain illiterate, even in this era].
In East Asia, South Korea had over 98% literacy. Mongolia too had reached this level.
The Arab world i.e. Middle East [also termed West Asia] focused on education and most of these countries did exceptionally well in the first quarter of this century.
Jordan, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates were all in the high literacy bracket. Turkey had long ago gone ahead and joined the list of countries with over 95% literacy for women.
Oman too has similar literacy level. Besides, in East Asia, Taiwan, Japan and China went past the 95% mark in recent years. Almost the same level is seen in South East Asia. Vietnam & Philippines touched 95%. Indonesia had crossed 95% mark & so did Malaysia.
However, the region that still has comparatively less literacy is South Asia. This region accounts for a large part of the world’s population–nearly a quarter of eight billion people who live on this planet.
India’s female literacy was nearly 70%. Bangladesh had 72%. Pakistan was far behind at around 52% and needs special efforts, as just over half of the women were literate. War-torn Afghanistan has a long way to go, as it is still among the countries with least literacy among women. Sri Lanka did much better than other countries in this region.
After Asia, the second most populous continent is Africa [1.4 billion]. Europe has nearly 0.75 billion populace. North America has 0.58 billion. South America is on the fifth spot with nearly 0.42 billion. Oceania is the least populated. [Map is region based and for representational purpose, not depicting exact boundaries & distances]
Countries with high literacy rates for women include: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and China. They have above 95% literacy rate for women. China, Mongolia, United Arab Emirates, Thailand, Turkey, Philippines, some other countries in Middle East, are in the 90%-95% bracket.
Slight variation in estimates are due to internal conflicts, displacement of population and natural calamities that also affect census operations. The figures have been sources from multiple top agencies including World Bank, UNESCO and research organizations. Census data is also awaited in several countries.
