Casually looking through nationmaster.com*, a great resource for aggregating stats on almost every country in the world depending on availability of information I was struck by one particular set of stats. The HIV prevalence rates among adults was overwhelmingly dominated by African countries. Its not like this was news to me, I have known this for as long as I can remember. I guess it was more telling after looking at other sets of statistics and seeing African countries occupying the bottom and middle of wealth per capita lists and Olympic achievement tables to name a couple. Compared to the literacy rates of African countries the HIV prevalence rate is put into perspective. Literacy rates on the continent range between 19% to 85%. It is important to note that countries like South Africa and Zimbabwe with high HIV/AIDS prevalence rates do have very literate populations. The remaining percentage of illiterate people in these countries and other sub-Saharan African countries (many from rural areas) need programs like Grassroot Soccer and Kick for life to reach them with their important hands on educational programs. Without proactive work such as this, these people may never be reached.
Literacy stands to improve as the continent picks itself up from years of mismanagement, natural disasters and war in some places. For now the work of those on the ground working to fight diseases like HIV/AIDS through hands on programs like Grassroot Soccer's the Skillz program need to be supported!
*The site compiles information from various sources in an easy and understandable fashion. You can even have some info appear as a graph. The site compiles info ranging from Olympic performance of countries to a basic list of natural resources for every country in the world.
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