Female illiteracy worry

More than 70 percent of Mozambican women are illiterate, with little prospect of learning to read and write before the new millenium, news reports said. Quoting the Mozambican education minister, Arnaldo Nhavoto, the reports said the country's overall literacy rate is at about 60 percent, with only a fractional increase in the number of adults attending literacy classes. Nhavoto said an estimated 27,000 adults attended literacy classes in 1994, while only 29,000 people attended these in 1999. "We should promote women's literacy because by doing so we would be educating the entire nation," Nhavoto said. He however added that his government's primary school building programme has been successful. "The programme has seen a 12.2 percent increase in the number of primary schools over the past five years, with 6,605 schools now teaching pupils from grades one to five," Nhavoto said.