linguistic:voice_change, structural:reformatting
Africa

The literacy rates in Africa vary significantly between countries. The registered literacy rate in Libya was 86.1% in 2004, and UNESCO says that the literacy rate in the region of Equatorial Guinea is approximately 95%, while the literacy rate in South Sudan is approximately 27%.

In sub-Saharan Africa, youth from wealthier families often have more educational opportunities to become literate than poorer youth, who may need to leave school because they are needed at home to farm or care for siblings. Additionally, the rate of literacy has not improved enough to compensate for the effects of demographic growth. As a result, the number of illiterate adults has risen by 27% over the last 20 years, reaching 169 million in 2010. Thus, out of the 775 million illiterate adults in the world in 2010, more than one fifth (20%) were in sub-Saharan Africa. The countries with the lowest levels of literacy in the world are also concentrated in this region, where adult literacy rates can be well below 50%.