This article reports on a pilot research project conducted in nine countries of Africa and Asia on some aspects of the impact that teaching literacy to adults has had on the lives of some adult literacy facilitators (ALFs). The small-scale enquiry was implemented by a team of twelve researchers in nine countries (Afghanistan, Botswana, Ethiopia,…

The purpose of this study was to examine the existing practices and challenges of Integrated Functional Adult Literacy Program in eastern Ethiopia. To achieve this objective, the researchers used mixed research design. Questionnaires, interview and focus group discussions were used as viable instrument for data collection. The questionnaires were…

This article discusses the impact of literacy programmes on those who learned to read and write in their own African languages. It draws on adult learners' reflections on the significance of literacy and numeracy in their everyday lives as evidenced in interviews conducted in 2014 and 2015 in rural sites in five African countries: Ethiopia, Kenya,…

When Ethiopia launched its National Literacy Campaign (NLC) in July 1979, it was announced that illiteracy would be removed from the urban areas of the country by 1982 and from rural Ethiopia by 1987. By the end of the 12th round of the NLC in February 1985, 16.9 million youths and adults had been covered by the campaign, and 12 million (almost…

This report contains one man's impressions of the state of adult literacy education in several countries of Africa and in India. The first country reported on is Ethiopia, where signs of a capitalist society were evident in that officially Marxist country, where literacy education was still a priority in the midst of a waning famine. Ethiopia had…