A saying goes:

‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world’.[1]

Education is crucial to ending poverty because it is essential to sustainable development, as it enables people to create solutions for themselves and find paths to a better future.

Africa has made great strides in getting children into schools–this according to UNESCO’s 2015 Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report. [i]

The changes, which were measured from 1999-2012, were most notable in ten regions: Burkina Faso, Burundi, Ghana, Guinea, Lesotho, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Senegal and Zambia.[ii]

Many non-profit organizations, venture capitalists, and philanthropists are investing in or founding e-learning programs. Intel Corporation has collaborated with the Kenya Private School Association to implement e-learning programs in private schools. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg support Bridge, an internet-based education institution that has opened over 400 international institutions.

Serum therapy is broadly defined as the act of transferring certain humoral antibodies from an animal proved to have a high concentration of these antibodies to another animal in need of the same antibodies temporarily. The applications of this term is widely used even when other species other than human is the recipient or donor. As part of the solution to many viral diseases there are also probes associated with serum therapy as a whole, those include transmission of other infections other than the target disease.

The Washington Post wrote an article following US Secretary of State John Kerry urging leaders around the world to “step up even further” in their anti-Ebola efforts. In the article there was a graph (shown below) that shows financial contributions to the UN for Ebola by country. The goal is to raise $998 million and as of October 8^th, 2014, financial contributions towards the UN Ebola response fell short by $306.2 million. The highest contributor was the US at $113.8 million and the lowest contributor was Italy at $2.2 million.

From smartphones to computers, the endless stream of new gadgets in the global market has ushered an age of unparalleled access to communication. As a result, schools in the US have replaced cursive writing with keyboarding. Children’s games are now taking the form of kid-friendly electronics. Google is currently testing a free Wi-Fi network capable of being accessed in nearly any location on Earth.

Education is the start of an adventurous quest to become a global citizen and to position one to become a productive element in the job market sector. The benefit of having an education goes far beyond what anyone could ever begin to explain in just a few words.

At fourteen, Aminata was hungrily looking in at the rice and sauce being served at her school in Freetown, Sierra Leone. By sixteen, she is married and pregnant. “My parents couldn’t afford to give me any money for food, so I dropped out of school and got into an early marriage to an older man.” As we Skype in a classroom, I in a spacious well equipped one in London and Aminata in a small, basic one, provided by the Global Giving charity in Sierra Leone, she and some of her classmates explain some of the problems they face.

The computer may be an integral part in the homes, schools and companies of developed nations but for Africans it is a distant dream. This could also be one of the reasons why the youth in African countries are unable to compete in the global market. Those aspiring to get even basic computer training need to enroll and pay the computer schools which come at a predatory price.

Today, without exception, we live in a technological age.  We live in a world where computers offer instant access to knowledge, communication, culture, and skill building opportunities.  We live in a time where a person can go to school, tend to their finances, talk with friends, apply to jobs and so much more - all with the click of a mouse.  Perhaps most important to acknowledge, we live in a world where those who possess computer skills soar in their personal and professional lives and those without often get left behind.