Like their urban counterparts, many rural residents face extreme levels of poverty. It is no surprise, then, that rural education has struggled since the beginning. This poverty contributes to lower educational attainment in rural schools. Only one in 10 people from low-income families attain a bachelor’s degree by the age of 25. Rural districts face an even harder task than their urban counterparts in improving these statistics; at the turn of the century, an urban resident had a 10 to 15 percent higher chance of going to university than a rural resident.
All this, coupled with funding disparities, the burden of transportation, shortage of teachers, technology, and internet connectivity has increased further the gap between the urban and rural students.
Access to water and energy has also been detrimental to the development of rural education in Africa. The scarcity of basic services has also added the woes of rural education departments and officials. Teachers face the daunting task of commuting on a daily basis as accommodation is also a problem for them and this leads to an exodus of teachers moving to urban areas for greener pastures.
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