ADDIS ABABA, Feb 16, 2024 (BSS/XINHUA) - Nearly 100 million children and youth aged 5 to 19 across Africa are not socially integrated simply because they are out of school, African Union (AU) Commissioner for Education, Science, Technology and Innovation Mohammed Belhocine said Thursday.

These children and youth are vulnerable to all sorts of scourges, and they can be easily manipulated by terrorist groups, drug dealers and human traffickers, Belhocine told reporters during the ongoing AU Summit held in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, noting that many of them end up in different crime networks or migrating to other parts of Africa or out of the continent.

He stressed the need to support these children and youth through vocational and technical training, and help them get necessary skills to become self-employed.

Africa faces a setback in delivering quality education, especially at low grades, resulting in nine out of 10 children in Sub-Saharan Africa being unable to read and understand a simple text by the age of 10, the commissioner acknowledged.

Noting that Africa needs about 90 billion U.S. dollars to achieve universal education coverage by 2030, he called for global support for the continent to meet the funding gap.