At the launch of Girls Education Network in Koforidua, the director of Girls' Education Unit (GEU) at the Ghana Education Service (GES) said if parents performed their parental responsibilities, teenage girls would not fall prey to illicit sex, which often resulted in unexpected pregnancies and school drop-outs. She said there was the need for a paradigm shift, hence the establishment of the network to advocate girls welfare and advancement. [...] Some local NGOs and international partners included UNICEF, United States Agency for International Development and UNESCO.

In order to reduce poverty and introduce community development, oftentimes it’s best to start with women. That’s the approach taken by Oklahoma City-based non-governmental organization World Neighbors in its work in Nepal and India. World Neighbors currently works in about 20 villages in Bihar, India and in nearly 32 communities over five districts in Nepal. The three main areas of work are sustainable agriculture and rural livelihood, community-based natural resource management, and reproductive health and gender equity.

Under a new foreign policy it adopted last year, Taiwan is seeking to woo more foreign students, including from India, to study in its institutes of higher learning. “The central focus of our New Southbound policy is to strengthen ties with Southeast Asia and India,” Rebecca Lan, Deputy Director General at the Department of International and Cross-Strait Education in Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, said during an interaction with a group of visiting journalists from the region here.

Globally, boys tend to be favored over girls. This is particularly true in the developing world, where data show discrimination against girls deprives them of an education and makes them vulnerable to harmful practices. [...] Developing countries that allow girls to complete their secondary education will earn an economic dividend of $21 billion every year, the UN report says.

International collaboration can cause African universities to become more dependent on the North. But they can also have the opposite effect: they can empower African researchers and help them to become more independent.