Source: The Guardian
Ten years ago in Malawi's capital, Lilongwe, Zikani Kaunga, a prominent education advocate, invited me to the Sunbird Hotel. Pushing his juice aside, he tipped forward to make a proposition.

For years, Zikani had implemented a scholarship programme, funded by a foreign government, to put hundreds of rural girls through primary school. But Zikani told me that within six months of graduating from eighth grade, a third of the girls became pregnant. No one funded secondary education, and the tuition was more than the average parent earned in a year.

Zikani knew I'd written about poverty in Malawi. If I could raise tuition money from my readers for some of his primary graduates, he would make it his personal business to ensure they succeed. He told me about a girl, Idah, who he enrolled in first grade eight years before. She was an orphan with seven siblings, and gifted. He was hellbent on seeing her through.

Almost 25 years ago, World Bank chief economist Lawrence Summers endorsed girls' education as one of the best ways to transform societies. Since then, volumes of research attest to the related outcomes in health, empowerment and economic growth. In 2014, public interest in the field soared in solidarity with Malala Yousafzai and the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram.

Despite all this, if you scratch the surface, you'll find that help is slow to arrive where it's needed most.

Policymakers are hardwired to look for low-hanging fruit. In girls' education, this meant boosting enrollment for younger children. Malawi was one of the first countries to make primary education free in 1994, followed by the majority of African countries and many Asian countries. Donor governments were quick to fund these efforts, in line with the global goal of universal primary enrollment. Ironically, cutting tuition fees sometimes hurt learning outcomes, as kids crammed into unprepared school systems overnight. But in Malawi the policy skyrocketed girls' primary enrolment from under 50% to 100% today.

Improvements in primary enrollment – in Malawi and elsewhere in Africa – were a crucial first step, but it wasn't a game-changer for girls. The statistics were so impressive that they created a false narrative that damaged the bigger effort; at anti-poverty meetings, policymakers are known to say that girls' education is already solved.

The reality is that many girls are just as far behind boys as they were 10 years ago when you look at secondary education. Secondary education is more expensive than primary and is complicated by puberty and related societal pressures, but many of the benefits of education kick in at this level. Startlingly, girls in sub-Saharan Africa are still eight percentage points behind boys in lower secondary school completion, just as they were in 2004.

Thanks to the advocacy of people like Zikani Kaunga, the good news is that globally, after decades of focusing on primary education, more funding institutions are zeroing in on the gender gap at secondary school level. How much more could have been achieved if education funders had also focused on the harder problem of girls' secondary education two decades ago? There's a lesson in this; on equity issues, addressing low hanging fruit isn't as effective as going to the heart of the problem.

Today, the biggest challenge in girls' education rests in a group of countries ravaged by war. In these "donor orphan" countries, many funding institutions can't function. As a colleague from a large bilateral aid agency told me: "We designed our education programmes knowing there was a different set of countries where girls were furthest behind. We just didn't have government relations there." For smaller foundations, the risks of funding programmes in northern Nigeria, Chad, or Syria are daunting.

In a set of countries ravaged by war - Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger, Chad, Somalia and others – there's seven girls per 10 boys in the classroom or less, but aid rarely arrives. Girls are not only missing an education, they are at increased risk of early marriage and gender-based violence.

I recently surveyed 44 funder institutions in education for a report published by The Brookings Institution. The result was surprising. Although three-quarters prioritise girls' education, most can't work in conflict settings.

For girls' education to make real progress in the next decade, this balance has to change. The Global Partnership for Education – a multilateral partnership that grants billions for education, including to countries affected by war – must take the lead in pivoting toward this challenge.

In Malawi last year, Idah and I traded text messages as I drove up the dirt road to her university. Years ago Zikani and I saw her through high school. Now she studies media and development and has a weekend internship doing social work in nearby villages. We went together to St Mary's High School for girls in southern Malawi where she was the featured speaker. In keeping with the school dress code, the girls all had shorn heads, but being a college girl, Idah favoured fine braids tied gently around her shoulders. The girls swarmed around her like bees to a flower, saying: "Tell us about college!"

It might be harder to do, but a few more girls like Idah in the hardest places would do a world of good.