Almost 30 million children of primary school age will not learn to read and write.

This was revealed in a paper by the Unesco Institute for Statistics and the Global Education Monitoring Report, which was released last month.

The paper stated that 9 million girls and 6million boys across sub-Saharan Africa will not attend school.

"In total 34 million children between the ages of 6 and 11 are out of school across the region [sub-Saharan Africa].

"One-third of these children will start school at a later age, but almost half will remain entirely excluded, with girls facing the biggest barriers," the report stated.

The paper said in 2014 263 million children aged between six and 17 did not attend school.

Source: Timeslive