Robert Maguire's Library tagged "youth bulge" →  View Popular

Sub-Saharan Africa, as "the
continent with the largest youth cohorts and the lowest levels of male secondary
education, scoring on average nearly 30 percentage points lower than the world
average."

In Syria,
for example, males 14 years old and younger make up nearly 20 percent of the
population. Only 39.1 percent of secondary school-aged students are enrolled in
school, making it the 101st lowest-ranking country of 135 surveyed. In the long run, Syria is facing
declining oil production and rapid population growth - a recipe for violent
unrest.

The policy implications are clear. Programs that focus on
primary education, like the U.N.'s Education
for All and Millennium
Development Goals

must
be more support for programs like the World Bank's own Secondary
Education in Africa initiative.

The total cost of a secondary education in Kenya is estimated at $6,865.
A 2007 Oxfam report
found that on average a "war, civil war, or insurgency shrinks an African economy
by 15 percent," and conflict causes the continent to lose about $18 billion a
year. You do the math.