After she became a mother just before her 15th birthday, Diana Ricardo* was forced to drop out of school and give up her dreams of a brighter future. Ricardo says she was impregnated by a teacher, who afterwards refused paternity testing claiming he could not afford a second wife. Ricardo’s case is not unique. Worrying statistics around sexual abuse in schools and high female drop-out rates means Mozambique and other countries in the sub-Saharan Africa region may not reach the 2015 education and gender targets set out in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

African nations lack the political will to provide access to primary education to all children, according to the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), a coalition of organisations in 100 countries. In most countries on the continent, achieving basic education remains a far-off dream, the coalition stated in a report titled, "Back to School? The worst places in the world to be a school child in 2010", which was launched during the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Summit in New York, where world leaders are gathering to evaluate their countries’ progress five years ahead of the 2015 deadline.