Macky Sall, the President of Senegal, has pledged 150 scholarships to Afghan girls studying in Rwanda.
He made the pledge while attending Women Deliver Conference that concluded on July 20 in Kigali.
He was reacting to the concerns raised by Shabana Basij-Rasikh, Co-Founder and President of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA) that is lacking capacity to receive more Afghan girls who are being deprived of rights to education in their country.
The year was 1996, and Afghanistan had fallen to the Taliban for the first time. Shabana Basij-Rasikh was only six years old, with no hope of obtaining a formal education because all girls' schools had been slammed shut.
Despite the dangers of opposing the Taliban's rule, Basij-Rasikh's parents, a former general and an educator, refused to keep their daughters locked up at home.
They decide to enroll their daughters in a secret school run out of a former principal's living room, giving them a rare privilege of Education at the time.
After receiving a scholarship to attend Middlebury College in Vermont, she founded SOLA, back home in Kabul.
SOLA, the Afghan word for peace and a short form for School of Leadership Afghanistan, would then become the only opportunity for a number of Afghan girls to obtain formal Education.
At the start of 2021, SOLA was fully thriving. Basij-Rasikh had secured land in Kabul and construction was underway on a new campus.
Until April 2021, when the US announced an unconditional withdrawal from Afghanistan, giving the newly emboldened Taliban a foothold.
Two years later--the SOLA girls have found a home in Rwanda. Making them the only Afghan middle and high school girls -- out of a country of 40 million -- who are getting a formal education.
Speaking on a panel during Women Deliver Conference in Kigali, Basij-Rasikh reiterated that in Afghanistan, girls' access to secondary school education is illegal and that the school in Rwanda capacity to receive more girls.
"It is embarrassing and shameful. It should be alarming not just for people of Afghanistan but for all of us, for people of the world," she stated.
President of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA) said that it is their second year in Rwanda with girls having access to education.
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For the incoming class, she said, the school received 2,000 applications across 20 countries where some Afghans are living.
However, she said that the school has no capacity to receive as many girls as possible.
For instance, in 2022, it received 180 applications from Afghans living in 10 countries but only 27 girls were admitted.
"That should tell you alone that families in Afghanistan are ready to support the girls," she noted.
She said that there is priority to ensure Afghan girls are able to come to SOLA in Rwanda from anywhere in the world.
"They have difficulty in securing access to education because they have left Afghanistan, they are refugees. But there are thousands of girls who want to come to Rwanda," she noted, adding that they are looking at taking SOLA branches to where they are.
"We will share more information in the coming months. We are working hard to make that happen," she said.
While reacting to Basij-Rasikh's concerns, Macky Sall, said that Senegal is ready to give scholarships to 150 Afghan girls to pursue university education.
"I am ready to take 150," he said.
