New research has found that over 1.2 bil­lion peo­ple in the under-developed world can­not read or write their own name. The research was con­ducted at a Malaysian uni­ver­sity by Prof Emer­i­tus Tan Sri Lim Kok Wing.

From this story in the Malaysian New Straits Times, writer Adrian David attended the reveal­ing of the research.

Lim said less than 40 per cent of school-going chil­dren in devel­op­ing coun­tries were enrolled, with 50 per cent of them drop­ping out after six years.

At the global level, almost one-third of those who were illit­er­ate and three bil­lion of those who lived in abject poverty earn­ing less than US$1 a day, were from the Com­mon­wealth, he said.

Lim said this meant that the Com­mon­wealth had 330 mil­lion illit­er­ates and one bil­lion very poor.

Lim was speak­ing at the Stake­hold­ers Forum of the 17th Con­fer­ence of Com­mon­wealth Edu­ca­tion Min­is­ters, themed ‘Mak­ing Con­nec­tions and Build­ing Part­ner­ships: Towards and Beyond Global Edu­ca­tion Goals and Tar­gets’ at the Kuala Lumpur Con­ven­tion Centre.

Lim said of the 6.7 bil­lion world pop­u­la­tion, only 900 mil­lion who lived in 57 coun­tries termed as devel­oped or indus­tri­alised, were rich.

“In con­trast, five bil­lion peo­ple live in the devel­op­ing world of 120 low– and middle-income countries.

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