The African Union (AU) says at least 100 million children and youth between the ages of five and 19 across Africa are not socially integrated because they are out of school.

AU Commissioner for Education, Science, Technology and Innovation, Mohammed Belhocine, said this at the ongoing AU Summit in Addis Ababa.

Mr Belhocine said the children and youth are vulnerable to all sorts of scourges and can be easily manipulated by terrorist groups, drug dealers and human traffickers.

He noted that many of them end up in different crime networks or migrating to other parts of Africa or out of the continent.

The commissioner stressed the need to support children and youth through vocational and technical training and help them get the necessary skills to become self-employed.

Africa faces a setback in delivering quality education, especially at low grades, resulting in nine out of 10 children in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The children are unable to read and understand a simple text by the age of 10, the commissioner acknowledged.

Noting that Africa needs about $90 billion to achieve universal education coverage by 2030, he called for global support for the continent to meet the funding gap. 

(Xinhua/NAN)