Lowest Literacy Rates
Updated February 21, 2017 | Factmonster Staff 
The countries with the lowest literacy rate, defined as the ability to read and write at a specified age.
| 1. | Burkina Faso | 21.8% |
| 2. | Chad | 25.7 |
| 3. | Afghanistan | 28.1 |
| 4. | Niger | 28.7 |
| 5. | Guinea | 29.5 |
| 6. | Benin | 34.7 |
| 7. | Sierra Leone | 35.1 |
| 8. | Somalia | 37.8 |
| 9. | Senegal | 39.3 |
| 10. | Gambia | 40.1 |
NOTE: Country rankings of the type presented above cannot pretend to be definitive; instead they aspire only to provide the reader with an approximation of the high and low ends on a particular scale. Country data vary enormously depending on the sources, and the absence of reliable data on some countries requires their omission, which further skews the results. Only countries for which statistics were available in sources 1 and 2 figure in these lists. Sources: 1. The World Factbook, 2013. 2. U.S. Census Bureau, International Database.
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