page_title: Central African Republic
section_title: Education
hierarchical_section_title: Central African Republic / Education
caption_attribution_description: Credits: Pierre Holtz for OCHA - hdptcar.net This mission to Sam Ouandja, north-eastern Central African Republic, was undertaken to visit a camp housing almost 3,000 refugees from Darfur, Sudan, as well assessing the security situation in the region.
context_page_description: The Central African Republic is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Chad to the north, Sudan to the northeast, South Sudan to the southeast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the south, the Republic of the Congo to the southwest and Cameroon to the west. The CAR covers a land area of about 620,000 square kilometres and had an estimated population of around 4.7 million as of 2018. As of 2020, the CAR is the scene of a civil war, ongoing since 2012.
  Most of the CAR consists of Sudano-Guinean savannas, but the country also includes a Sahelo-Sudanian zone in the north and an equatorial forest zone in the south. Two-thirds of the country is within the Ubangi River basin, while the remaining third lies in the basin of the Chari, which flows into Lake Chad.
  What is today the Central African Republic has been inhabited for millennia; however, the country's current borders were established by France, which ruled the country as a colony starting in the late 19th century.
context_section_description: Public education in the Central African Republic is free and is compulsory from ages 6 to 14. However, approximately half of the adult population of the country is illiterate.
caption: Classroom in Sam Ouandja
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