World Bank Open Data · CC BY 4.0 Some World Bank indicators are published with a lag. The site always shows the latest actually available year for each country and indicator.
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Afghanistan
Literacy rate, adult total (% of people ages 15 and above)

Adult literacy rate is the percentage of people ages 15 and above who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement about their everyday life.

Global rank#43out of 44 countries
Go to rankingOpenglobal ranking and map

Historical trend

37.332.527.722.918.2197920002021Afghanistan · 2021: 37Afghanistan

Analytical takeaways

  • Afghanistan records 37 for Literacy rate, adult total (% of people ages 15 and above) in 2021, ranking #43 globally out of 44 countries.
  • Literacy rate, adult total (% of people ages 15 and above) increased from 18 in 1979 to 37 in 2021, a gain of 19.
  • The country sits in the bottom quartile of the global distribution for this metric, which also makes the page relevant for low-value and lagging-performance searches.

Comparison

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