Twelve-year old Lucia goes to primary school; her dream is to go to secondary school, and go on to train as a pilot. Her older sister Barita wants to do computer studies, but she had to leave school when their parents died of AIDS. And Portia, the youngest in the family, wants to be a dressmaker, but she doesn't go to school at all. The three sisters are AIDS orphans being brought up by their grandmother. She can only afford school fees for one girl, Lucia, to attend primary school. Tragically for these three sisters from one of Zimbabwe's large scale commercial farms, in tobacco country 50 miles outside Harare, they're more likely to end up - as their mother before them - with no formal education, working as seasonal labourers on the farm. Across Africa, the odds are dramatically against girls getting an education. This Life episode examines why.

Even if girls do get to attend primary school, they're often withdrawn before they finish - to work as unpaid labourers for their extended family, to be married off or to have children. Only one in four school age girls in Burkina Faso ever attends school; enrolment rates in primary school in Benin, Chad, Ethiopia, Guinea, Niger and Mali are even lower, and in Somalia the figure is only seven per cent. Nor is enrolment the whole story. Across the continent only 24 per cent of girls actually complete primary school, compared to 65-70 per cent for boys.

Another obstacle is early marriage. In Uganda, when Anyango's father died of AIDS, her destitute mother married her off when she was still at school to get the dowry. But fortunately Anyango's teacher Tabu manages to persuade her mother that she should continue her schooling, and thanks to the Ugandan Government's Complimentary Opportunities for Primary Education (COPE) programme - run for out-of-school children with the support of Unicef - this is made possible.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international instruments ban child marriage, but in rural Africa this cuts little ice, even when there is a national law against it, as in Uganda and Zimbabwe. But a powerful example of the importance of education is that Anyango has now learnt this. She says: "There's a law against child marriages. Young women are unaware of this. They are tricked into marriage. They should be provided with an education."

In the former French colony Benin there's one of the greatest disparities between boys' and girls' school enrolment rates. One reason is the practice of Vidomegon, a term used to describe children who've been sent away from home to live with other families - a common practice across Africa. Traditionally girls in remote rural areas became Vidomegon so they could move to the cities to get an education. But over time, they've become just another source of cheap domestic labour. Today the practice is one of the major reasons why girls in Benin are denied an education.

Dope, a 15-year-old Vidomegon, came to live with relatives when she was five, but has never been to school - her family say they can't afford it. But Benoit, who was abandoned with another poor family, is luckier: Agnès, who looks after her and her brother, was a Vidomegon herself. "When my parents placed me with my new family, it was with the condition that I went to school - but I never did. . . I think girls should go to school to get education, to get knowledge." That's why she makes the necessary sacrifices to keep Benoit at school. Benoit is grateful: "I like going to school to get an education. Children who don't go to school suffer. When I grow up, I'll send my children to school."

This determination in girls like Benoit is the best hope of overcoming the remaining obstacles to girls' education in Africa.

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