Bridging the Divide? Radio learning and girls’ education in rural Afghanistan

Afghanistan Analysts Network

22 Mar 2026 print sharing button

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When classrooms fell silent for older Afghan girls in 2021, millions were cut off from formal schooling, deepening long-standing inequalities between girls and boys. Yet learning did not stop – it adapted. Across the country, alternative avenues have emerged to try to help fill the gap. Among them, radio-based education has taken on particular significance, turning a medium, long embedded in daily life, into an unexpected classroom. Lessons broadcast over the airwaves are enabling girls – many confined to their homes by both policy and social norms – to have access to some sort of an education. In this report, Sharif Akram examines the rise of radio-based learning as one of the few remaining pathways for girls to learn. Drawing on interviews in Loya Paktia and neighbouring regions, he argues that radio – accessible, low-cost and culturally acceptable is helping reshape attitudes towards girls’ education in conservative communities. But he also raises questions about quality, reach and sustainability. Can radio learning truly bridge the gap left by closed schools – or is it only a fragile substitute?

Education in Afghanistan, particularly for women and girls, has long been shaped by politics, conflict and social norms. While significant progress was made during the Islamic Republic to expand access, many communities – especially in rural areas – remained underserved. Schools did not exist everywhere, and corruption, insecurity and cultural barriers meant that millions of children were, in practice, excluded from formal education, with girls disproportionately affected.

Radio has long been used as a tool for education in Afghanistan, reaching communities where schools are absent or inaccessible. Since the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate, and in response to their clamping down on girls’ education, radio learning has seen a resurgence, becoming a critical lifeline for an unknown number of girls and women. Delivered through decentralised networks of local radio stations, it depends not only on educators and broadcasters, but also on families and communities, with interviewees often reporting the value of a better-educated, or at least literate parent, sibling or other relative helping girls follow lessons and complete assignments. In this way, interviewees from conservative communities where purdah is practiced, girls’ schools, including primary, were scarce and the idea of educating girls suspect, report that radio education is beginning to shift general attitudes towards girls’ education. In such deeply conservative communities, radio learning is reaching the ‘never educated’; for girls who had gone to school and whose schools are now closed, it also offers one of the few remaining pathways to learning.

For many, radio is not simply an alternative, but the only available option. In rural areas – where access to the internet and television is limited and where girls make up the overwhelming majority of learners – lessons broadcast into homes, often supported by textbooks, workbooks and interactive call-in sessions, are reshaping how Afghan girls learn.

Yet, this report asks, whether radio is just a stopgap measure rather than a long-term solution. Despite the best efforts of radio stations to mirror schooling – with curricula, lesson progression, workbooks and even exams, it cannot offer the depth, quality or social experience of formal schooling. It lacks consistent systems for accreditation and relies heavily on student motivation. While radio has preserved learning where it might otherwise have disappeared, it cannot provide the full, meaningful education needed for higher study, professional opportunities or economic independence. For millions of older Afghan girls, the right to education has effectively been reduced to what can be transmitted over a radio signal.

You can preview the report online and download it by clicking here or the download button below.

Edited by Roxanna Shapour, Rachel Reid and Kate Clark

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