Should the World Bank fund schools that expel pregnant girls?

TANZANIA’S PRESIDENT, John Magufuli, has little sense of irony. He marked International Women’s Day by tweeting that his government wants to help women “fulfil [their] responsibilities effectively”. Those responsibilities evidently do not require an education: his government expels girls from school if they become pregnant. Mr Magufuli sounds less than empathetic when discussing the matter. “After calculating some few mathematics, she’d be asking the teacher in the classroom: ‘Let me go out and breastfeed my crying baby’,” he once complained.Aghast, the World Bank withheld a $300m loan in 2018 that was intended to fund secondary education. After some toing and froing, Mr Magufuli promised to expand a programme to teach young mothers. The bank once again offered a loan, this time of $500m.