Michelle Obama to visit Africa

U.S. first lady Michelle Obama will travel to Africa on Sunday with daughters Sasha and Malia and her mother as part of an effort to promote girls’ education, her office said.

The upcoming, six-day trip will include visits to Morocco and Liberia.

The trip will highlight the work of Let Girls Learn, a U.S. government initiative launched by U.S. President Barack Obama and the first lady in 2015.

Let Girls Learn is part of “a U.S. government effort to address the barriers that keep over 62 million girls around the world out of school, particularly adolescent girls,” the first lady’s chief of staff, Tina Tchen, told reporters on a conference call.

Michelle Obama will be joined by actresses Meryl Streep and Freida Pinto in Morocco, where they will talk to adolescent girls on the challenges they face in getting an education.

In Liberia, she will visit a U.S. Peace Corps training facility and a school with Liberian President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first female elected head of state and a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

The first lady will speak to adolescent girls at Unification Town, Liberia, about the obstacles they faced in order to acquire education.

“The conversation will highlight both educational barriers girls face as Liberia moves beyond the Ebola epidemic, and the U.S. government’s efforts to continue to address those barriers and provide adolescent girls with equitable access to safe and quality education,” said Tina Tchen, Chief of Staff to the first lady.

Michelle Obama’s interest in education for young girls was heightened after militant Islamist group Boko Haram seized 276 girls from their school in Chibok, northeast Nigeria, in April 2014.

She highlighted their plight through a Twitter hashtag, #BringBackOurGirls.

Reuters