Self-reliance and empowerment for women have been at the centre of the agitations for gender balance in Africa. Women are largely marginalised, and obvious gender disparity exists in school enrolment and completion rates in most African countries, particularly in The Gambia. Efforts to address this shortfall led to the adoption of adult literacy and skill acquisition programmes to build the capacity of women and out-of-school adults. Training contents were developed and centres set up across the six educational regions in the country, but most graduates of the programme are neither financially empowered nor self-reliant. Therefore, the study examined the relationship between these capacity-building programmes and women empowerment and self-reliance. The research employed a descriptive design of survey type with 250 participants from two educational regions in The Gambia. Four null hypotheses were raised and data collected through a questionnaire were analysed using t-test, mean, and simple frequency. The result showed that adult literacy and skill acquisition programmes correlate significantly with women empowerment and self-reliance in The Gambia. Recommendations were made on how to improve on the existing training structure.

中文翻译：

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与冈比亚妇女赋权和自力更生相关的成人扫盲和技能获取计划

妇女的自力更生和增强能力一直是非洲促进性别平衡的核心。妇女在很大程度上处于边缘地位，在大多数非洲国家，特别是在冈比亚，入学率和毕业率存在明显的性别差异。为了解决这一不足，人们采取了成人扫盲和技能获取计划，以增强妇女和失学成年人的能力。开发了培训内容，并在全国六个教育地区建立了中心，但是该计划的大多数毕业生既没有经济能力，也没有自力更生。因此，研究审查了这些能力建设方案与增强妇女权能和自力更生之间的关系。该研究采用了描述性的调查类型设计，来自冈比亚两个教育地区的250名参与者参加了调查。提出了四个无效假设，并使用t检验，均值和简单频率分析了通过问卷收集的数据。结果表明，冈比亚的成人识字和技能获取计划与增强妇女权能和自力更生有着显着的相关性。就如何改进现有的培训结构提出了建议。