The problem of illiteracy was popular through centuries and is still quite actual, as progress goes further and the level of knowledge, which is enough to co-exist with other people grows rapidly too. Low level or lack of education is mostly caused due to countries’ economic problems.
Economic problems effect show up when the government is not able to provide proper education facilities, school is not affordable for low or even mid-income families or children have no opportunity to study as they have to work since early age. Not less important is the cultural problem, when religion forbids women from attending school, luckily, nowadays this reason has almost gone away, but the cultural aspect still plays a role.
The main problem of illiteracy is the inability of the country to develop overall, as there are no specialists that could move it towards and work in demanding spheres. If there are no people, who can work with modern effective equipment, the country still would be outdated, and its economy would be worse and worse as the gap between developed countries would be wider. Moreover, the spreading of illiterate people around the world causes criminal problems, as uneducated people cannot find a good job and cannot think about the consequences of their actions, therefore immigrants are trying to get their place in the criminal sphere of the country they migrated to. That is one of the reasons why global society is trying to solve this problem, as everyone will feel the effects of illiteracy.
To deal with illiteracy, people from rich countries are trying to make volunteering missions, however, despite numerous volunteering programs, that are aimed at developing education institutes in other countries, it is just impossible to solve the education problem without the government, as the speed of population growth is too high and volunteers are not able to provide enough places even to half of current children, who are interested in education. For example, foreign people are building schools and hiring teachers in Africa to provide education for everyone, but most parents have to spend more than half of their salaries to give their children the opportunity to attend school. Obviously, not every family does it, and hence the number of illiterate people increases.
At the final, the only way to deal with the lack of education is to make investments in the economies of poor countries to let them develop and improve education facilities in the future as it is not possible to provide education without government intervention.