Luanda - A tota of 1,139,729 Angolans were literate from 2012 until today with the Cuban teaching method "Yo si puedo" ("Yes, I can"), with the coordination of 42 advisers from the island.

"Due to this result, Angola is the first African country to have over a million literate people using this method", declared to Prensa Latina Alfredo Díaz, advisor of the Angolan Ministry of Education.

The program is used in 18 provinces in that country and in only 13 weeks people who are over 15 (up to 65, mostly women) learn to read and write.

He added that it has been a policy of the Angolan government since 2012 to rehabilitate education in general, specially for adults and one of the main goals was to restore literacy and explained the goal was to have around a million literate people, yearly, by 2025.

Cuban specialists advise Angolan facilitators who carry the main weight of the program execution applied in Haiti for the first time, and spread to other 30 countries later using audio-visual media to support the teaching process. In addition, in the 176 municipalities the results of the advisers are excelent, Díaz declared.

He highlighted the support offered by churchs, the Armed Forces, the Women Organization, the Ministry of Interior and Youth Training and from the ruling party Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola.

Another important experience: this year the program is taken to prisons. In some provinces like Luanda, Bie and Huila this is carried out and facilitators are inmates formed by Cubans.

The Angolan government wants the 85 percent of the population registered as literate by 2025, but also wants encouraging and competitive results in 2017 as a part of the Millenium Development Goals of the UN.

In 2006 the Cuban method got the Sejong Award granted by Unesco.