Just as the better-educated segments of the population in the industrialized countries where the first to adopt health-conscious life-styles, a similar pattern now seems to be emerging in sub-Saharan Africa. Studies focusing on 15-19 years olds, have found that teenagers with more education are now far more likely to use condoms than their peers with lower education. They are also less likely,particularly in countries with severe epidemics, to engage in casual sex.
This was not the case early in the African epidemic. At that stage, education tended to go hand in hand with more disposable income and higher mobility, both of which increased casual sex and the risk of contracting HIV. But as information about HIV has become more widely available, education has switched from being a liability to being a shield.

The effect on education is that AIDSnow threatens the coverage and quality of education. The epidemic has not spared this sector any more than it has spared health, agriculture or mining.
On the demand side, HIVis reducing the numbers of children in school. HIV positive women have fewer babies, in part because they may die before the end of their child bearing years, and up to a third of their children are themselves infected and may not survive until school age. Also, many children have lost their parents to AIDS, or are living in households which have taken in AIDS orphans, and they may be forced to drop out of school to start earning money, or simply because school fees have become unaffordable.

On the supply side, teacher shortages are looming in many African countries In Zambia teachers are increasingly dying of AIDS and for many teachers their teaching input is decreasing because they are sick. Swaziland estimates that it will have to train more than twice as many teachers as usual over the next 17 years just to keep the services at their 1997 levels.