World

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says the global economic recovery is on "firmer footing" with improving growth in Europe and China even as it reduced predicted growth for the United States and Britain.

The IMF's World Economic Outlook released on July 24 said it expected the global economy will grow by 3.5 percent in 2017 and 3.6 percent in 2018.

IMF chief economist Maurice Obstfeld, who presented the quarterly update, said "there is now no question mark over the world economy's gain in momentum."

The IMF, however, warned that sluggish wage growth and growing antiglobal sentiment could leave economies worse off.

The IMF forecast improvement in the eurozone, where growth is projected at 1.9 percent this year and 1.7 percent in 2018.

The Russian economy is projected to "recover gradually" in 2017 and 2018, and inflation there has declined.

Growth in the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan is projected to slow considerably in 2017 due to a decrease in activity in oil exporters, before recovering in 2018.

Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai has called on Nigeria to focus on improving its education system, as she visited the country and met some of the Chibok schoolgirls whose cause she championed.

Yousafzai, 20, a Pakistani education activist who came to prominence when a Taliban militant shot her in the head in 2012, was named a UN Messenger of Peace in April to promote girls’ education around the world.

After a meeting with Nigeria’s acting president in Abuja, Yousafzai said the government should declare a “state of emergency on education in Nigeria,” where nearly half of primary-aged children are not enrolled in school.

According to UN figures, Nigeria has some 10.5 million children out of school -- the most in the world -- and 60 percent of them are girls.

Yousafzai has also taken part in global campaigns to maintain awareness of more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram Islamist militants from their school in Nigeria’s remote town of Chibok in 2014.

Some 100 of the schoolgirls still remain in captivity, while others were freed or escaped. Yousafzai met some of the freed girls in Abuja, Nigeria's capital.

Malala won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize along with Kailash Satyarthi of India.

Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters