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One of the authors of a big report on pupil absenteeism in Angola has told the BBC that a “serious lack of schools” is to blame.

A recent Afrobarometer survey shows that two-thirds of school-age children do not go to class.

“It’s not a rural or urban problem but a national one,” David Boio, co-researcher of the Afrobarometer survey, told BBC News.

“Limited spaces in schools, no mode of transportation in the provinces and no system in place to monitor the absences all hinder children from receiving an education,” Mr Boio explained.

Angola, which has a population of 29 million, may be rich in oil, but for the last two decades has been struggling to tackle the legacy a 27-year civil war that ravaged the country from its independence.

One of the major causalities of the conflict was education, with the destruction of many schools - and those remaining or recently built are often overcrowded.

Paulo Araújo, a senior Angolan education official, told the BBC that the government was trying to address this and had constructed more than 500 schools, under what is called the Integrated Plan for the Intervention of Municipalities (PIIM), over the last five years.

But the war has also affected attitudes towards education as most children growing up then did not go to school - and as parents today do not necessarily know they should register their own offspring for schooling, meaning they fall outside the system.

Plus, while public schools are free to attend they do cost parents money in terms of uniforms and books.

Those with an interest in educating their children will often prefer to pay for private schools as state-run institutions tend to have bad reputations.