South African President Cyril Ramaphosa called for greater investment in education on Friday, saying African countries could use schools and skills training to drive development and overcome the legacy of colonialism and apartheid.

Speaking at UNESCO headquarters in Paris on Friday, Ramaphosa co-chaired a leaders' meeting on Sustainable Development Goal 4, which focuses on access to quality education.

"From our own country, South Africa, comes a story of optimism and hope, where education was used during apartheid as a weapon to suppress and to exploit the majority of the citizens of South Africa. And today, education occupies the highest spending item, close on to 24% of the budget, where today school attendance has increased exponentially and where feeding of children at school now amounts to two meals a day for nine million young children on a daily basis, and where the pass rate has also increased exponentially. What makes all this extraordinary is that the majority of those who are passing and qualifying for university were learners from poor communities, communities that were relegated by apartheid to the backyard of the education process. These are young people who will go on to pursue their dreams at a university or a technical or vocational college of their choice, where they may want to study for free. And this is in fulfilment, in the end, of what Nelson Mandela dreamt of when he said, "The son of a cattle herder can, in the end, become president of a great nation."