This is a very interesting article although the issues can be separated into literacy and its importance and literacy in English.
The figures regarding how literacy (in your mother tongue) can affect your life is truly staggering and is a very good argument for why it is important to educate girls as well as boys. To not be literate in your mother tongue is a very debilitating thing and literacy programmes really need to be supported.
Not being literate in a second language is a bit different. However, it is equally as limiting if you are trying to integrate into a new life because it can curb your opportunities.
As a foreigner in Hong Kong, I have virtually no Chinese language skills, although I do have a large repertoire of strategies regarding how to cope if I am required to do something where Chinese language is likely to dominate. However, in my mother tongue, I am a highly educated person and I have never felt that my opportunities in Hong Kong have been limited due to my lack of Chinese. But I am not competing in the labour market with a lot of local people because a lot of local people don’t have my skill set.
But other foreigners, without the benefits of my education, might be competing in the labour market with local people and their opportunities re likely to be limited without Chinese. I can only begin to imagine how limited English skills limit people in English speaking countries.
While people may be born with the ability to acquire and use language, they need to be taught it. If the circumstances in childhood are against you learning to read and write, because of the school or the home background or some other reason, help should be extended when it can because literacy quite literally is a life changer.
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.