You can see there is a strong correlation between X and Y- I've added the black line to demonstrate. So theoretically the better the adult literacy rate, the higher the life expectancy. Without going into cause and effect too deep (my brain is filled with ideas, but I fear I might bore you) and without listing the many variables, I'm going to say yes, education does contribute to better health, more opportunities, probably less conflict, and therefore higher life expectancy. It's clearly not the only factor, but that's all we're looking at here for now.
So why is Kenya an anomaly? For the level of adult literacy, it ought to have a much higher life expectancy. As it is, the literacy rate is 75%, but people are only living into their mid to late fifties (there are a lot of exceptions to this rule, notably the father of a good friend of ours, a Maasai elder in his nineties!).
If you look at the interactive version of this chart, you'll notice that pretty much all the outliers are African countries. Taking into account GDP (not a good indicator of social development as inequality is often a huge distorter) as well, South Africa and Equatorial Guinea have hugely low life expectancies for their economic development.
So what's the problem? An inadequate healthcare system...corruption, poor quality medicines, lack of funding, lack of good medical staff, lack of government focus? Too much disease that the health system cannot deal with- HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB? Too many people living in remote areas who cannot access the healthcare system and are therefore dying from preventable diseases- inequality and rural poverty? Road traffic deaths? Conflict? High child and maternal mortality due to nutritional problems (drought, famine, poverty, poor nutritional education), FGM, stigma of accessing peri-natal healthcare?
It's definitely something to think about...
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