OPRAH Winfrey says she identifies with the children she’s helping in Africa because of their poverty.

“I see myself in those children,” Winfrey tells Diane Sawyer on tonight’s “Primetime” (10 p.m./Ch. 7). “Not only because their skin is black and I see myself in their eyes and feel myself in their hearts, but I came from that,” she says of their living conditions.

Winfrey is helping millions of children in Africa who have been orphaned by the AIDS epidemic.

“To me, education is freedom,” she says.