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Education in Africa

Of all regions, sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates of education exclusion. Over one-fifth of children between the ages of about 6 and 11 are out of school, followed by one-third of youth between the ages of about 12 and 14. According to UIS data, almost 60% of youth between the ages of about 15 and 17 are not in school. 

Without urgent action, the situation will likely get worse as the region faces a rising demand for education due to a still-growing school-age population.

Education in Africa is major priority for UNESCO and the UIS. In response, the UIS develops indicators to help governments, donors and UN partners better address the challenges. For example, the UIS tracks the extent to which schools lack basic amenities, such as access to electricity and potable water, while monitoring classroom conditions – from the availability of textbooks to average class sizes and the prevalence of multi-grade classrooms. With seven out of ten countries facing an acute shortage of teachers , the Institute also produces a range of data on their training, recruitment and working conditions.  

Girls’ education is a major priority. Across the region, 9 million girls between the ages of about 6 and 11 will never go to school at all, compared to 6 million boys, according to UIS data. Their disadvantage starts early: 23% of girls are out of primary school compared to 19% of boys. By the time they become adolescents, the exclusion rate for girls is 36% compared to 32% for boys.

To help policymakers bridge this gender gap , the UIS disaggregates all indicators by sex to the extent possible, while producing gender parity indices and developing specific indicators related to access to separate toilets for girls and boys and the presence of female teachers, who can serve as role models and encourage girls to continue their education.

These are just some of the ways in which the UIS is helping governments, donors and civil society groups strive towards Sustainable Development Goal 4 ( SDG 4 ) and reach the most marginalised children and youth.  

New Methodology Shows 258 Million Children, Adolescents and Youth Are Out of School

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Meeting Commitments: Are Countries on Track to Achieve SDG 4?

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School Resources and Learning Environment in Africa

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Latest News

Uis releases more timely country-level data for sdg 4 on education, launch of the 2019 sdg 4 data digest, new projections show the world is off track in meeting its education commitments by 2030, country profiles.

Technical Cooperation Group for Education 2030

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Publication

Education in Africa. Placing equity at the heart of policy. Continental report

Learning to read and write, and do simple maths, is a basic requirement to be able to navigate in today’s increasingly globalized and competitive world. Providing children with quality education opens the door for them to a lifetime of better opportunities. These translate not only in terms of the jobs that they will be able to have and how much they will earn, but it also has an impact on their physical and mental health.

Although many countries in Africa are taking significant steps to ensure quality education for all, too many children are still being left behind. One in five primary school age children are not in the classroom. And almost six in ten adolescents are out of school. This is due to several interlinking factors such as geographical location, gender, extreme poverty, disability, crises, conflict, and displacement.

In this comprehensive new analysis, UNESCO explores how these factors impact a child’s access to quality learning. It highlights the importance of addressing barriers to inclusion through actions such as making secondary education compulsory, building more schools, developing adapted curricula, improving the quality of teachers, and providing financial and academic assistance to children. The report aims to provide African governments with guidelines and advice as they try to overcome these challenges.

to prioritize equal opportunity in education

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This article is related to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals .

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Other recent publications

Children in Africa five times less likely to learn basics: New report

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African leaders gathered in Mauritius on Thursday, to mull solutions to the education gap highlighted by a new UN education agency report which shows children on the continent are five times less likely to learn the basics, than those living elsewhere.

The ability of education systems to ensure even rudimentary literacy skills for their students has declined in four out of 10 African countries over the last three decades.

📌🗂 Just released: Children in Africa are 5 times less likely to learn the basics. Find out more in the Spotlight report on primary education completion & #FoundationalLearning in Africa published by @GEMReport, @ADEAnet & @_AfricanUnion #BorntoLearn: https://t.co/HMNtuuMwgf https://t.co/69UOU2JwoX UNESCO 🏛️ #Education #Sciences #Culture 🇺🇳😷 UNESCO October 20, 2022

 The findings are published in the first of a three-part series of Spotlight reports on foundational learning in Africa, called  Born to Learn,  published by the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report at UNESCO , the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) and the African Union.

Manos Antoninis, Director of the GEM Report, said while every child is born to learn, they can’t do so if they’re hungry, lack textbooks, or don’t speak the language they’re being taught in.

Lack of basic support for teachers is another key factor.

Lessons for all

“Every country needs to learn too, ideally from its peers”, added Mr. Antoninis. “We hope this Spotlight report will guide ministries to make a clear plan to improve learning, setting a vision for change, working closely with teachers and school leaders, and making more effective use of external resources”.  

The report includes data from accompanying country reports developed in partnership with ministries of education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ghana, Mozambique, Rwanda and Senegal and a series of other case studies on the continent.

“Africa has a complex past that has left parts of it with linguistic fragmentation, conflict, poverty and malnutrition that have weighed heavily on the education systems’ ability to ensure universal primary completion and foundational learning”, said Albert Nsengiyumva, the Executive Secretary of ADEA.

New opportunity

“Our partnership is shining a spotlight on this issue together with education ministries to help find solutions that work. The social and economic consequences of low learning outcomes are devastating for Africa. This report’s findings give us the chance to find a new way forward, learning from each other”.

The report finds that, in addition to socioeconomic challenges, the limited availability of good quality textbooks, lack of proper teacher support, inadequate teacher training and provision of teacher guides, were a bar to progress across sub-Saharan Africa.

Hopeful signs

Recent interventions show progress is possible, if efforts are focused on classroom practices that are evidence based.

Positive practices highlighted in the report and other experiences will be fed into a peer-learning mechanism on foundational learning, hosted by the AU that has been launched alongside the eport, the  Leveraging Education Analysis for Results Network  (LEARN), building on the Continental Education Strategy for Africa clusters.

Mohammed Belhocine, African Union Commissioner for Education, Science, Technology and Innovation said the COVID-19 pandemic had thwarted efforts to ensure all children have fundamental skills in reading and maths.

“This is why a focus on basic education within our continental strategy’s policy dialogue platform is warranted. The work of the   new LEARN network   on basic education within the AU launched this week will draw from the experiences of countries  t hat have taken part in the Spotlight report series”. 

Key recommendations:

• Give all children a textbook:  Ensure all children have learning materials, which are research-based and locally developed.  Having their own textbook can increase a child’s literacy scores by up to 20%.  Senegal’s  Lecture pour tous  project ensured textbooks were high quality. Benin is celebrated for its system-wide curriculum and textbook reform that has provided more explicit and direct instruction for teachers.
• Teach all children in their home language : Give all children the opportunity to learn to read in the language they understand.  In 16 out of 22 countries, at most, one third of students are taught in their home language. Mozambique’s recent expansion of bilingual education covers around a quarter of primary schools, with children learning under the new approach achieving outcomes 15 per cent higher than those learning in one language.  
• Provide all children with a school meal : Give all children the minimum conditions to learn: zero hungry pupils in school.  Today, only one in three primary school students in Africa receive a school meal. Rwanda has committed to deliver school meals to all children from pre-primary to lower secondary education, covering 40 per cent of costs.
• Make a clear plan to improve learning : Define learning standards, set targets and monitor outcomes to inform the national vision.  There is no information on the learning levels of two-thirds of children across the region. This represents 140 million students.  The Ghana Accountability for Learning Outcomes Project, is working on a framework for learning accountability.
• Develop teacher capacity : Ensure all teachers use classroom time effectively through training and teacher guides. A recent study covering 13 countries, 8 of them in sub-Saharan Africa, found that projects with teacher guides significantly increased reading fluency.  
• Prepare teacher-leaders : Restructure support mechanisms offered to teachers and schools.  The  Let’s read  programme in Kenya, which combined school support and monitoring with effective leadership has seen improvements equivalent to one additional year of schooling for children. 
• Learn from peers:  Reinvigorate mechanisms for countries to share experiences on foundational literacy and numeracy.   
• Focus aid on institution building : Shift from projects to provision of public goods that support foundational learning  
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1. introduction, 2. a brief review of the current state of education in africa, 3. what do earlier syntheses say about education in africa, 6. discussion.

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Education in Africa: What Are We Learning?

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David K Evans, Amina Mendez Acosta, Education in Africa: What Are We Learning?, Journal of African Economies , Volume 30, Issue 1, January 2021, Pages 13–54, https://doi.org/10.1093/jae/ejaa009

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Countries across Africa continue to face major challenges in education. In this review, we examine 145 recent empirical studies (from 2014 onward) on how to increase access to and improve the quality of education across the continent, specifically examining how these studies update previous research findings. We find that 64% of the studies evaluate government-implemented programs, 36% include detailed cost analysis and 35% evaluate multiple treatment arms. We identify several areas where new studies provide rigorous evidence on topics that do not figure prominently in earlier evidence syntheses. New evidence shows promising impacts of structured pedagogy interventions (which typically provide a variety of inputs, such as lesson plans and training for teachers together with new materials for students) and of mother tongue instruction interventions, as well as from a range of teacher programs, including both remunerative (pay-for-performance of various designs) and non-remunerative (coaching and certain types of training) programs. School feeding delivers gains in both access and learning. New studies also show long-term positive impacts of eliminating school fees for primary school and positive impacts of eliminating fees in secondary school. Education technology interventions have decidedly mixed impacts, as do school grant programs and programs providing individual learning inputs (e.g., uniforms or textbooks).

Education has expanded dramatically in Sub-Saharan Africa over the past half century. From 1970 to 2010, the percentage of children across the region who complete primary school rose by almost 50% (from 46% of children to 68%). The proportion of children completing lower secondary school nearly doubled (from 22% to 40%). 1 Despite these massive gains, nearly one in three children still does not complete primary school. Efforts to measure the quality of that schooling have revealed high numbers of students who have limited literacy or numeracy skills even after several years of school ( Bold et al. , 2017 ; Adeniran et al. , 2020 ). The international community has characterised this situation as a ‘learning crisis’ ( World Bank, 2018a ). The past two decades have seen a large rise in evidence on how to most effectively expand access and increase learning, 2 but actual changes in access and learning in that period have not shown dramatic improvements. 3

In this paper, we synthesise recent research on how to expand access to education and improve the quality of learning in Africa. 4 Our analysis reveals two trends. First, we observe growing sophistication in evaluating education programs in Africa. An increasing number of studies not only examine whether a given intervention is effective but also test multiple permutations. For example, Mbiti et al. (2019b) test two alternative teacher incentive programs and Duflo et al. (2020) report on four alternative programs to target instruction to students’ learning levels. Evaluations are also testing alternative combinations of interventions, such as teacher incentives, school grants or the combination of the two in Tanzania ( Mbiti et al. , 2019a ). Other studies compare alternative programs to achieve a common goal, as in education subsidies versus the government HIV curriculum to reduce sexually transmitted infections in Duflo et al. (2015b ). Testing multiple treatments is certainly not unprecedented in African countries, but it is growing more common. 5 Second, we observe growth in evidence that previously was largely confined to other regions of the world, including early child development, mother tongue instruction and public–private partnerships.

In terms of substantive findings, we identify that certain multi-faceted programs deliver large gains in education quality: a program that includes teacher training, teacher coaching, semi-scripted lessons, learning materials and mother tongue instruction delivered sizeable gains in literacy both as a pilot and at-scale ( Piper et al. , 2018a , 2018b ); the average impacts for second-grade students in Kiswahili and English are both above the 99th percentile of education interventions ( Evans and Yuan, 2020 ; Kraft, 2020 ). A literacy program providing a similar array of supports delivered literacy gains in Uganda ( Brunette et al. , 2019 ). The combination of teacher incentives and school grants delivered higher learning gains than either on its own in Tanzania ( Mbiti et al. , 2019a ).

We also observe consistent gains across various other types of programs: mother tongue instruction seems to provide consistent learning gains across programs, eliminating school fees offers consistent gains in access, and school feeding offers consistent gains in access and learning. There are relatively few school construction studies, but they also tend to yield gains in both access and learning. Other inputs are inconsistent: cash transfers are reasonably consistent in increasing access to school but not at improving learning, which may be unsurprising given that the programs may relax an economic constraint to access for the children but do not directly affect the learning process beyond that. Similarly, eliminating school fees has inconsistent impacts on the quality of education.

Our collection of evidence does not offer a single solution that will apply in every school system. Programs adapted to new contexts will often yield distinct impacts. In our discussion section, we elaborate on factors to consider when translating a program from one setting to another. Still, this accumulation of recent evidence offers promising areas for investment and wide avenues for further study.

This review updates findings from earlier reviews with results from new research. Evans and Popova (2016b) synthesise evidence from six reviews on how to improve learning outcomes from low- and middle-income countries, only one of which— Conn (2017) —focuses exclusively on evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa, while others include significant research from the region. 6 This review focuses on how research in Africa from the past 5 years updates our ideas on making education effective and accessible.

In Section 2 , we briefly review the current state of education in Africa. In Section 3 , we summarise earlier evidence on how to expand access to and improve the quality of education on the continent. In Section 4 , we discuss our strategy for collecting and analysing new research. In Section 5 , we synthesise the findings. In Section 6 , we draw conclusions from our findings, highlight areas for needed future research and discuss implications for policy.

Primary Completion Rates in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1971–2015 Source: Author tabulations using data from World Development Indicators (2020) .

Lower Secondary Completion Rates in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1971–2015 Source: Author tabulations using data from World Development Indicators (2020) .

Education in Africa has expanded dramatically in recent years ( Figures 1 and 2 ). The median proportion of children completing primary school across countries has risen from 27% to 67% between 1971 and 2015 ( World Bank, 2020 ). The median proportion of children completing lower secondary school across countries has also risen dramatically, from a mere 5% in 1971 to 40% in 2015. 7 These are enormous increases; they also demonstrate just how far there is to go. Nearly one in three children in the median country does not complete primary school, and three in five fail to complete lower secondary. Africa is the lowest performing region in the world in terms of school access by a significant margin ( Figure 3 ): for primary completion, all other countries achieve higher than 90%. For lower secondary, the next lowest performing region has a completion rate of 75%, more than 70% higher than Africa’s numbers. Median completion rates at both levels of education have been increasing at a roughly consistent rate between 2000 and 2015, between 1.2 (primary) and 1.1 (lower secondary) percentage points a year. With linear improvements at that same rate, Africa would achieve universal primary education in 28 years and universal lower secondary education in 56 years. Yet, access will likely not increase at a linear rate, given the increasing marginal cost of enroling the most difficult-to-reach children (the ‘last mile’ challenge), leading these to be underestimates.

Primary and Lower Secondary Completion Rates across Regions in 2015 Source: Author tabulations using data from World Development Indicators (2020) .

At the same time, the education quality in Africa also suffers. Recent evidence across seven countries in Sub-Saharan Africa found that in third grade, less than two in three children could read a letter and only about half of the children could read a word or put numbers in order ( Bold et al. , 2017 ; Table 1 ). 8 The harmonised learning outcomes, an effort by Patrinos and Angrist (2018) to combine data from different tests across regions, finds that learning outcomes for countries in Sub-Saharan Africa concentrated in the bottom half of the learning spectrum; although they are not substantively lower than what would be expected for Africa’s income levels ( Figure 4 ). A combined measure of schooling quantity and quality—the learning-adjusted years of schooling ( Filmer et al. , 2020 )—shows more African countries performing below what their income level would predict ( Figure 5 ). Further, the quality of learning outcomes does not appear to be rising in recent years. Le Nestour et al. (2020 ) document steady increases in adult literacy rates between 1940 and 2000, mostly linked to increases in enrollment. However, the test score data from the World Bank’s Human Capital Project show that for 35 African countries with two data points between 2000 and 2017, scores fell for 18 countries and rose for 17 countries ( Table 1 ; Angrist et al. , 2019 ). Some of the inconsistent gains in learning may result from expanding access: as children with less preparation gain access to school and participate in tests, average scores could fall even while learning is rising. Despite weaknesses in education quality, recent studies demonstrate significant returns to education in Africa ( Appendix Section 1, Supplementary Material ).

Change in Learning Outcomes in African Countries for Two Time Periods between 2000 and 2017

Source: Authors’ construction, using all African countries with at least two data points. For countries with more than two data points, we used the first and last data point. Data provided by Angrist et al. (2019) .

Test Scores for Countries at All Income Levels around the World Relative to Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa Source: Authors’ construction using the harmonised test scores from the Human Capital Project ( World Bank, 2018b,c ).

Learning-adjusted Years of Schooling for 158 Countries around the World Relative to Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa Source: Authors’ construction using the data from the Human Capital Project ( World Bank, 2018b,c ).

This is not the first study to synthesise evidence on education, even in Africa. Bashir et al. (2018) provide a comprehensive descriptive analysis of the current state of education across the continent, highlighting that many children remain out of school, that learning levels are low for those in school and that ‘the problem of low learning emerges in the early grades’. In terms of priorities for improvement, Evans and Popova (2016b) review the following six syntheses of evidence on how to improve the quality of education in low- and middle-income countries: Conn (2017) , Glewwe et al. (2014) , Kremer et al. (2013) , Krishnaratne et al. (2013) , McEwan (2015) and Ganimian and Murnane (2016) . Another review focused on learning, released slightly later, was Masino and Niño-Zarazúa (2016) . Across the reviews that focused on boosting learning, the authors recommend many different interventions, but Evans and Popova (2016b) identify two classes of interventions that are recommended with some consistency: pedagogical interventions that help teachers to tailor instruction to student learning levels and individualised, repeated efforts to improve teacher’s ability and practice.

Of these reviews, only Conn (2017) focuses exclusively on Sub-Saharan Africa, although several others draw heavily on evidence from the region. Based on a meta-analysis of 56 studies available through 2013, Conn finds the largest learning impacts for programs that ‘alter teacher pedagogy or classroom instructional techniques’. Snilstveit et al. (2015) is the most comprehensive review, examining 238 studies focused on both access and learning across low- and middle-income countries (not exclusive to Sub-Saharan Africa). 9 They find the strongest, most consistent gains in access from cash transfer programs and the best gains to quality from ‘structured pedagogy’ programs; those that provide a variety of inputs to improve teaching, such as lesson plans and training for teachers together with new materials for students (similarly to Conn, 2017 ). They also find promising evidence that school feeding programs can increase both access and learning. Glewwe and Muralidharan (2016) also examine both access and learning, finding strong gains from improved pedagogy—especially for foundational literacy and numeracy skills, improved governance—including teacher accountability and cost reductions.

In this review, we complement this previous work with evidence published in 2014 or later, most of which came out later than the scope of the searches conducted by previous reviews.

4.1. Inclusion criteria

For this paper, we limited our focus to research studies that (i) were published in 2014 or later, either as a journal article, a conference paper or a working paper; (ii) were conducted in or used data from at least one African country; and (iii) report on outcomes from education-related interventions. We included interventions that may not focus exclusively on education outcomes but do report them, such as cash transfers and school feeding programs. We also limited our search to papers that include a quantitative analysis of results that seeks to establish a counterfactual including a variety of estimation designs such as randomised controlled trial, difference-in-differences, matching, regression discontinuity and instrumental variable analysis. As a result, studies that report purely descriptive data or carried out a case study were not included in our primary analysis. Some descriptive studies are used to provide context to our discussion of results.

4.2. Search strategy

We began by compiling a database of papers that complied with the above criteria from published systematic reviews such as Conn (2014) , Glewwe et al. (2014) , Snilsveit et al. (2015) , Evans and Popova (2016b) and Evans and Yuan (2019) . We also reviewed papers from the National Bureau of Economic Research working paper series, the World Bank Policy Research Working Paper Series, the Centre for the Study of African Economies 2017–2020 conference papers and the North East Universities Development Consortium conference papers 2017–2019. We included papers identified in the African Education Research Database ( Education Sub Saharan Africa, 2020 ). Finally, we searched Google Scholar and journal databases using variations of the search terms ‘education’, ‘learning’ and ‘students’ and confirmed the location of the intervention or the source of the data used. The journal databases searched included the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, the Journal of African Economies, World Development, the Economics of Education Review, the Journal of Development Effectiveness, the International Journal of Educational Development and the International Journal of Educational Research. We included studies from other journals as turned up by our database searches. We also added studies known to the authors that are eligible but did not come up in the original search. We conducted the search between September 2019 and May 2020 and compiled a list of 195 papers eligible for review. See Appendix Table 2 for the breakdown of the papers by provenance. In this study, we review 145 of those papers on topics of current interest in education (excluding, for example, a study on the historical impact of Christian missions on education performance in later generations).

4.3. Analytical strategy

The purpose of this review is to understand the direction and scope of recent education research in Africa, including the choice of topics and interventions studied, the countries where these studies are being conducted and the key trends and messages in their findings.

In order to answer these questions, we reviewed the title, abstract and full text of the papers to extract and code the following data: country of intervention, year of publication, type of intervention (if there is one), type of intervention target (student, teacher, household, school or system), type of outcomes reported (learning, access or both), education level of intervention (pre-primary, primary, secondary, tertiary, vocational or adult learning), education level of outcomes reported, research method, scale (i.e., number of treatment arms and the size of the treatment sample) and key findings. We also encoded the choice of implementation partner (government agencies, non-government organisations, other partners or researchers only) and any cost-effectiveness data provided in the paper.

We grouped the studies according to common themes and interventions and present a narrative review of the findings. We avoid the other two main types of review (meta-analysis and vote counting) because of large variation in the design of interventions within categories: an average effect of a teacher training intervention—for example—is not informative when one is averaging across programs as varied as a one-time half-day lecture for teachers and a full-year program of classroom observations with feedback. 10 This narrative approach is more helpful for solving some problems and less helpful for solving others. Our approach is intended to help readers to update their prior beliefs within key classes of educational interventions that are commonly—and in many cases—increasingly used across the continent. It can guide the design of educational interventions within categories: for example, many countries have cash transfer programs or school feeding programs and this analysis can guide decisions about the optimal design of those programs. On the other hand, not providing meta-analytic results means that this review will not answer the question, should a given country implement a cash transfer program or a school feeding program (i.e., is the expected impact of one class of program greater than the other)? While there is certainly insight to be gleaned from that approach (and other reviews have used it, including McEwan, 2015 ; Snilstveit et al. , 2015 ; and Conn, 2017 ), the wide variety of designs and effect sizes within categories incline us—in this review—to focus on characterising the range of evidence within groups and encouraging researchers and policymakers to dig deeper into individual studies that may be most relevant to a context and class of program that they are considering.

4.4. The studies

The collection of studies reveals interesting findings on what is studied and where. We identify a high concentration of studies in Kenya (41) and Uganda (21) with fewer but still significant numbers of studies in Ethiopia (17), Ghana (15), Nigeria (13) and Tanzania (13) ( Figure 6 ). Most studies we identify focus on primary education (61%) and almost a quarter of studies examine secondary education (24%). Fewer studies examine pre-primary (8%), with just a handful examining tertiary, adult education or technical-vocational training (6% and under each) ( Figure 7 ).

Distribution of Identified Education Studies (2014–2020) across Countries in Africa. The countries with the most studies are Kenya (41), Uganda (21), Ethiopia (17), Ghana (15), Nigeria (13) and Tanzania (13). This figure includes the 195 studies that passed the eligibility criteria of our search. In the Results section, we restrict the sample to 145 studies on topics that are of current interest in education

Distribution of Identified Education Studies (2014–2020) across Levels of Education and Classes of Outcomes. Access includes all outcomes related to students staying in school such as rates of enrollment, attendance and drop-out. Sum of values may exceed 100% since interventions can be implemented in more than one phase of education. Other outcomes include labour market outcomes and other life outcomes. This figure includes the 195 studies that passed the eligibility criteria of our search. In the Results section, we restrict the sample to 145 studies on topics that are of current interest in education

The majority of the interventions (72%) evaluated by the studies are administered through the school system, including interventions targeting teachers, school management and students, while only about 38% of the studies are targeted at the household level ( Figure 8 ). School-system interventions usually aim to increase students’ enrollment and retention and improve the quality of the learning environment. These interventions are (i) teacher- and teaching-targeted programs such as pedagogy, mother tongue instruction, education technology, teacher incentives and trainings and hiring practices; (ii) student-level interventions including health and nutrition programs (e.g., school feeding), incentives for students and individual inputs such as uniforms, solar lamps or bicycles; and (iii) school-level interventions such as school construction, school grants, public–private partnerships and other non-government school provision and community-based monitoring. The household-level interventions usually aim to reduce the economic and social barriers that keep households from sending their children to school—providing cash transfers, low-cost early child development care centres and learning and attendance information to parents.

Distribution of the Studies by Targeting the Level and Class of Intervention. Our sample includes household-targeted interventions (75 studies, 38%), teacher-targeted (81 studies, 42%), student-targeted (38 studies, 19%) and school-targeted (22 studies, 11%). The sum of the percentages is more than 100 since each intervention may target more than one group. This figure includes the 195 studies that passed the eligibility criteria of our search. In the Results section, we restrict the sample to 145 studies on topics that are of current interest in education.

A significant number of studies were implemented through government channels ( Table 2 ). In addition to the 19% of the studies that examined national policy reforms (such as free primary education), 46% of the 145 studies partnered with government agencies, most often the ministry of education for school construction, teacher trainings or incentive policies; the ministry of health for school feeding; or the relevant government agency for cash transfers. In total, 40% of the studies in our sample worked with non-government organisations such as the BRAC, the World Food Programme, the Aga Khan Foundation or the Twaweza. A smaller number (17 studies) worked with private partners such as for-profit schools, clinics or educational companies. About 15% of the studies did not employ any implementing partner aside from the research teams themselves. Some of these researcher-only studies evaluated smaller, less intensive interventions (e.g., a specific pedagogical technique). More than half of the interventions were evaluated using randomised controlled trials (58% of the studies); the next most common empirical method was difference-in-differences (25%), which was the most common method for evaluating national policies.

Studies According to the Implementing Partner. Private partners include for-profit schools, clinics and educational companies. Some studies have multiple implementing partners (e.g., public–private partnerships that are implemented by both government and private partners)

Source: Authors’ calculations based on underlying studies.

A limited number of studies offer cost information ( Table 3 ). Two out of five studies in our sample have no cost analysis at all. About one-quarter provide a full cost-effectiveness analysis, and the others provide limited information on costs, usually only the cost of one specific input, such as a stipend for the trainer or the value of a voucher provided to students. A handful of studies make claims such as an intervention being a ‘cost-effective measure’ or ‘scalable (low-cost)’ without providing any cost details.

Distribution of Cost Analyses within Studies

In terms of scale, 27 of our 145 studies evaluate national reform policies. For studies that are not national in scale and that report schools as treatment units, we find an average treatment group size of 96 schools (median: 66 schools). There are some larger studies: the 90th percentile includes 211 treated schools ( Carneiro et al. , 2020 ). Table 4 shows the average treatment group size for studies reporting other treatment units such as districts, communities or individuals.

Studies Reporting the Size of the Treatment Group. Other treatment units reported are households (two studies) and classrooms (one study)

Source: Author calculations based on underlying studies.

In addition to the 19% of the studies that evaluate national policies, almost half of the studies evaluate the impact of a single treatment. The other 35% have multiple treatment arms ( Table 5 ). Twenty-eight studies evaluate two treatment arms, seventeen studies test three treatment arms and six studies test four or more treatment arms. One outlier, Haushofer and Shapiro (2016) , randomised cash transfers to gender of the recipient, frequency of instalment and size of instalment, in addition to the spill-over group (nine treatment arms in total).

Studies Reporting the Number of Treatment Arms

We review the studies in four broad categories. Studies in the first group focus on what happens in the classroom and on policies around the person who manages the classroom—the teacher. These include studies on mother tongue instruction, structured pedagogy and policies around teacher pay and teacher professional development and accountability. Studies in the second group focus on a variety of inputs: school feeding, education technology, school construction and other inputs. Studies in the third group focus on financing: cash transfers, school grants and the elimination of school fees. Studies in the fourth and final group focus on three other topics: early child education, for which there has been little experimental or quasi-experimental evidence in Africa in the past, but for which that literature is growing; girls’ education; and public–private partnerships.

5.1. Teachers and pedagogy

5.1.1. mother tongue instruction.

Mother tongue instruction usually refers to teaching students basic skills in a language that they already know when they arrive at school. In many African countries, the historical norm has been to teach children in a colonial language (e.g., English, French or Portuguese), even though most children arrive at school with little or no ability in that language. 11 Most earlier syntheses have little or nothing to say about mother tongue instruction, but evidence has grown dramatically in recent years ( Appendix Table 3 ). Teaching children to read in a language they speak at home increased the rate at which children learn to read in Cameroon ( Laitin et al. , 2019 ), Kenya ( Piper et al. , 2016c ) and Uganda ( Brunette et al. , 2019 ; Kerwin and Thornton, 2020 ). 12

While impacts on initial reading ability in the mother tongue are promising, the objective of many parents is for their children to be literate in the colonial language, which may explain some of the resistance that parents have posed to mother tongue instruction reforms, as in Kenya ( Piper et al. , 2016c ). Several recent studies suggest that mother tongue instruction has positive impacts on children’s ability to subsequently learn a second language in Cameroon ( Laitin et al. , 2019 ), Ethiopia ( Seid, 2019 ) and South Africa ( Taylor and von Fintel, 2016 ). However, Piper et al. (2018c) find the effect is not as strong: students taught in mother tongue do not perform any better in English and perform worse in mathematics compared with students taught in a non-mother tongue.

Finally, there is some evidence of impact beyond literacy. In Ethiopia, where mother tongue instruction reforms took place in 1994, researchers have identified long-term impacts on educational attainment and civic engagement ( Ramachandran, 2017 ; Seid, 2017 ).

5.1.2. Structured pedagogy

Recent years have also shown growing rigorous evidence for approaches to improve literacy that incorporate a range of elements ( Appendix Table 4 ). Piper et al. (2014 , 2015) used a randomised controlled trial to evaluate a literacy program in Kenya that included teacher professional development, the provision of textbooks for students (including textbooks in Kiswahili), the provision of structured teacher guides for teachers and classroom observation and feedback to teachers, among other elements. The program led to sizeable literacy gains. Seeking to isolate the most important elements of the program, Piper et al. (2018b) find that structured teacher guides are the most cost-effective element of the program. The program was effective at boosting literacy for low-income students ( Piper et al. , 2015 ). The program was subsequently scaled up nationally and continued to demonstrate literacy gains ( Piper et al. , 2018a ). Similarly, a mathematics-focused version of the program provided teacher guides and teacher professional development training and yielded statistically significant improvements in test scores ( Piper et al. , 2016a ).

A combination of training principals and teachers as well as mentoring for teachers and new instructional materials was effective in boosting literacy in Uganda but not in Kenya, potentially because the language of testing was different from the language used in instruction in Kenya, despite national policy ( Lucas et al. , 2014 ). Brunette et al. (2019 ), already discussed in the section on mother tongue instruction, evaluated a program that not only encouraged mother tongue instruction in 12 different mother tongue languages but also provided teacher training, detailed teachers’ guides, textbooks for pupils and feedback from school leaders, resulting in sizeable literacy gains.

Beyond these literacy interventions, many interventions seek to improve the quality of teaching particular skills using a particular method, such as using graphics (e.g., Venn diagrams) in teaching to improve prose comprehension among secondary school students in Nigeria ( Uba et al. , 2017 ). These studies are of value mostly to those seeking to improve the teaching of these specific skills; as such, they are summarised in the appendix but not discussed at length here.

5.1.3. Teacher policies

Teacher remuneration and accountability Because teachers play such an instrumental role in students’ education, recent evidence on high rates of absenteeism and low levels of pedagogical and content knowledge suggests that better teacher policies may be useful to boost education outcomes ( Mbiti, 2016 ; Bold et al. , 2017 ). There is no general pattern in the level of teacher pay relative to comparable professions across Africa ( Evans et al. , 2020 ). There is evidence of a premium to civil service teachers relative to private school teachers ( Barton et al. , 2017 ). A new generation of evidence has arisen on bonus payments for teachers based on student performance. Earlier evidence on performance pay for teachers in Africa was limited and mixed: a randomised trial in Kenya showed that performance bonuses for students increased test scores on the exams directly linked to the incentives, but not on general exams ( Glewwe et al. , 2010 ).

A new generation of studies adds much more to our knowledge base ( Appendix Table 5 ). All these new pay-for-performance programs take place in primary schools. In one study in Tanzania, performance-based bonuses to teachers had positive impacts on student learning in only one of the two tests administered, but when those bonuses were coupled with school grants, students performed consistently better in both tests and across all subjects ( Mbiti et al. , 2019a ). Schools that received grants alone showed no performance gains. Teachers also support these programs in Tanzania, both in theory and in practice, reporting higher levels of satisfaction in schools that have performance pay ( Mbiti and Schipper, this issue ). In Rwanda, a novel experimental design separates the impact of performance pay on recruitment and on effort and finds favourable effects on both, with a significant net increase in student test scores ( Leaver et al. , 2019 ). A pay-for-performance program in Uganda had test score impacts only for the subset of students who attended schools that had books; although it did reduce dropout rates, which were not directly incentivized by the program ( Gilligan et al. , 2019 ). In Kenya, using contracts that are renewable based on performance to hire teachers also boosted student learning ( Duflo et al. , 2015a ); although an effort to scale up those contracts nationwide did not result in learning gains, potentially due to a combination of political opposition, reduced monitoring and delayed salaries ( Bold et al. , 2018 ).

New studies are exploring the nuances of how to implement these programs. In Tanzania, researchers tested two alternative incentive designs: one, a pay-for-percentile system where a teacher’s bonus is based on students’ ranks against other students with similar baseline scores; and the other program, where a teacher’s bonus is based on students achieving benchmark proficiency levels, which the authors argue is easier to implement and gives teachers clearer targets. Both designs boosted test scores, but the latter program had larger impacts at a lower cost ( Mbiti et al. , 2019b ).

Recent evaluations have also shown impacts from non-remunerative accountability interventions. In Côte d’Ivoire, providing twice-a-week text messages to either parents or teachers reduced dropout by between 2 and 2.5 percentage points (about 50% of the dropout rate in control schools). Texting both parents and teachers resulted in a much smaller, statistically insignificant impact. For low-attendance teachers, all three treatments had positive impacts ( Lichand and Wolf, 2020 ). In Tanzania, a nationwide program that simply published school performance on primary school leaving exams led to more students passing the exam among schools that initially performed poorly. However, in an example of how even a low-stakes intervention can also adversely affect behaviours, the program also increased dropouts ( Cilliers et al. , 2020c ). In Niger, a low-stakes, randomised intervention that complemented regular class inspections with phone calls to the village chief, the teacher and two randomly selected students to check on whether adult education classes were being held and how they were going led to improved student learning ( Aker and Ksoll, 2019 ).

Beyond improving performance and accountability, dozens of countries have designed incentive programs to recruit and retain teachers in less attractive teaching posts, and these have had little rigourous evaluation in the past ( Pugatch and Schroeder, 2014 ). Teacher turnover is high in Africa, especially in low-performing schools (Zeitlin, this issue), making teacher retention a policy priority. In Zambia, salary increases of 20% for rural teachers show at least some impact on an increased stock of teachers in beneficiary areas, albeit no impacts on student test scores ( Chelwa et al. , 2019 ). In the Gambia, a salary premium of 30%–40% significantly increased the share of trained teachers in remote areas ( Pugatch and Schroeder, 2014 ). 13 Ultimately, the impact of all of these teacher remuneration interventions—and their relevance to other settings—likely hinge both on existing teacher remuneration relative to other professions and on other aspects of the labour market.

Teacher professional development Another class of teacher intervention seeks to boost their content and pedagogical skills. Earlier reviews showed promising evidence on pedagogical interventions ( Conn, 2017 ), but that is not to say that most teacher professional development programs are effective. On the contrary, the vast majority of at-scale teacher professional development programs in Africa (and elsewhere) go unevaluated in any serious way and many among those do not have the characteristics common to programs that have been shown to be effective ( Popova et al. , 2018 ). Still, recent evidence bolsters the view that teacher professional development—particularly coaching programs—can be effective at boosting student learning outcomes. 14 Importantly, most multi-faceted literacy programs highlighted earlier include teacher training as one aspect of the intervention.

In Ghana, training teachers to target instruction to children’s learning levels by dividing the class by ability group for part of the day increased student learning ( Duflo et al. , 2020 ). In another study in Ghana, training teachers to do targeted instruction (including by dividing students by learning level rather than grade level) increased student scores on a combined Math and English test ( Beg et al. , 2020 ). Adding training for school principals and school inspectors had no additional impact. In South Africa, the government tested traditional, centralised training for teachers versus in-class coaching, with the impact of coaching more than double of that of the centralised training ( Cilliers et al. , 2019 ). In the subsequent cohort of students, only those with teachers who benefitted from coaching show learning gains, although even those are half the size of effects for the first cohort ( Cilliers et al. , 2020a ).

Another teacher training program, combined with partially scripted lesson plans and weekly text message support for teachers, improved teacher practice and children’s literacy ( Jukes et al. , 2017 ). Four trials invested in boosting teacher skills focus on pre-primary education. In Ghana, teacher training for preschool teachers led to small increases in children’s school readiness. When that training was coupled with parental awareness meetings, the outcomes were reversed, potentially because parents preferred traditional teaching over age-appropriate play-based learning in preschool ( Wolf et al. , 2019 ). Attanasio et al. (2019 ) evaluate a program—also in Ghana—that trained volunteer mothers and kindergarten teachers in stimulation and play curriculum; the intervention improved kindergarten children’s cognitive and socio-emotional skills. In Kenya, a combined package of teacher coaching and training, along with instructional materials, boosted learning in early child education centres ( Donfouet et al. , 2018 ). In Malawi, teacher training only boosted outcomes in informal preschools when combined with parent training ( Özler et al. , 2018 ). Finally, a teacher training program in Rwanda designed to complement a new entrepreneurship curriculum in secondary schools did not improve student test scores, although it did boost student participation in school business clubs ( Blimpo and Pugatch, 2020 ).

An alternative strategy is to train teaching assistants to assist teachers. In Ghana, schools were randomly assigned to hire teaching assistants from among the country’s youth employment program to either work with students who had fallen behind during school, work with students who had fallen behind after school or just work with half of the class, thereby reducing class size ( Duflo et al. , 2020 ). All three interventions improved student learning, although the first two had the largest impacts. Interestingly, relative to the Ghana-based, teacher-led targeted instruction intervention mentioned above, the remedially targeted teaching assistant interventions not only doubled the impact on student test scores but also doubled the cost, so cost-effectiveness was comparable.

5.2. Inputs

5.2.1. school feeding.

Just one earlier review highlights school feeding as a possibility for boosting both access and learning ( Snilstveit et al. , 2015 ), and most of the evidence behind that recommendation stems from other regions in the world. Recent evidence from Africa supports that finding ( Appendix Table 6 ). From a randomised evaluation of Ghana’s nationwide school feeding program, Aurino et al. (2019) find gains in test scores as a result of school feeding, with particularly large gains for girls and for children from the poorest households. In rural Senegal, Azomahou et al. (2019) use a randomised design to find gains in both enrollment and test scores from the provision of school meals, as do Diagne et al. (2014) in an earlier evaluation of the same program. Mensah and Nsabimana (2020) exploit staggered implementation of a school feeding program in Rwanda and find small (less than 0.03 standard deviations) but significant impacts on student test scores. Nikiema (2019) uses a difference-in-differences strategy to show that providing take-home rations in Burkina Faso increases school attendance for both boys and girls and increases enrollment for girls in particular. Parker et al. (2015) measure only health outcomes (haemoglobin and anaemia) in a cluster randomised trial of school feeding in rural Burundi and find no clear impacts.

In addition to evaluating the impact of providing school meals, studies are venturing into the details of the meals themselves. Hulett et al. (2014) examine the impact of introducing animal protein into school meals in Kenya with a randomised trial and find that the ‘meat group’ showed higher test score gains than other groups.

These results greatly strengthen earlier global evidence that school feeding is a promising strategy for boosting cognitive outcomes as well as access to school, particularly in food-insecure areas and especially for girls.

5.2.2. Education technology

A previous synthesis that highlighted the promise of education technology ( McEwan 2015 ) draws on evidence from 32 different treatments in five different countries, none of them on the African continent. Recent years have shown a rapid increase in evidence in this area with a mixed track record ( Appendix Table 7 ). 15 In some cases, technology complements existing inputs. In Kenya, researchers experimented with different technology complements (e-readers for students, tablets for teachers or tablets for instructional supervisors): none boosted literacy scores significantly relative to a non-technology-based intervention ( Piper et al. , 2016b ). In South Africa, a randomised trial comparing on-site teacher coaches with virtual teacher coaches (i.e., coaches who communicated with teachers by tablet) led to comparable outcomes in the first year, but over time, the gains from in-person coaches translated to other skills, whereas the gains from virtual coaches did not ( Kotze et al. , 2019 ; Cilliers et al. , 2020b ). A quasi-experimental evaluation of the impact of introducing interactive whiteboards—a complement to teachers—found higher test scores for urban students in Senegal ( Lehrer et al. , 2019 ). De Hoop et al. (2020 ) evaluate a program in Zambia where teachers receive tablets (and projectors) with lesson plans for teachers and interactive lessons for students. Complemented with weekly teacher professional development, the program shows gains for first graders in both reading and math.

In Angola, a randomised controlled trial of learning software together with the technological equipment needed to use the software had no consistent impact on primary school student learning, although it did boost teacher and student familiarity with technology ( Cardim et al. , 2019 ). An experimental evaluation that provided secondary school students in Malawi with access to Wikipedia—the students otherwise had little to no internet access—had small, positive impacts in two subjects but not in others ( Derksen et al. , 2020 ). Also in Zambia, a phone-based literacy game provided to a few hundred randomly selected first-grade students boosted their spelling ability relative to a control group ( Jere-Folotiya et al. , 2014 ). In Kenyan primary schools, interactive literacy software coupled with a library of digital books and stories boosted reading scores ( Lysenko et al. , 2019 ).

In other cases, technology seeks to substitute for other inputs. Providing e-readers to secondary school students in urban Nigeria only increased learning if they included curricular content and were distributed in areas with limited textbook access, essentially substituting e-readers for traditional textbooks ( Habyarimana and Sabarwal, 2018 ). In Ghana, broadcasting live instruction—where students can interact with the instructors—from teachers in the capital to students in rural areas improved literacy and numeracy scores, essentially substituting for teacher ability ( Johnston and Ksoll, 2017 ). Alternatively, technology can fill an input gap in terms of role models: Riley (2019) finds that showing secondary students in Uganda a film featuring a low-income adolescent Ugandan girl succeeding at chess improved student test scores and closed the gender gap in enrollment in subsequent years.

While the findings are certainly not universally positive, they suggest that technology in education can effectively complement or substitute for existing inputs when the infrastructure is in place to support it. This pattern is consistent with earlier evidence ( Bulman and Fairlie, 2016 ). However, most of the technologies evaluated in the studies are used in school settings, with more stable access to electricity and internet connectivity (with the exception of e-readers that students can take home). There is still limited evidence for technology that allows for distance learning where access to school is not available.

5.2.3. School construction

School construction rarely features in reviews of the best investments, but when there are few schools, construction is essential to achieve the last mile (or last 20 miles) of enrollment. Recent studies bolster this ( Appendix Table 8 ). In Burkina Faso, a program to construct schools improved enrollment, attendance and student learning both 7 and 10 years after the program ( Ingwersen et al. , 2019 ; Kazianga et al. , 2019 ). 16 A similar program in Niger also boosted enrollment and learning ( Bagby et al. , 2016 ). These programs of course will be most effective when there are few schools: a school construction program in Benin boosted enrollment principally in rural areas ( Deschênes and Hotte, 2019 ). Furthermore, the Burkina Faso program led young women to put off marriage and childbearing ( Ingwersen et al. , 2019 ) and the Benin program reduced tolerance of domestic violence ( Deschênes and Hotte, 2019 ). Ashraf et al. (2020b) find that school construction benefitted girls’ education in Zambia only among ethnic groups with a bride price tradition. Ultimately, construction is likely a necessary condition for other interventions to work when there are insufficient schools.

5.2.4. Other inputs

Fewer recent studies evaluate the impact of providing simple, non-technological in-kind inputs for schooling (although a previous generation of evaluations yielded several of those), but recent studies still provide some insight into this area ( Appendix Table 9 ). Two studies in Kenya provided free school uniforms: one provided them to girls in upper primary grades and found reductions in school dropout, pregnancy and marriage; another provided them to children in lower primary grades and found significant reductions in absenteeism in early years, but no evidence of enduring effects several years later ( Duflo et al. , 2015b ; Evans and Ngatia, 2020 )

Previous studies examining the simple provision of additional textbooks to schools found either no impacts or selective impacts in Kenya and Sierra Leone ( Glewwe et al. , 2009 ; Sabarwal et al. , 2014 ), but a new randomised trial providing textbooks together with a combination of financial and non-financial incentives to simply take the books home increased both language scores and the likelihood of students taking the end-of-year exam in the Democratic Republic of the Congo ( Falisse et al. , 2019 ).

In Kenya, randomly selected seventh-grade students who lived in rural areas off the electrical grid received solar-powered lamps. In some classes, a higher proportion of students received solar lamps and the authors use that variation to estimate the externalities on non-recipient students. The program found significant gains in math scores for students who received lamps and smaller additional gains for students who did not receive lamps in classrooms where many students did ( Hassan and Lucchino, 2016 )

5.3. Financing

5.3.1. cash transfers.

Cash transfers are a richly studied area of analysis, with the first generation of evidence coming out of Latin America and the Caribbean ( Fiszbein et al. , 2009 ). Early evidence from Africa showed promising results in that setting as well ( Davis et al. , 2016 ). The most recent evidence shows impacts not only of giving transfers but also of testing a variety of designs ( Appendix Table 10 ). In terms of simple impacts, a randomised trial of unconditional transfers in Malawi showed an increase in school enrollment and reduced dropout rates ( Kilburn et al. , 2017 ). In Kenya, unconditional transfers did not translate to improved educational outcomes after 9 months ( Haushofer and Shapiro, 2016 ). In Lesotho, unconditional child grants boosted primary enrollment but not completion or the transition to secondary ( Pellerano et al. , 2014 ). Conditional cash transfers in Tanzania boosted primary school completion ( Evans et al. , 2014 ). Baird et al. (2016a) compare conditional cash transfers for already enrolled and unenrolled adolescent girls in Malawi: they find enrollment gains for both groups and mixed effects on test scores. Eyal and Woodard (2014) find that expanding a child support grant in South Africa increased educational enrollment in South Africa but that higher enrollment does not translate into higher levels of attained education. An unconditional cash transfer program in Rwanda increased educational investments (more children had school uniforms) but did not affect school attendance ( Sabates et al. , 2019 ).

Other evaluations inform the design of cash transfer programs. De Walque and Valente (2019) compare cash transfers directly to children and to parents as well as simply providing information (with no cash) about their children’s attendance to parents. Providing attendance information delivered 75% of the gains of cash in terms of children’s attendance. Transfers to children and to parents performed comparably. Akresh et al. (2016) compare a variety of transfer designs and find positive impacts on children’s education outcomes across designs in Burkina Faso, with larger impacts on school attendance for older children from conditional transfers relative to unconditional transfers. Benhassine et al. (2015) found that unconditional transfers labelled as education support in Morocco increased both school participation and parent views of the value of education investments; adding explicit conditions and targeting a particular parent (mothers versus fathers) had no additional impact. In Malawi, conditional cash transfers had larger impacts on school attainment, but unconditional cash transfers had larger gains on other outcomes ( Baird et al. , 2019 ).

On the whole, these findings are consistent with earlier work that suggests that cash transfers—especially, but not limited to, conditional transfers—can be an effective way to boost school enrollment but may not by themselves translate into broader educational gains. We also observe significant variation in cash transfer performance. 17 Evaluations on this topic, among others, signal a maturing literature in testing alternative designs.

5.3.2. School grants

Grants to schools can be an effective way to distribute resources, and there is evidence from other regions of the world that they can boost enrollment: in Haiti, grants to schools conditional on not charging fees to students boosted enrollment and reduced grade repetition ( Adelman et al. , 2017 ). Recent evidence in Africa confirms that grants are not a silver bullet but can yield benefits, mostly when complemented with other programs ( Appendix Table 11 ). In Senegal, school grants led to improved test scores for younger students, particularly in schools that used the grants for training teachers and school administrators ( Carneiro et al. , 2020 ). Grants to school committees in Niger increased enrollment for young children but did not affect learning ( Beasley and Huillery, 2017 ).

School grants alone had no impact on student learning in Tanzania; although when they were coupled with teacher incentives, outcomes improved ( Mbiti et al. , 2019a ). School grants alone in the Gambia had no impact on student attendance or on learning outcomes, but in concert with management training, the program did boost attendance and—in some communities—even learning ( Blimpo et al. , 2015 ). Grants alone do not consistently solve access or learning problems, but when attached to conditions or complementary programs that relax other constraints, they can boost both access and learning.

5.3.3. Eliminating school fees

An obvious constraint to education is the cost, including both formal school fees and myriad other fees that schools charge ( Williams et al. , 2015 ). An array of recent papers seeks to quantify the impact of reducing those costs, mostly at the primary level ( Appendix Table 12 ). İşcan et al. (2015) use regression analysis to show that the introduction of school fees reduced enrollment and subsequent completion of primary school across seven African countries. Moussa and Omoeva (2020) use a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to examine the impact of universal primary education policies in Ethiopia, Malawi and Uganda: they find an increase in educational attainment, as well as a decrease in adolescent pregnancy and marriage. They do not observe impacts on labour force participation or employment. In Kenya, free primary education—rolled out in 2003—increased educational attainment as well as subsequent employment and income ( Ajayi and Ross, 2020 ). There is some evidence that the expansion of access led to a fall in quality ( Atuhurra, 2016 ). Free basic education increased girls’ attainment and reduced adolescent fertility and marriage in Ghana and Uganda ( Boahen and Yamauchi, 2018 ; Masuda and Yamauchi, 2018 ). The elimination of primary school fees in Ethiopia led to more schooling for men and women, along with reduced fertility ( Chicoine, 2019 , 2020 ). In Tanzania, free primary education increased access and had positive returns across sectors, even in the agricultural sector ( Delesalle, 2019 ; Valente, 2019 ). Lesotho also saw dramatic gains in access with the elimination of fees ( Moshoeshoe et al. , 2019 ). Informal fees in public primary schools continue to keep students—especially poor, rural students—away from school ( Sakaue, 2018 ).

As countries expand secondary education, more studies examine impacts at that level. In Uganda, free secondary education significantly but not completely reduced expenditures ( Omoeva and Gale, 2016 ), consistent with earlier work showing that school fees are not the only out-of-pocket expense. In the Gambia, eliminating secondary school fees for girls increased the number of girls taking the high school exit exam by more than 50%. Test scores also rose, despite the increase in access coming mostly from poorer areas ( Blimpo et al. , 2019b ). An earlier evaluation found increased female enrollment for both secondary and primary schools ( Gajigo, 2016 ). Similarly, a study in Kenya found that the abolition of tuition in public secondary schools increased access, delayed childbirth and did not reduce test scores ( Brudevold-Newman, 2019 ). In Uganda, eliminating secondary school fees via public funds to private schools increased the number of students taking the exit exam by 16%, with no fall in test scores ( Masuda and Yamauchi, 2018 ). Finally, a randomised controlled trial of scholarships for students in Ghana who had already passed the entrance exam but lacked financing increased secondary and tertiary attainment and—10 years later—reduced fertility and improved labour market outcomes ( Duflo et al. , 2019 ).

5.4. Other topics

5.4.1. early child education.

Earlier syntheses have little to say about early child education in Africa, largely because of a paucity of studies. Martinez et al. (2017) highlight that most evidence from low- and middle-income countries stems from Latin America and do not identify a single paper that predates 2015 in Africa. Since then, several studies have come out, most of which examine the impact of access to early child education ( Appendix Table 13 ). Martinez et al. (2017) use a randomised controlled trial to estimate the impact of community-based preschools in Mozambique and find that enroled children are much more likely to be in primary school at the right age and that their test scores are higher, with larger effects for children from poorer households. Bietenbeck et al. (2019) take advantage of the expansion of pre-primary education in Kenya and Tanzania to compare siblings with access with siblings without; they find that children with access to preschool education are more likely to be in primary school, more likely to have advanced, and have moderately higher scores on cognitive tests (0.10 standard deviations). Aunio et al. (2019) —with a simple cross-sectional regression approach and the selection challenges that entails—find a significant, positive correlation between kindergarten attendance and later numeracy skill in South Africa, even when controlling for other current skills (language and executive function). Krafft (2015) compares siblings with and without access to early child education in Egypt and finds that access translates to an additional year of total schooling. Woldehanna and Araya (2017) use an instrumental variables approach with Young Lives data in Ethiopia and find that preschool attendees in urban areas are 25% more likely to have completed secondary education than non-attendees. Finally, Blimpo et al. (2019a) evaluate random assignment of community-based early child development centres in the Gambia and find that children from less-disadvantaged families do worse, consistent with some evidence from high-income countries ( Baker et al. , 2019 ).

Five studies examine the quality of early child education services. Blimpo et al. (2019a) find that children who attended preschools that were randomly assigned to receive intensive teacher training had much higher language skills than children who attended other preschools. Morabito et al. (2018) evaluate children randomly assigned to high-quality versus low-quality preschools: they find no average effect on test scores, although there is evidence that high-quality preschool has a positive impact for children with poorly educated fathers (compensating for inequality) and a negative impact for children with poorly educated mothers (reinforcing inequality). Four other interventions trained early child education providers—in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi—and were discussed in Section 5.1 .

Finally, at least one study examines a home-based program to strengthen children’s emergent literacy skills before they even begin school. In Kenya, randomly selected parents of young children received either children’s storybooks or storybooks with training on how to read the storybooks with children ( Knauer et al. , 2020 ). Children whose parents received both books and training demonstrated increased vocabulary.

This new generation of early child education evidence suggests that there is value in these investments and capacity of governments and others to provide them on the African continent.

5.4.2. Education for girls

Education for girls has long been cited as a potential high-value investment, by both researchers and policy makers ( Evans et al. , 2020 ). Discussing girls’ education as a separate category can be problematic, since earlier sections covered studies that reported impacts on girls. For example, the elimination of school fees for secondary school has shown consistent impacts in reducing adolescent marriage and fertility, and school construction in several countries has focused on ensuring that girls’ needs are met and have improved outcomes for girls. In this section, we discuss work on girls’ education that does not fit naturally into our other categories. A recent synthesis, not restricted to Africa but drawing heavily on research from the continent, suggests that the most effective investments to improve girls’ educational outcomes may be a mix of targeted and non-targeted investments ( Evans and Yuan, 2019 ). Recent work in Africa backs that up: Duflo et al. (2020) , in their evaluation of targeted instruction interventions in Ghana, find larger impacts for girls despite the fact that girls are not specifically targeted by the intervention.

Among targeted interventions not discussed earlier, providing negotiation training to secondary school girls in Zambia—including teaching them to advocate for their own education—improved educational outcomes over the subsequent several years ( Ashraf et al. , 2020a ). Providing sanitary pads to schoolgirls in Kenya reduced absenteeism significantly ( Benshaul-Tolonen et al. , 2019 ). A program that provided bicycles to schoolgirls in Zambia reduced girls’ commute time and their absenteeism from school, with modest impacts on mathematics learning ( Fiala et al. , 2020 ). Unlike a similar program in India, the program had no impact on dropout rates or grade advancement ( Muralidharan and Prakash, 2017 ).

Several recent studies look beyond educational outcomes to examine the impact of school-based programs to improve other outcomes for girls ( Appendix Table 14 ). Bandiera et al. (2020) find—using a randomised controlled trial in Uganda—that simultaneously providing vocational training as well as information about reproductive health to adolescent girls increased self-employment and reduced adolescent pregnancy and sexual violence 4 years later. A similar program in Tanzania had no impacts ( Buehren et al. , 2017 ). In Sierra Leone, a program provided similar services in the context of girls-only after-school clubs but was interrupted by the 2014 Ebola outbreak. Girls in participating communities were protected from the significant school dropout and adolescent pregnancy effects of the outbreak ( Bandiera et al. , 2019 ). A mentoring program intended to develop social and emotional life skills in Liberia increased primary school completion and the transition to secondary school ( Koroknay-Palicz and Montalvao, 2019 ). Another girls-only safe space program—this one in Ethiopia—used longitudinal analysis and found gains in both literacy and the likelihood of accessing health services ( Medhin and Erulkar, 2017 ). The findings demonstrate significant variation in impacts across settings.

5.4.3. Private schools and other non-government school provision

Private schools are an important part of the education landscape in Sub-Saharan Africa. On average across countries, 14% of primary school students and 19% of secondary school students were enroled in secondary schools as of 2014, and that number had grown since the year 2000 ( Baum et al. , 2018 ). Private schools are perceived by many parents to be of higher quality: in Kenya, even poor families were willing to undergo financial hardship to pay for so-called low-cost private schools ( Zuilkowski et al. , 2018 ). Distinguishing the impact of private schools on student learning is generally difficult because of student selection effects: often, students with better off parents or parents more invested in education may be more likely to attend private schools. Beyond purely private schools, many African governments are entering into agreements with private school chains where they receive public resources to educate students at no charge. These public–private partnerships often seek to leverage the physical and human capital of private schools to increase access and learning. The past several years have seen some new work on private schools and public–private partnerships in Sub-Saharan Africa ( Appendix Table 15 ). Most previous work on private schools has taken place in other regions, and to our knowledge, this topic is not covered in previous reviews focused on Africa.

Recent studies seek to compare student outcomes in private and public schools in African countries. Wamalwa and Burns (2018) compare public school versus private school attending siblings within the same household (i.e., household fixed effects) in Kenya and identify literacy and numeracy gains in attending private schools. Despite efforts to gauge the potential extent of bias, the challenge remains of unobserved child characteristics determining whether a child is sent to private or public school. Also in Kenya, Zuilkowski et al. (2020) compare student scores over two academic years in low-cost private schools and government schools in Nairobi and find that, in general, the low-cost private schools do not produce better student outcomes over time. However, private schools yielded more learning gains when they received an instructional improvement intervention than did public schools. Lipcan et al. (2018) compare test scores, costs and management practices across public and private schools in Lagos, Nigeria, and find that one international chain of private schools has higher student test scores relative to other private schools and public schools in literacy and relative to public schools only in mathematics. Adjusting for a set of observed student characteristics reduces the gains by a small amount. The authors make no claim to causality, as unobserved characteristics of students may still play a role in the results. A third study does not find any differences in management practices between public and private schools in Uganda; although it does find a significant association between the quality of management and student performance overall ( Crawfurd, 2017 ).

Two randomised controlled trials examine the impact of public–private partnerships, one for primary schools in Liberia and another for secondary schools in Uganda. In Liberia, the management of 93 randomly selected schools was delegated to one of eight different private organisations ( Romero et al. , 2020 ). Government teachers taught in both publicly and privately managed schools, but privately managed schools received more funding, and some raised additional funding independently. Ultimately, the privately managed schools achieved significantly higher test scores but at a significantly higher cost per student. In general, management of teachers was better at privately managed schools, but one chain kicked out students when their enrollment cap was reached and transferred less effective teachers to non-evaluated schools. Three years after implementation, the learning gains in privately managed schools failed to compound over time ( Romero and Sandefur, 2019 ). Ultimately, private management of public schools proved to be a mixed bag.

In Uganda, a program randomised which private secondary schools participated in the public–private partnership and so documented the impact on private school performance ( Barrera-Osorio et al. , 2020 ). Participation in the partnerships boosted both enrollment and student performance. There is evidence of both an increase in inputs at the partnership schools and changes in student composition, favouring students with more educational advantage. The evaluation did not measure the impact relative to public schools.

Non-profit school providers are another option, especially in the context of extreme poverty and poor state provision of schooling. In Guinea-Bissau, a non-profit organisation randomly selected villages to provide 4-year primary schools to substitute for existing government education ( Fazzio et al. 2020 ). The schools had a custom-made structured pedagogy program and frequent monitoring and assessment of teachers and students. Students in intervention schools performed dramatically better on early grade reading and math tests.

The private school and other non-government school evaluation literature is still nascent in Africa. While there is no compelling evidence that private schools or private management of schools deliver more learning than public schools, the revealed preference of many parents and demonstrated improvement in private schools suggests merit in continuing to examine the issue.

6.1. What we learn

The past several years of education and economics research in Africa demonstrate that there is a range of promising ways to continue to expand access to schools and to improve their quality. Earlier reviews of the evidence had little examination of mother tongue instruction programs and limited coverage of structured pedagogy programs, both of which show sizeable impacts on learning. Likewise, a range of teacher policies shows promising results, including both teacher pay-for-performance programs at the primary level and non-remunerative interventions, such as teacher coaching and training teaching assistants. School feeding programs appear to be beneficial for both access and learning outcomes.

As evidence on inputs—including education technology inputs—grows on the continent, its track record is decidedly mixed. Technology proves effective in some cases and not in others, paralleling the education technology findings in high-income countries and the fact that technology is a means to an end rather than an end in itself ( Bulman and Fairlie, 2016 ). Public–private partnerships likewise are proving no panacea to education systems in Africa.

The past few years have provided several long-term studies on the elimination of primary school fees, showing positive results on later life outcomes. Likewise, a new generation of studies on reducing fees for secondary school shows gains in access, increased employment and reduced early fertility. Of course, the first step of constructing schools in places where there are no schools is likely an essential condition for further educational investments.

6.2. What we still need to learn

The weaknesses of this evidence base are the same weaknesses of economics of education research throughout low- and middle-income countries. The first is the duration of impacts. The vast majority of interventions measure outcomes within 12 months of the onset of the intervention, with little information on the longer run time path of impacts ( McEwan, 2015 ). There are recent exceptions to that in the region, with studies studying impacts of experimental interventions 2 years after implementation ( Cilliers et al. , 2020a ), 3 years after implementation ( Bagby et al. , 2016 ), 7 years after implementation ( Evans and Ngatia, 2020 ) and even 10 years after implementation ( Baird et al. , 2016b ; Ingwersen et al. , 2019 ). But most interventions still lack any long-term follow-up. Quasi-experimental studies that examine policy changes are showing much longer-term impacts, as in several of the fee elimination studies.

The second is scale. Many evaluations of interventions are at relatively small scale. Outside of the interventions evaluating national policies, the median number of treated schools is just 66 ( Table 4 ), often implemented under the careful eye of a cautious researcher. Obviously, going to scale entails a host of challenges—both political and implementation—and sometimes those challenges ultimately undermine whatever worked well in the original evaluation ( Bold et al. , 2018 ). Design elements in pilots can facilitate moving to scale by, for example, testing a variety of elements to increase confidence in the optimal policy design, drawing on government systems when possible and providing cost analysis ( Gove et al. , 2017 ).

Interventions where scale requires a large increase in financial resources but not a proportional increase in human resources (e.g., cash transfers or fee elimination) present a distinct set of challenges than those where scale requires a corresponding increase in human resources (a structured pedagogy program, for example). In some ways, the financial resources are easier to come by at large scale than the human resources, especially in education systems that historically have had difficulty recruiting and training qualified workers.

A third challenge is cost-effectiveness. A natural response to the array of evidence we have presented would be to point out that the benefit is just half of the investment decision. Unfortunately, less than 30% of the studies report cost-effectiveness ( Table 3 ), which may be an increase from a few years ago ( McEwan, 2015 ). 18 Programs that provide consistent benefits in boosting access—including fee elimination, school construction and school meals—also tend to have high fixed or recurrent costs (or both). Cost-effectiveness analysis is essential for better policy decisions, and hopefully the new generation of studies will do more of that.

6.3. Applying research findings to policy

These findings can help policymakers to update their existing beliefs as to the best starting points for discussions about education policy. Every place and time is different, and so synthesising effective results is not intended to promote wholesale adoption of one program to another context. Achieving high-quality education in Africa will require a host of interventions at each education level—early child education, primary education, secondary education, etc. As a result, policymakers and the researchers who advise them can learn from successful interventions in two key ways. First, most simply, successful interventions in one context provide a starting point for discussions in another context ( World Bank, 2018a ). 19 Would that work here? Why or why not? Second, we can examine the principles behind the success of interventions rather than focusing on specific point estimates ( Muralidharan, 2017 ). Specifically, we can ask what the theory behind the program is: whether the required conditions in a new context hold for that theory to apply; whether the same behaviour change would be expected in the new context, based on existing evidence; and whether the program could be well implemented ( Bates and Glennerster, 2017 ). In some cases, a different program design may be more effective at achieving the same change in teacher or student behaviour in a new country because of different contextual factors. Certain classes of programs that have been successful across several contexts—such as structured pedagogy programs, school feeding programs, school fee elimination programs or mother tongue instruction programs—may provide starting points for policy discussions in other areas.

The education impact evaluation evidence in Africa is shifting from simple tests of what works and what does not to what implementation design is the most effective in a given context. As Duflo (2017) writes, ‘Our models give us very little theoretical guidance on what (and how) details will matter.’ But the growing array of evidence can guide us in the path forward.

The authors are grateful for contributions from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in support of this work.

These initial numbers are regional aggregates provided in the World Bank’s World Development Indicators. One challenge in tracking and reporting these statistics is the availability of data: in 2010, only about two-thirds of the countries in the region reported primary completion rates. Figures 1 and 2 provide a more detailed distribution.

The number of impact evaluations on the topic of education in development settings rose more in absolute numbers than in any other sector except health, both from 2000 to 2009 and from 2010 to 2015 ( Sabet and Brown, 2018 ).

Section 2 provides evidence for these claims.

Most of our studies are from Sub-Saharan Africa, but a handful is from northern African countries.

Two earlier examples include Kremer and Miguel (2007) and Baird et al. , (2011) .

Lacking access to time travel technology, Evans and Popova (2016b) actually review an earlier version of the work of Conn (2014) but the results of Conn’s analysis do not change across the two versions.

We use the median rate across countries because education policy decisions are made at the country level. The World Development Indicators also provide a regional aggregate number with population weighting, which yields slightly higher completion rates (68% for primary and 43% for lower secondary).

An assessment of student test scores in Nigeria reports that only 17% of the students meet the minimum literacy competency benchmark and 31% meet the numeracy benchmark. Students from poor households, in rural areas and in government-owned schools are particularly worse off ( Adeniran et al. , 2020 ).

Snilstveit et al. (2016) provide a manageable summary of Snilstveit et al. (2015) , which comes in at more than 850 pages.

Evans and Popova (2016b) provide a detailed description of the advantages and disadvantages of different review methodologies.

Mother tongue instruction can also be used to refer to teaching children their mother tongue (e.g., formalising knowledge of a language spoken from childhood). That is not how we use the term here.

Brunette et al. (2019) examined interventions in 12 different mother tongues and found positive, significant impacts for three quarters of them.

The Gambian program also had no clear impact on student test scores ( Pugatch and Schroeder, 2018 ).

Many teacher professional development interventions report impacts on participant knowledge and even practice—as do McDermott and Allen (2015) in Sierra Leone—but it cannot be assumed that teachers will be able to translate that knowledge into increased student learning.

Some studies provide proof of concept of technological interventions in very small samples. These studies should not inform large-scale policies yet, but they can point to promising directions for future testing. In a very small pilot study in Kenya, primary school teachers and students had access to an ‘interactive, multimedia literacy software’ for 90 minutes per week, resulting in gains in end-of-year subject exams ( Abrami et al. , 2016 ). Another small pilot provided electronic career guidance for secondary school students in Nigeria, with promising results ( John et al. , 2016 ).

That program also seems to have increased children’s participation in household chores ( de Hoop and Rosati, 2014 ).

Evans and Yuan (2019) find cash transfers among both the most and the least effective interventions to increase girls’ access to schooling worldwide.

Even if one had those data, comparing costs across settings entails many of the same challenges that comparing effect sizes entails ( Evans and Popova, 2016a ).

Most immediately, evaluations can inform policy decisions in the same context, as demonstrated by the multifaceted use of evaluations by the Department of Basic Education in South Africa ( Pophiwa et al. , 2020 ). This is less relevant to the present synthesis of evidence from many countries.

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Africa education: The future of the fastest-growing continent

• By Matt Rees
• 18 November 2016

Africa’s population is 1.2 billion, or 16 percent of the world. The UN projects that will double by 2050. By the end of the century, Africans will have contributed 3.2 billion of an anticipated 3.8 billion increase in population. They will then account for 39 percent of the world’s people.

The increase is due to improvements in public health. Life expectancy for an African born in 1955 was only 37. Today it’s 60.

All this growth could exacerbate existing problems, of course. Education is one area where Africa badly needs improvement. Less than one in five African women gets any education. Half the world’s children not in education are African —that’s 30 million not in school.

Brian Mugabe, Greensteds head prefect, outside the school’s new dormitory

Choosing Africa for his career

Which is why Brian Mugabe is such an inspiring young man.

At 18, Mugabe is head prefect at Greensteds. He arrived at the school from his home in Kampala, Uganda at the age of 13. Though he was far from his family at a boarding school, he soon felt at home. “When I first got here, I was scared,” he says. “But everyone was very friendly.”

He now studies chemistry, geography and physical education. He aims to study for a degree at a university in the UK.

Many people in his situation might be tempted to remain overseas and build a life in a richer country. But Mugabe intends to return to Africa as a teacher.

“The school has developed my leadership skills,” he says. “I came as a very shy boy, when I was younger. But now I’m open to talking to people. I feel like Greensteds has made me a better person.”

EIB invests in Africa education

Mugabe adds that boyhood friends who remained in Uganda didn’t get the level of schooling he received. “I feel I have better opportunities than they do. They ask me about universities, and I can always help them because the teachers at Greensteds have helped me. So I’m getting better advice.”

“There’s not a school in Uganda that compares to Greensteds.”

Greensteds recently expanded its facilities with a new building for its male students. The EUR 1 million dormitory was financed with a loan from ABC Bank for almost half the project’s cost. ABC drew the funds from a lending facility backed by the European Investment Bank. The EUR 20 million facility is one of a number the EU bank operates across Africa . Intermediaries like ABC draw on the EIB funds to invest in projects that make a difference on the ground.

The Greensteds campus near Nakuru

Hope and vision for Africa education

Most of the students at Greensteds are East African, many of them from the local community in Nakuru, 17 km to the north. The school’s workers are also local. Founded in 1936, Greensteds is one of the biggest employers in Nakuru. Most of the teachers are British, hired for their expertise in the UK curriculum the school teaches, though some are Kenyan.

Headmaster Murray Walker, who’s originally from Southampton in the UK, sends his students off to universities across the world. But he wants them to come back. “Our hope and vision is that they will possibly go outside East Africa for their university education,” he says. “ I hope that a majority of them will come back to East Africa after their education and have a chance to make a positive impact on East Africa. And I’m sure they will.”

Modern facilities

The children, aged from 2 to 18, describe the school’s facilities with great pleasure. The boarding house for the 16- to 19-year-old boys, which was financed by the EIB, is a modern facility built in local stone with lounges and neat study-bedrooms. It has “had a very positive impact on how they study and how they live,” Murray Walker says.

“The boys are very happy with that boarding house,” the headmaster adds, “so the girls now want their own.”

Two Greensteds youngsters

About the author

I'm an editor at the European Investment Bank. I write about the Bank's projects, its people, and industries and issues where it makes a difference.

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Theme of The Year 2024 : “Educate and Skill Africa for the 21st Century”

The AU Theme of the Year for 2024 is proposed to be Education, following a global Summit on Transforming Education convened by the UN Secretary-General in September 2022.

The urgency stems from the global education crisis and the off-track progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 4.

Africa faces significant challenges in achieving SDG4, leading to the organization of an AU High-level side event in New York.

The event resulted in a draft declaration, reviewed and adopted by the Specialized Technical Committee on Education, Science, and Technology.

The High-level side event included participation from African leaders, UN representatives, and partners who emphasized the need for collective commitment to address education challenges.

 Moussa Faki Mahamat, Chairperson of the AUC, proposed that Education be the AU Theme of the Year 2024, a proposal widely supported.

The final declaration, unanimously adopted, reaffirms commitments to continental education strategies and SDG4.

The proposal is set for consideration and adoption in the 36th ordinary session of the Assembly summit in February 2023.

A snapshot of the education sector in Africa indicates efforts and progress in ensuring access, completion, and quality of education, with a focus on reducing out-of-school children and improving literacy rates.

Theme: Educate an African fit for the 21st Century: Building resilient education systems for increased access to inclusive, lifelong, quality, and relevant learning in Africa.

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Africa grapples with huge disparities in education

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At the dawn of independence, incoming African leaders were quick to prioritize education on their development agendas. Attaining universal primary education, they maintained, would help postindependence Africa lift itself out of abject poverty.

As governments began to build schools and post teachers even to the farthest corners of the continent, with help from religious organizations and other partners, children began to fill the classrooms and basic education was under way.

Africa’s current primary school enrolment rate is above 80% on average, with the continent recording some of the biggest increases in elementary school enrolment globally in the last few decades, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which is tasked with coordinating international cooperation in education, science, culture and communication. More children in Africa are going to school than ever before.

Yet despite the successes in primary school enrolment, inequalities and inefficiencies remain in this critical sector.

According to the African Union (AU), the recent expansion in enrolments “masks huge disparities and system dysfunctionalities and inefficiencies” in education subsectors such as preprimary, technical, vocational and informal education, which are severely underdeveloped.

It is widely accepted that most of Africa’s education and training programs suffer from low-quality teaching and learning, as well as inequalities and exclusion at all levels. Even with a substantial increase in the number of children with access to basic education, a large number still remain out of school.

A newly released report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Income Inequality Trends in sub-Saharan Africa: Divergence, Determinants and Consequences, identifies the unequal distribution of essential facilities, such as schools, as one the drivers of wide income disparities.

Ayodele Odusola, the lead editor of the report and UNDP’s chief economist, makes the following point: “Quality education is key to social mobility and can thus help reduce poverty, although it may not necessarily reduce [income] inequality.”

To address education inequality, he says, governments must invest heavily in child and youth development through appropriate education and health policies and programmes.

Higher-quality education, he says, improves the distribution of skilled workers, and state authorities can use this increased supply to build a fairer society in which all people, rich or poor, have equal opportunities. As it is now, only the elites benefit from quality education.

“Wealthy leaders in Africa send their children to study in the best universities abroad, such as Harvard. After studies, they come back to rule their countries, while those from poor families who went to public schools would be lucky to get a job even in the public sector,” notes Mr. Odusola.

Another challenge facing policy makers and pedagogues is low secondary and tertiary enrolment. Angela Lusigi, one of the authors of the UNDP report, says that while Africa has made significant advances in closing the gap in primary-level enrolments, both secondary and tertiary enrolments lag behind. Only four out of every 100 children in Africa is expected to enter a graduate and postgraduate institution, compared to 36 out of 100 in Latin America and 14 out of 100 in South and West Asia.

“In fact, only 30 to 50% of secondary-school-aged children are attending school, while only 7 to 23% of tertiary-school-aged youth are enrolled. This varies by subregion, with the lowest levels being in Central and Eastern Africa and the highest enrolment levels in Southern and North Africa,” Ms. Lusigi, who is also the strategic advisor for UNDP Africa, told Africa Renewal.

According to Ms. Lusigi, many factors account for the low transition from primary to secondary and tertiary education. The first is limited household incomes, which limit children’s access to education. A lack of government investment to create equal access to education also plays a part.   

“The big push that led to much higher primary enrolment in Africa was subsidized schooling financed by both public resources and development assistance,” she said. “This has not yet transitioned to providing free access to secondary- and tertiary-level education.”

Another barrier to advancing from primary to secondary education is the inability of national institutions in Africa to ensure equity across geographical and gender boundaries. Disabled children are particularly disadvantaged.

“Often in Africa, decisions to educate children are made within the context of discriminatory social institutions and cultural norms that may prevent young girls or boys from attending school,” says Ms. Lusigi.

Regarding gender equality in education, large gaps exist in access, learning achievement and advanced studies, most often at the expense of girls, although in some regions boys may be the ones at a disadvantage.

UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics reports that more girls than boys remain out of school in sub-Saharan Africa, where a girl can expect to receive only about nine years of schooling while boys can expect 10 years (including some time spent repeating classes).

More girls than boys drop out of school before completing secondary or tertiary education in Africa. Globally, women account for two-thirds of the 750 million adults without basic literacy skills.

Then there is the additional challenge of Africa’s poorly resourced education systems, the difficulties ranging from the lack of basic school infrastructure to poor-quality instruction. According to the Learning Barometer of the Brookings Institution, a US-based think tank, up to 50% of the students in some countries are not learning effectively.

Results from regional assessments by the UN indicate “poor learning outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa, despite upward trend in average learning achievements.” Many children who are currently in school will not learn enough to acquire the basic skills needed to lead successful and productive lives. Some will leave school without a basic grasp of reading and mathematics.

The drivers of inequality in education are many and complex, yet the response to these challenges revolves around simple and sound policies for inclusive growth, the eradication of poverty and exclusion, increased investment in education and human development, and good governance to ensure a fairer distribution of assets.

With an estimated 364 million Africans between the ages of 15 and 35, the continent has the world’s youngest population, which offers an immense opportunity for investing in the next generation of African leaders and entrepreneurs. Countries can start to build and upgrade education facilities and provide safe, non-violent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all.

The AU, keeping in mind that the continent’s population will double in the next 25 years, is seeking through its Continental Education Strategy for Africa 2016–2025 to expand access not just to quality education, but also to education that is relevant to the needs of the continent.

The AU Commission deputy chairperson, Thomas Kwesi Quartey, says governments must address the need for good education and appropriate skills training to stem rising unemployment.

Institutions of higher learning in Africa, he says, need to review and diversify their systems of education and expand the level of skills to make themselves relevant to the demands of the labour market.

“Our institutions are churning out thousands of graduates each year, but these graduates cannot find jobs because the education systems are traditionally focused on preparing graduates for white-collar jobs, with little regard to the demands of the private sector, for innovation or entrepreneurship,” said Mr. Quartey during the opening of the European Union–Africa Business Forum in Brussels, Belgium, in June 2017.

He noted that if African youths are not adequately prepared for the job market, “Growth in technical fields that support industrialization, manufacturing and development in the value chains will remain stunted.” Inequality’s inclusion among the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities) serves as an important reminder to leaders in Africa to take the issue seriously.

For a start, access to early childhood development programmes, especially for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, can help reduce inequality by ensuring that all children begin formal schooling with strong foundations.

The UNDP, through its new strategic plan (for 2018 through 2021), will work to deliver development solutions for diverse contexts and a range of development priorities, including poverty eradication, jobs and livelihoods, governance and institutional capacity and disaster preparedness and management.   

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Africa is the world’s youngest continent – education is key to unlocking its potential

With 40% of all Africans aged under 15, smarter funding for schools can help young Africans fuel a colossal powerhouse

T he African Union (AU) is marking 2024 as its first Year of Education. This could not have come at a better time. Commitment to education has marked the continent’s progress since the 1960s era of independence. Now more than ever, this resolve must transform Africa into the world’s powerhouse for the 21st century.

In 60 years Africa has made considerable progress in education, with more children finishing school. Primary school completion rates across the region between 2000 and 2022 rose from 52% to 67% . High school dropout rates slowed too, with 50% of pupils completing lower secondary, up from 35%, and 33% in upper secondary education, up from 23%, while the number of tertiary education students has risen from fewer than 800,000 in 1970 to above 17 million today. More girls are in school than ever before.

But as we usher in this year of education, we must acknowledge that any hard-won gains fall short of preparing for tomorrow’s opportunities and risks.

After the Covid pandemic, millions of children, adolescents and youth were out of school across sub-Saharan Africa. Only one in five children achieve the minimum proficiency level in reading by the end of primary education. Girls are particularly disadvantaged in the only region in the world not to have achieved gender parity in enrolment at any level in the education system, with one in three girls married before they turn 18 . This trend, while troubling, is not irreversible.

To build the Africa we want, we must finance quality education that equips all our children with the knowledge and skills to succeed in the labour market of tomorrow, and to secure a peaceful, prosperous and stable future.

National budgets remain the principal source of education funding, but these often struggle to cover essentials such as teacher training, salaries, books and administrative costs.

Since 2020, education budgets in nearly half of low-income countries diminished by an average of 14% . At the same time, more than 20%of total spending went to servicing debt . While the pandemic affected education budgets, before the crisis only about 20% of governments on the continent met international benchmarks for spending between 2017 and 2019.

While trimming education spending might relieve budgets in the short term, it is depriving economies of long-term prosperity.

To support domestic financing of education and prevent this backsliding, donors, multilateral institutions and the private sector can step up, pursuing all possible means – including debt relief – to help finance the quality education that African children need. For African governments, spending smarter is also imperative.

Without it, our continent’s development will stagnate when it should be racing ahead, powered by its youth, natural resources and green energy. Africa is the world’s youngest and fastest-growing continent. It currently accounts for 14% of the world’s working-age population. That is set to rise to 42% by the end of the century .

Today, 40% of all Africans are under 15 . Another 100 million children will be born here by 2050 .With education, young Africans can fuel a colossal powerhouse. Yet, of the 1 million Africans entering the labour market every month, fewer than 25% find a job in the formal economy.

Since the Global Education Summit in 2021, 21 African heads of state have signed the Declaration on Education Financing that demands exemplary levels of investment. The AU year of education can re-energise members in committing to adequate domestic financing.

Multilateralism is essential to finance transformative education, which is why we support multi-stakeholder collaborations such as the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). Over 20 years, GPE has contributed $6bn (£4.8bn) to support education funding in sub-Saharan Africa.

Today, African influence is asserting itself globally – the AU has a seat at the G20. This influence can expand with its growing young population if matched with a quality education that unlocks the potential of every girl and boy.

Nelson Mandela recognised the foundational importance of learning when he said: “It is not beyond our power to create a world in which all children have access to a good education. Those who do not believe this have small imaginations.”

Nana Akufo-Addo is the president of Ghana and Jakaya Kikwete is the former president of Tanzania and chair of the board of directors of the Global Partnership for Education .

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• Our Accolades
• James Urdang, ( www.jamesurdang.net ) our CEO & Founder, was recognised at the 2019 Gauteng Premier’s Service Excellence Awards with a Bronze Award in the Leadership category.
• Joan Lithgow and the team from the Education Africa International Arts & Culture Project were recognised with a Silver Award in the category: Arts & Culture at the 2019 Gauteng Premier’s Service Excellence Awards.
• We are immensely proud of Education Africa and the Marimba Workshop for having been nominated as a finalist for the Business Arts South Africa (BASA) 2019 Awards in the category: Sponsorship In-Kind.
• James Urdang, our CEO and Founder was one of ten international Award winners at the 2018 Klaus J Jacobs Awards for social innovation and change-making in the field of child and youth development.
• Our Phambili Marimba Hub received the Golden Shield Heritage Award in the category: Outstanding Community Project in 2015.
• The Education Africa international SAMUN delegation has on numerous occasions brought home the award for “Best Small Delegation” at international Model United Nations Conferences. Many of delegates to these conferences have also been recognised with individual Merit Awards over the years.
• In 2001 our SAMUN project received the prestigious Blue Ribbon Award from the United Nations Capital area in recognition of programme excellence in furthering the ideals of the United Nations.
• In 1994 Education Africa received an award for its “Contribution to peace and to bringing about a new South Africa” from the Hostels Peace Initiative.

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Poverty, Inequality and Africa’s Education Crisis

Subscribe to africa in focus, julius agbor ja julius agbor africa research fellow - global economy and development , africa growth initiative.

September 26, 2012

The Africa Learning Barometer , a new interactive produced by our colleagues at the Brookings Center for Universal Education , indicates that only about half of sub-Saharan Africa’s 128 million school-aged children currently attending school are likely to acquire the basic skills needed for them to live healthy and productive lives. The center’s research further suggests that if you are a poor, female child currently attending school in a rural region you are far more likely to not be learning the critical skills, such as reading, writing and math. While these gender, income and regional learning gaps exist in most sub-Saharan African countries, they are most salient in South Africa, Uganda, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Botswana.

Taking aside the legacy of colonialism and racial and ethnic inequalities in some of these countries, a number of other factors explain the continuing disparities in learning between rural and urban schoolchildren in sub-Saharan Africa. Considering the significance of rural poverty across the continent, it should come as no surprise that rural schoolchildren are the most disadvantaged from a socioeconomic perspective when it comes to access to a quality education. Rural schools generally have less qualified teachers and not enough teachers for the number of children enrolled in school. This is clearly evident in the low teachers-per-school ratios and teacher-to-pupil ratios in most rural African regions. The reasons for these low numbers in rural Africa are many and very much linked to poverty and other inequalities and socioeconomic conditions. For example, teachers generally prefer urban to rural schools because urban areas offer greater opportunities and higher incomes. There is also a better quality of life in urban areas, with better access to good infrastructure, other services (such as healthcare) and general public goods.

In contrast, rural areas in Africa are often characterized by poor or nonexistent infrastructure and little or no provisions for other critical social services. This in turn negatively impacts the quality of education for rural-area children since even getting to school is a more difficult challenge and illness of a pupil or a family member may force the pupil to drop out of school entirely. Students in rural regions of Africa are further disadvantaged by the fact that their parents are generally uneducated. Again, we see that other socioeconomic conditions and inequalities greatly impact the quality of education in rural areas compared to urban centers.

To address Africa’s education crisis , African governments must implement policies that reduce poverty in rural areas, such as improving infrastructure, health and sanitation conditions, and modernizing the agricultural sector. While urbanization is certainly good for Africa’s industrialization and economic growth, a synergy between rural and urban development needs to be maintained if the quality of education in rural Africa is to be improved. African governments can also provide incentives, such as an additional bonus for teachers who accept positions to teach in rural schools. For their part, Africa’s development partners could support initiatives and programs that specifically target rural schools in order to help improve learning outcomes in those areas.

The continent’s education crisis is serious and it adversely affects rural areas more than urban ones. African governments and their development partners should not underestimate the long-term consequences of continued poverty and socioeconomic inequalities in rural areas. These conditions will only continue to exacerbate the education and learning gaps between rural and urban African schoolchildren. And in turn, poor quality education in rural areas will only continue to perpetuate long-term poverty in the region. It is a vicious cycle that African countries and international donors must work together to solve.

Global Economy and Development

Sub-Saharan Africa

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Elyse Painter, Emily Gustafsson-Wright

January 5, 2024

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October 20, 2023

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In west and central africa, we help to provide quality education to every child..

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Millions of children in West and Central Africa are still denied an education.

The region accounts for one-third of the global total of primary school age children and one-fifth of lower secondary age children who are out of school. Children and adolescents caught up in humanitarian emergencies are especially vulnerable to missing out on schooling or dropping out of school permanently.

The region also lags behind in gender equality in education: for every ten boys enrolled in primary school, there are only nine girls. These differences get bigger as children progress through the school system.

Many children do not get the best start in life. Only one in four children in the region has access to early childhood learning, care, and stimulation. This means that they start first grade at a disadvantage, not ready to tackle the demands of primary education.

Another challenge is the quality of education. Even pupils who complete basic education face a slim chance of high-quality learning. This is despite the need for quality education to help prepare children with the skills, knowledge, values, and attitudes required for success in the 21st century.

Access to Education

Quality education for all children lies at the heart of social and economic development. UNICEF supports countries to improve educational access through inclusive education, expansion of early learning programmes, Koranic education, vocational training and national data production.

Quality Learning

When it comes to education, quality is a must if we want to build a better future for the next generation. UNICEF and its partners work to improve teaching skills, quality standards, life skills programmes and early learning assessments.

Girls’ Education

Educated girls are vital for the health and prosperity of families, communities and countries. UNICEF helps countries to develop and implement programmes that support girls’ achievements in and through education.

Education in Emergencies

In the midst of conflict and disaster, education can be both life-sustaining and life-saving. UNICEF works alongside other partners on risk-informed education programming, school safety, psychosocial support in the classroom and information management in emergencies.

UNICEF supports countries to generate evidence on how and where to make the most effective investments for children. Check out our global publications catalogue .

International Day of Education 2024: Advancing Learning for Lasting Peace

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Call for Applications: Africa Fellows in Education Program 2024/2025

Submit your application for the Africa Fellows in Education Program (AFEP) 2024/2025. The application submission deadline is  April 1, 2024 (23:59 GMT) .

  An indispensable element of successful long-term economic development is a skilled population.  However, the major problem in many developing countries, particularly in Africa, is the low quality of education. For example, most children in these countries complete primary school without acquiring functional literacy and numeracy skills, reflecting educational systems struggling to prepare large numbers of students 1 .

Numerous factors contribute to this challenge, and a wide array of potential solutions have been proposed to tackle it. Transparent and analytically useful data from student assessments is perhaps the most critical initial step toward improving school performance. When properly constructed, this data identifies possible performance levels and encourages analyses that can improve low-performing school systems.

However, there is a lack of national testing and participation in regional or international assessments due to several factors, including costs, lack of capacity to conduct assessments, and aversion to possible embarrassment from the results. Notably, some of these issues are being addressed by the broad-based efforts of regional and international organizations to support the expansion of comparable student assessments. 

Still, a closely related issue needs to be addressed: the need for more local capacity to use student outcome data effectively to improve policy and schools. While it might be initially possible to swap external people for trained local researchers, this is neither sustainable nor conducive to developing sound and well-informed decision-making in schools. 

The Africa Fellows in Education Program (AFEP) aims to address this local capacity gap and improve education decision-making across Sub-Saharan Africa. AFEP will support a network of local policy fellows with enhanced skills in evaluating existing educational research, developing and using performance data to make better decisions, and introducing rigorous evidence into the decision-making process.  Having a network of highly competent researchers across a region reinforces the value of using systematic evidence in decision-making and supports broad policy improvement. Local expert researchers will also form a constituency for expanding and improving the assessment structures in each country. The Fellows will be able to identify and produce high-quality research utilized in educational decision-making.  They will also become active in outreach to policymakers and civil society actors and advocate for sound, analytically based local policies. 

In sum, the objective of the AFEP is to build a group of Africa-based leaders capable of developing evidence and shaping educational policies relevant to their countries.  They would be part of a global network of such people and could help build local networks of strong advocates for improving schools.

1 Gust, S., Hanushek, E. A., & Woessmann, L. (2022).  Global universal basic skills: Current deficits and implications for world development  (No. w30566). National Bureau of Economic Research; World Bank. (2017).  World development report 2018: Learning to realize education's promise . The World Bank.

The Call for Applications 

The Global Education Analytics Institute (GEAI) , in collaboration with PEP, invites young African researchers, who are motivated to work on educational improvement and could benefit from additional support, to submit an expression of interest in the AFEP.

The AFEP enables the fellows to participate in a two-year research and policy development fellowship that introduces them to relevant research and analytical experiences and international networks of researchers and policy advisers. See Application Process below.

GEAI and AFEP are supported by the Yidan Prize.

The Structure of the AFEP

The proposed program is organized around a combination of in-country activities and network/training opportunities regionally and abroad. Under the two out-of-country segments, it is expected that the successful fellows will have the opportunity to attend two of the most prominent international conferences on the economics of education: the CESifo Economics of Education conference and the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) conference. (The exact conference and travel schedule is subject to change based on the prevailing circumstances.) In addition to these conferences, the fellows will participate in a series of short courses designed to suit their needs, covering topics such as evaluation methods, communications, incentive structures, and other related areas while also allowing fellows to foster international connections. Further, they will have a series of lectures around testing and performance measurement. This introduction will enable the fellows to understand the use of large-scale testing data from various international and regional assessments. It will also sensitize them to general issues around the use of standardized testing. The first two weeks of training will be in September 2024, and the other two will be held in March 2025. 

While in their home countries, the fellows will develop a research/evaluation project to be carried out (mainly) in the second year under program supervision and with local scientific mentors. The initiative will engage a part-time local facilitator to monitor each fellow's progress and reinforce new skills. This approach will lead the fellows to explore the existing state of local assessments and evaluation of educational issues. Both during the fellowship period and afterwards, a team of advisors from Stanford University and other organizations in Africa (such as PEP and Teaching at the Right Level ( TaRL ) Africa) and internationally will provide direct support and supervision. Fellows are expected to complete the project in two years, organize in-country policy outreach workshops to disseminate the research findings, and present the final report at the GEAI-PEP-organized conference in June 2026.   

See also  Africa Fellows in Education - Terms of Reference .

Funding Information

Funding includes a $35K research (cash) grant. Other expenses, with a value of up to $25K, for mentorship, study visits, conference travel, and in-country workshops to share research findings and training will be covered directly by the Program. 

Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible for this call, applicants must: 

• Be a national of a Sub-Saharan African country; 
• Have an MA or PhD degree, preferably in Economics, education policy, social/public policy, development studies or international development, with a strong focus on education. While a PhD is not mandatory, GEAI and PEP encourage new PhD graduates who can benefit from mentorship and additional training to become solid researchers; 
• Be proficient in quantitative data analysis, with a strong knowledge of data analysis software such as R and Stata;  
• Not be older than 35 years old; 
• Demonstrate interest in education policy research and analysis; 
• Work for the government or have an affiliation at either a research or higher education institution in a Sub-Saharan African country and intend to do so for the foreseeable future; 
• Qualified females are strongly encouraged to apply. 

Application Process

The Africa Fellows application process is managed by GEAI in collaboration with PEP. The applications will be assessed based on several factors, including prior preparation and the quality of an essay (see below). The expression of interest by the applicants should include:  

• A two-page statement of interest; 
• either think and write about a specific education problem in their home country and how it could be scientifically evaluated using quantitative methods.
• or write an essay responding to any of the learning areas of our partner institution, Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) Africa (see the learning areas in Annex 1 ). Similarly, candidates must explain how such questions could be scientifically evaluated using quantitative or mixed (quantitative and qualitative) methods.
• A detailed and updated CV with at least two (2) referees the selection committee can contact.  

To submit your application:

STEP 1: Register on the PEP website: click  Register  (see also the top right corner of the PEP website, next to "Login") and fill out all required information.

• Your profile will be activated within 24 hours.  Your username is the email address that you use to register.  

STEP 2: Access your PEP account. Once your profile has been activated, you can access your PEP account  by clicking the  Login  button (also in the top right corner above).  

STEP 3: Complete your "profile": click on your name (top right corner of your PEP account page).

• Include all information relevant to this application  - birthday, highest diploma, institution, position, etc. (see eligibility criteria) - and  upload your updated CV.
• We also strongly encourage you to include a photo and a short professional bio.
• When finished,  click on SUBMIT  at the bottom of your profile page.  

STEP 4: Go to the menu under "My workspace" (top left corner) and click on "Submit a proposal".

• Follow the instructions and  upload your statement of interest and essay as one/combined document.
• Once finished, to make sure that the submission was successful, return to your PEP account and click on "My Projects" (under "My workspace). Select the project and go to "Documents" to find or replace/update your document.

Africa Fellows in Education - Terms of Reference

The objective of the AFEP is to build a group of Africa-based leaders capable of developing evidence and shaping relevant educational policies for their countries.  They would be part of a global network of such people and could help build local networks of strong advocates for improving schools. 

The program enables the fellows to participate in two-year research and policy development fellowships that introduce them to relevant research and analytical experiences and international networks of researchers and policy advisers. 

The Fellow’s Key Responsibilities 

During the two years of the program, each fellow will be expected to achieve the following milestones:   

• By the end of the first year, having consulted with relevant policy makers/stakeholders, write a concept research proposal focusing on a specific education problem in their home country or any other Sub-Saharan African country. Motivate the selected (education) research issues and objectives, outline the data sources and proposed methodology, and provide a clear plan for completing the project by June 2026.   
• Attend all short-term training courses arranged by GEAI in collaboration with PEP.   
• Over the two years, work closely with local and international scientific mentors to develop and complete the research project. 
• Present the project’s work-in-progress and final reports at local and international conferences organized by GEAI and its partners.  
• Complete the project in two years and present the final report at the GEAI-PEP-organized conference in June 2026. The final report must be rigorous enough to meet contemporary research and evaluation standards. 
• Write a policy brief based on the final technical research report.  
• Write a policy blog. 
• Organize in-country policy outreach workshops to disseminate the research findings. 

Annex 1: TaRL Africa Learning areas

• How can the TaRL teaching and learning approach be strengthened and scaled in SSA?  
• Can supplementary teaching-learning material improve teacher effectiveness in TaRL schools?  
• Can digital/hybrid solutions effectively provide Continuous Teacher Professional Development (CPD) at scale?  
• Peer-level teacher support as informal CPD: Does it improve teacher capacity and learning outcomes?  
• What is the long-term impact of TaRL instruction in SSA (i.e., in Zambia and Cote d’Ivoire)?  
• How does the Language Learning from Familiar to Formal Language (L2F2) program impact learning outcomes?

The African Studies Center K-16 Education Program is seeking Graduate Student Assistant Summer/Fall 2024

The BU African Studies Center Outreach Program aims to promote teaching about Africa and Africa-related studies in U.S. schools. In this position , the graduate student assistant will be responsible for assisting the Outreach Director with administrative tasks to help manage the program. Main responsibilities include: 

• Regularly checking and managing the Outreach email inbox and responding to/forwarding messages appropriately.
• Supporting the Teaching Africa Teacher certificate program, its professional development events, and its members as well as recruiting teachers for the program.
• Updating the “Resources for Teachers” pages of the website with relevant links, materials, and lesson plans. The assistant may develop new webpages based on their Africa-related interests of field of study.
• Organizing documents and records in Google Drive.

Other tasks may include: 

• Designing flyers as promotional tools for workshops and events.
• Sending out announcements to mailing lists using MailChimp and Listserv.
• Special projects related to building new curriculum for teachers. 
• Proofreading and editing curriculum submissions.

Knowledge of K-12 education and knowledge of Africa are highly preferred. The position will start this Fall 2024, with potential for some summer hours. Students are expected to work 8 hours in the office weekly, but there is flexibility with schedule planning and some remote days are possible. Pay is $17/50/hour. To apply, please send a CV and email cover letter to [email protected] . Contact us at [email protected]  if you have questions. 

NGOs Decry 'Insecurity Stranglehold' On Nigeria's Education Sector, Presents Report To UK Parliament

IA-Foundation and Peace and Social Justice have unveiled the reality of insecurity challenges on the Nigerian education sector.

IA-Foundation is a UK-based educational charity which was set up to reduce the number of out-of-school children in Nigeria while PSJ-UK is a UK-based advocacy NGO of diasporans and friends of Nigeria who are committed to peacebuilding and social justice in Nigeria.

The realities are contained in the Report recently launched at the Jubilee Room of the House of Parliament, London, United Kingdom.

The Founder, IA-Foundation, Ibironke Adeagbo described Education as the cornerstone of nation's development, fostering critical thinking, opportunity, and a brighter future.

She, however, stated that the cornerstone is under siege, noting that Schools once regarded as safe havens for learning have become targets of violence and terror.

Adeagbo explained that Nigeria has been grappling with a pervasive and deeply troubling phenomenon: the alarming escalation of insecurity within its education sector over the last 10 years, since the 2014 Chibok school girl's abduction.

She expressed excitement about the new appointment of Retired General Ja'afar as the Executive Director of the newly commissioned Alamajiri and out of school children commission, looking forward to working with the commission.

Adeagbo added that they are looking forward to the senate bill being discussed to penalise parents who do not send their children/ward to school.

Chief Executive Officer, PSJ-UK, Ayo Adedoyin noted that every year since 2014, hundreds of innocent children in primary and secondary schools across the nation are snatched away, their dreams held hostage for ransom.

Ayo said children have become victims to a harrowing cycle of kidnapping and ransom demands.

According to him, many die and never return, the weight of this fear has forced numerous schools to close their doors, leaving a generation in the shadows of an uncertain future.

In the Report, the NGOs proposed recommendations aimed at safeguarding schools, restoring a sense of safety, and ensuring that every child in Nigeria has the chance to learn and thrive.

In his presentation, The Lead Speaker, Chief Executive Officer, Halogen Group, Wale Olaoye, said institutionalization of education as a form of prevention and tool of personal, political and social transformation is strategically vital to the possibilities of establishing lasting peace in Nigeria.

Wale, who spoke on the theme: Nigeria: Illiteracy and Insecurity, suggested that Comprehensive and sustained integration of educational interventions into the whole of society is more likely to yield transformative results.

According to him, Lifelong learning is essential to supporting the full development of the person, and nurturing capacity development throughout life to respond to emergent threats in a changing world.

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Africa’s push to regulate AI starts now        

AI is expanding across the continent and new policies are taking shape. But poor digital infrastructure and regulatory bottlenecks could slow adoption.

• Abdullahi Tsanni archive page

In the Zanzibar archipelago of Tanzania, rural farmers are using an AI-assisted app called Nuru that works in their native language of Swahili to detect a devastating cassava disease before it spreads. In South Africa, computer scientists have built machine learning models to analyze the impact of racial segregation in housing. And in Nairobi, Kenya, AI classifies images from thousands of surveillance cameras perched on lampposts in the bustling city’s center. 

The projected benefit of AI adoption on Africa’s economy is tantalizing. Estimates suggest that four African countries alone—Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa—could rake in up to $136 billion worth of economic benefits by 2030 if businesses there begin using more AI tools.

Now, the African Union—made up of 55 member nations—is preparing an ambitious AI policy that envisions an Africa-centric path for the development and regulation of this emerging technology. But debates on when AI regulation is warranted and concerns about stifling innovation could pose a roadblock, while a lack of AI infrastructure could hold back the technology’s adoption.  

“We’re seeing a growth of AI in the continent;  it’s really important there be set rules in place to govern these technologies,” says Chinasa T. Okolo, a fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings, whose research focuses on AI governance and policy development in Africa.

Some African countries have already begun to formulate their own legal and policy frameworks for AI. Seven have developed national AI policies and strategies, which are currently at different stages of implementation. 

On February 29, the African Union Development Agency published a policy draft that lays out a blueprint of AI regulations for African nations. The draft includes recommendations for industry-specific codes and practices, standards and certification bodies to assess and benchmark AI systems, regulatory sandboxes for safe testing of AI, and the establishment of national AI councils to oversee and monitor responsible deployment of AI. 

The heads of African governments are expected to eventually endorse the continental AI strategy, but not until February 2025, when they meet next at the AU’s annual summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Countries with no existing AI policies or regulations would then use this framework to develop their own national strategies, while those that already have will be encouraged to review and align their policies with the AU’s.

Elsewhere, major AI laws and policies are also taking shape. This week, the European Union  passed the AI Act , set to become the world’s first comprehensive AI law. In October, the United States issued an executive order on AI. And the Chinese government is eyeing a sweeping AI law similar to the EU’s, while also setting rules that target specific AI products as they’re developed. 

If African countries don't develop their own regulatory frameworks that protect citizens from the technology’s misuse, some experts worry that Africans will face social harms, including bias that could exacerbate inequalities. And if these countries don't also find a way to harness AI's benefits, others fear these economies could be left behind. 

“We want to be standard makers”

Some African researchers think it’s too early to be thinking about AI regulation. The industry is still nascent there due to the high cost of building data infrastructure, limited internet access, a lack of funding, and a dearth of powerful computers needed to train AI models. A lack of access to quality training data is also a problem. African data is largely concentrated in the hands of companies outside of Africa.

In February, just before the AU’s AI policy draft came out, Shikoh Gitau, a computer scientist who started the Nairobi-based AI research lab Qubit Hub, published a paper arguing that Africa should prioritize the development of an AI industry before trying to regulate the technology. 

“If we start by regulating, we're not going to figure out the innovations and opportunities that exist for Africa,” says David Lemayian, a software engineer and one of the paper’s co-authors.  

Okolo, who consulted on the AU-AI draft policy, disagrees. Africa should be proactive in developing regulations, Okolo says. She suggests African countries reform existing laws such as policies on data privacy and digital governance to address AI. 

But Gitau is concerned that a hasty approach to regulating AI could hinder adoption of the technology. And she says it’s critical to build homegrown AI with applications tailored for Africans to harness the power of AI to improve economic growth. 

“Before we put regulations [in place], we need to do the hard work of understanding the full spectrum of the technology and invest in building the African AI ecosystem,” she says.

More than 50 countries and the EU have AI strategies in place, and more than 700 AI policy initiatives have been implemented since 2017, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s  AI Policy Observatory . But only five of those initiatives are from Africa and none of the OECD’s 38 member countries are African.

Africa’s voices and perspectives have largely been absent from global discussions on AI governance and regulation, says Melody Musoni, a policy and digital governance expert at ECDPM, an independent-policy think tank in Brussels.   

“We must contribute our perspectives and own our regulatory frameworks,” says Musoni. “We want to be standard makers, not standard takers.” 

Nyalleng Moorosi, a specialist in ethics and fairness in machine learning who is based in Hlotse, Lesotho and works at the Distributed AI Research Institute, says that some African countries are already seeing labor exploitation by AI companies. This includes poor wages and lack of psychological support for data labelers, who are largely from low-income countries but working for big tech companies. She argues regulation is needed to prevent that, and to protect communities against misuse by both large corporations and authoritarian governments. 

In Libya, autonomous lethal weapons systems have already been used in fighting , and in Zimbabwe, a controversial, military-driven national facial-recognition scheme has raised concerns over the technology’s alleged use as a surveillance tool by the government. The draft AU-AI policy didn’t explicitly address the use of AI by African governments for national security interests, but it acknowledges that there could be perilous AI risks. 

Barbara Glover, program officer for an African Union group that works on policies for emerging technologies, points out that the policy draft recommends that African countries invest in digital and data infrastructure, and collaborate with the private sector to build investment funds to support AI startups and innovation hubs on the continent. 

Unlike the EU, the AU lacks the power to enforce sweeping policies and laws across its member states. Even if the draft AI strategy wins endorsement of parliamentarians at the AU’s assembly next February, African nations must then implement the continental strategy through national AI policies and laws.

Meanwhile, tools powered by machine learning will continue to be deployed, raising ethical questions and regulatory needs and posing a challenge for policymakers across the continent. 

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Kenya: Govt Withdraws Contentious Higher Education Amendment

Nairobi — The government has withdrawn a contentious amendment proposal embedded within the Statute Law (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 2) Bill, 2023 that would have otherwise had an impact on Kenya's higher education sector.

The amendment, which aimed to amend section 56(1)(a) of the Universities Act, 2012, generated considerable debate and scrutiny within the legislative and educational spheres.

The proposed change sought to ensure that government-sponsored students were placed in public universities and colleges unlike the current system of university placement where government-sponsored students are placed in private universities and colleges.

This has limited access to university education by students from poor family backgrounds who are mostly government-sponsored students.

The arrangement was also intended to provide greater opportunities for students from diverse backgrounds and alleviate the strain on public universities grappling with funding shortages.

However, upon closer examination, concerns emerged regarding the unintended consequences of the proposed amendment.

It became apparent that the amendment would still mandate the Placement Board to place government-sponsored students in private universities and colleges.

Additionally, the amendment would also see privately sponsored students being placed in public universities and colleges which ideally should be for government-sponsored students.

This unexpected outcome raised alarms that the proposed amendment would further inhibit government-sponsored student enrollment in public universities and colleges.

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Furthermore, there were apprehensions that the proposed amendment could undermine the government's broader objectives of promoting equitable access to university education, particularly for vulnerable and needy students.

Critics argued that such a blanket policy could exacerbate disparities and hinder efforts to foster inclusivity within the higher education landscape.

In response to these concerns, the Majority Leader of the National Assembly Kimani Ichungw'ah, in consultation with the Ministry of Education, decided to withdraw the proposed amendment to allow for consultations.

"The move reflects a commitment to undertake a more comprehensive review of the Universities Act, of 2012, to ensure that any legislative changes align with the government's overarching policies and objectives in the education sector," Ichungw'ah said.

To this end, the National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetangula acceded to the request by Ichungw'ah to withdraw the proposed amendments to the University Act of 2012.

"I wish to notify the House that I have received a request from the majority leader seeking my consent for the withdrawal of the proposed amendment as contained in the Bill," Speaker Wetangula said.

The Speaker added, "I have acceded to the request by the leader of the majority to withdraw the provision as contained in the Bill."

Read the original article on Capital FM .

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