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KIX Africa 19 hub

 

The Global Partnership for Education Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX), a joint endeavour between the Global Partnership for Education and IDRC, aims to contribute to the improvement of education policy and practice in the Global South.

A key component of KIX is a knowledge sharing and exchange function, where country representatives come together to share information, innovation, and best practices related to education policy and programming and to inform knowledge gaps and policy priorities. Four regional hubs act as knowledge brokering units for KIX. This page provides information on the hub that primarily oversees activities in Eastern, Western, and Southern Africa.

Hub details

Consortium: UNESCO IICBA, UNICEF, African Union

Region: Eastern, Western, and Southern Africa

Countries: Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia (Somaliland and Puntland), South Sudan, Tanzania (mainland and Zanzibar), Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Who are we?

The KIX Africa 19 hub facilitates cross-country knowledge exchange and mobilization, learning, synthesis, and collaboration among national education stakeholders in 19 Global Partnership for Education partner countries in eastern, southern, and western Africa. The hub functions as a regional forum within KIX.

A consortium of three organizations manages the Africa 19 hub:

What do we do?

The hub will address challenges faced by countries in sub-Saharan Africa in terms of achieving  quality, inclusive, and equitable education for social transformation and development. A systemic approach will be applied that includes:

  • Engaging country partners to strengthen national education systems through participation in the hub.
  • Setting a regionally specific knowledge and innovation agenda that informs knowledge generation and sharing activities, analysis, and use of data and evidence in policy.
  • Strengthening the capacity of country partners to generate information and research, translate policies into practice, and develop innovative strategies to accelerate education progress.
  • Strengthening strategies and implementing activities to address gender and equity in the region.

About the region

Children’s access to education in sub-Saharan Africa had increased from 59% to 78% over the past decade, but these positive results are being affected by the temporary closure of most education systems due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Learning achievement and quality of education remain alarmingly low, while improvements in access to education are also declining. Many countries face enormous challenges around teacher recruitment, management and professional development, enrolment at pre-primary and secondary levels, gender equity, and quality of learning processes and outcomes. These issues have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has strained education systems.

Africa’s education ambitions cannot be realized without building effective partnerships and fostering harmonized approaches to integrating Sustainable Development Goal 4 (ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all) into national education policies and strategies. This ambition requires innovation because of the scale, diversity, and rapidly changing educational needs amidst high rates of population growth and unemployment in most sub-Saharan African countries.

Setting regional priorities

To identify the priorities of the GPE-member countries that the hub oversees, the Africa 19 hub began a process in March 2020 to identify shared policy challenges for public education systems. The process has involved consultations with government and non-governmental education stakeholders from the countries, regional experts, and a review of education sector plans and regional education analyses. A full report on the priority identification process can be found here

The hub conducted a rapid assessment using a questionnaire to collect quick data with a view of identifying experiences, best practices and innovations as well as emerging priorities and institutional capacity development needs on education section policy formulation and development along the six thematic areas and beyond. The assessment also aimed at identifying what is working and what is not working as well as other emerging issues; types of knowledge and innovations in the education sector in evidence-based policy development and implementation along the six thematic areas. This was then followed by discussions with the country KIX focal points on the findings and the following two themes have been highlighted as priorities: 

1. Teaching and Learning 

2. Learning Assessment 

3. Gender equality 

The results from the rapid assessments also highlighted several gaps: 

  • Innovation: Limited educational innovations were reported on the themes of inclusivity, gender equality and data. 

  • Hub’s value addition to countries: Countries indicated that their participation in the hub would provide an opportunity for systems strengthening and capacity building in three thematic areas; teaching and learning; inclusivity and meeting the data challenge. 

  • Capacity development needs: The survey revealed that respondents require greater capacity to generate information and research in meeting the data challenge, to develop innovative strategies to accelerate education progress for ECD and to conduct learning assessments. 

For the most up to date information of the hub's progress, activities and upcoming events, visit: https://www.gpekix.org/regional-hub/kix-africa-19 

Hub map