About the ESDC project

The "Tackling Education and Skills Data Challenge in Africa" project is a five-year intervention implemented by the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation Centre for Innovative Teaching and Learning (The Centre).

The project will support up to 30 African countries over a five-year period to produce and use quality data on education and skills for informed decision-making through policy, programme implementation, monitoring and evaluation. 

By strengthening decision-making, educational outcomes can be enhanced. It seeks to achieve the objectives:

  • Sensitize the top education sector leadership on the importance of data; cascade to other levels.
  • Strengthen the capacity of policymakers to understand the process of collecting and publishing quality education and skills data.
  • Strengthen regional institutions to support countries in owning and sustaining partner-initiated interventions.
  • Develop a one-stop African portal for up-to-date information and knowledge on Africa’s education and skills and provide a platform for peer learning, knowledge exchange and experience sharing.

Africa faces a data crisis in education and skills – availability of quality data for informed decision making has been a perennial challenge. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the situation, especially for education. COVID-19 pandemic was not only a health crisis. It was also an education crisis.

Some countries have made positive efforts in providing data on education and skills, demonstrated improved country reporting on the eight priority areas of the African Union’s Second decade of Education for Africa Plan of Action (2006-2015) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, global, continental and regional reports still exhibit missing our outdated data.

Data is at the heart of policymaking. Unfortunately, poor data continues to hurt the ability of African countries to make demand-driven policy decisions on education and skills. According to UIS (2020), there are 98 million out-of-school learners in sub-Saharan Africa. This, adversely, impacts the quality of education and learning delivery in Africa and stunts the continent’s growth and development.

The Tackling Education and Skills Data Challenge in Africa comes in to solve this challenge.

 

Addressing the challenge

The Tackling Education and Skills Data Challenge in Africa project will address the education data crisis in Africa through the following means:

  • Strengthen the capacities of education and education data stakeholders to improve country capacity in data usage (including collection, analysis, utilization and reporting).
  • Sensitize education leadership on the importance of data.
  • Strengthen the capacities of the Ministries of Education in selected Africa countries to use data quality to reform their education sectors to provide quality education and skills to the youth.
  • Provide a platform for peer learning, knowledge exchange and experience sharing among Africa countries on the production, management and use of education and skills data.
  • Build peer learning avenues and platforms for greater coordination and planning in education at regional level.
  • Develop a roadmap for scaling up the experiences of the 30 African countries to the remaining 25 countries.

 

Values

ADEA strongly believes in African ownership, upholds the highest standards in trust, ethics, and integrity as an equal opportunity provider, and is non-discriminatory in its operations. Underpinning these principles are the following core values.

  • Resilience: ADEA is a learning organisation with an African ownership committed to supporting member countries to develop African-context educational policies and strong educational institutions that will enable them to withstand or respond positively to change.
  • Excellence: ADEA is a result-oriented organisation which upholds excellence in its activities. It thrives for distinction in its pursuit of quality, equity, inclusive and relevant education for all in Africa.
  • Advocacy: ADEA provides opportunity for all irrespective of gender or socio-economic standing and always demonstrates inclusion whilst placing high premium on creating awareness of innovative and successful ground-breaking ideas through shared learning among its members and partners for the purpose of gaining the buy-in of African Ministers of Education and other stakeholders.
  • Leadership: ADEA committed to integrity and honesty in the provision of African leadership for mutual trust and with the support of its networks has remained relevant and resilient in the face of trying conditions innovating its approach to become an excellent pan African organisation committed to the development of Education in Africa.

 

Country selection and support

The project generally follows the methodology outlined below to sign up new countries. 

  • Country visits (based on request)
  • Country needs analysis
  • Country engagement, negotiations, and approval
  • Execution
  • Reporting
  • Continuous engagement/closure

 

ESDC project, Agenda 2063 and SDGs

The Tackling Education Data and Skills challenge ties into Africa’s blueprint for sustainable development – Agenda 2063 as well as the global goals.  All seven aspirations of Agenda 2063 as well as the SDG goals is anchored on reliable data. The project’s orientation towards continental and international cooperation for sustainable development means ADEA is very closely aligned with the Agenda 2063 and Agenda 2030 and is helping to achieve these goals – which includes supporting African countries through their respective ministries of education to deliver on Agenda 2063 and SDG goal 4.

 

Partner

Mastercard Foundation Centre for Innovative Teaching and Learning

The Mastercard Foundation Centre for Innovative Teaching and Learning (The Centre) drives the innovative use of technology to improve access to quality education, particularly for the most underserved communities. The Centre works with a range of actors — including innovation hubs, EdTech entrepreneurs, policymakers, researchers, educators, and learners — to support the effective and impactful integration of technology in education, including the development, deployment and scale-up of promising EdTech innovations that boost learning and strengthen the education system.