The Ministerial Coalition for Improving Foundational Learning in Africa was officially launched on Thursday, February 16, 2023 by the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) and Human Capital Africa (HCA). This coalition is dedicated to improving foundational learning (FL) in Africa. The ministers of education from Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Malawi, Rwanda, and Uganda, along with four ministerial delegates from Angola, Kenya, South Africa, and Zambia, participated in the virtual event that lasted for one hour. The policymakers restated their intentions to enhance the outcomes of fundamental learning in their nations and to benchmark their efforts, draw lessons, and achieve advances in FL more swiftly. Moreover, they committed to achieving these goals in a more collaborative manner.
The creation of this FL Coalition, which includes Ministers of Education from 11 African nations and is dedicated to pushing the agenda for improved FL results, was a significant achievement achieved as a direct result of the ADEA 2022 Triennale. The goal of the Coalition is to foster learning among peers, the exchange of information, expertise, and ideas, and to promote understanding among the Ministers on what works, what does not work, and areas of potential mutual collaboration. The convergence of thoughts that take place within the Coalition will be of assistance in putting forth plans for FL and will contribute to an improvement in the quality of students who are generated by fundamental learning structures in Africa’s education system.
The Ministerial Coalition is built on two important pillars: frequent advocacy and engagement, which will center on knowledge development, peer learning, advocacy for freedom of expression, and interactions at the country level. As the second pillar of the initiative, the Foundational Learning Scorecard will provide countries with assistance in analyzing the level of success achieved by their primary education systems. Actions will consist of gathering performance data on a regular basis, including providing quarterly updates to an adoption tracker, doing desk research, holding in-country progress review meetings, and holding yearly meetings of coalition nations.
The ADEA is in charge of managing the activities of the Ministerial Coalition and ensuring that they run smoothly. Already, a communication and engagement platform has been established on WhatsApp, and it was also publicly inaugurated on Thursday, February 16th, 2023. This platform is comprised of the Ministers from the 11 nations that pledged to the Coalition during the ADEA 2022 Triennale. The following countries are included in this category: Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, and Zambia. The Scorecard is an effort of HCA that measures the success of fundamental learning systems across six important variables, including pedagogy and teacher capability. The Scorecard was created by HCA.
