ABOUT

UNESCO estimates that 617 million children—nearly all in low-income countries—are not achieving minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics. To overcome this, education systems in the Global South require better and more effective teacher training, more gender equity, better learning processes and more efficient ways of using evidence to better inform planning in the education sector. All of this will help achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, which aims to ensure “inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” A key way to hasten progress is addressing knowledge gaps, improving access to evidence, and strengthening systems that support the generation and uptake of evidence and innovations in the Global South.

The Global Partnership for Education Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX) is a global response to these challenges. With a budget of about CAD $100 million (over USD $75 million), KIX supports the scaling of promising education innovations and strengthens partners’ capacity to address these challenges. KIX is the largest fund solely dedicated to bridging the knowledge gaps that undermine education systems in developing countries.

 

HOW KIX WORKS

KIX is designed to be shaped by the demand from national education systems and respond to their principal policy and programming challenges. KIX both funds research and facilitates knowledge sharing among country stakeholders to enhance their education systems using relevant evidence and actionable research.

KIX operates through two main mechanisms, which contribute to strengthening national education systems with relevant and actionable evidence: 

  1. Exchange of knowledge: KIX creates spaces for GPE partner countries to share information, innovation, and best practices in relation to their needs and priorities, and disseminates knowledge generated through KIX-funded projects. The exchange of knowledge is facilitated through KIX’ four regional hubs. 
  2. Applied research projects: KIX projects build evidence, mobilize knowledge, and strengthen capacity of educational stakeholders on how to adapt and scale innovations that address education priorities of GPE partner countries. 

These mechanisms are mutually reinforcing: building and mobilizing evidence through applied research generates new knowledge to support the scaling of promising and proven innovations, while knowledge exchange plays an important role in identifying priorities for research and learning, synthesizing and sharing relevant knowledge to facilitate learning, and encouraging the uptake of evidence in policies and practice. These two mechanisms are complemented by support for monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL), and communications and engagement. 

WHERE KIX WORKS

KIX brings together 70 low- and middle-income countries that are partners of the Global Partnership for Education to identify common policy challenges and facilitate knowledge sharing and evidence building. KIX currently funds 36 projects across these 70 countries.

 

 

 

KIX TEAM

KIX is implemented by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and includes a globally diverse team.


Tricia Wind
Program Leader GPE Knowledge and Innovation Exchange
Canada
I am the Program Leader for the GPE Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX) at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). I live in Ottawa, Canada. Within KIX, I am particularly interested in how to facilitate effective knowledge sharing and knowledge mobilization and how to scale positive impact in education systems. I've worked in international development and international research programming for over 20 years, primarily at IDRC, but also in a variety of non-governmental organizations in Canada and East Africa.


Florencio Ceballos
Senior Program Specialist
Canada
Florencio Ceballos is a Senior Program Specialist with the Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX). He holds a degree in Sociology, a Diplome d´Etudes Approfondis on Education Sciences at University Paris 8 and PhD studies in Sociology at EHESS Paris. Florencio has 20+ years of experience in design and implementation of global programs in international development and research support. Within IDRC, Florencio led the telecentre.org initiative on public access to technologies and has been part of the ICT for Development and the Governance and Justice Programs, focusing on issues of youth participation, citizenship and inequalities. Before joining IDRC Florencio was a private consultant and taught Sociology of Education at Universidad de Valparaiso.


Margarita Lopez
Senior Program Specialist
Canada
Margarita Lopez is a Senior Program Specialist with the Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX). She holds a PhD in Political Science from Université Laval, Quebec. She worked as the Planning Director of the Ministry of Education as well as the Director of Education at the National Planning Department in Colombia. She was also the Executive Director of the research centre on education, Corpoeducacion. Recently she was the director of the Canadian project FORTA in Honduras that supported the strengthen of education at the district level. Her expertise is on public policy and decentralization with emphasis on the education sector.


Hamidou Boukary
Senior Program Specialist
Kenya
Dr. Hamidou Boukary is a Senior Program Specialist with the Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX). Prior to joining KIX, he was the Chief Education Specialist at the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA). From 2015 to 2019, he worked as a consultant to several continental, bilateral and multilateral organizations. He’s a co-writer of the AU’s Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA 2016-2025) and coordinator of the recently endorsed UNESCO Global Strategy for Youth and Adult Literacy (2020-2025). He specializes in comparative international education and has expertise in education policy analysis, education systems design, policy implementation and research.


Joy Nafungo
Senior Program Officer
Kenya
Joy Nafungo is a Senior Program Officer with the Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX). She is currently pursuing a PhD in Comparative Education at University of South Africa. She holds a master’s degree in Education (Innovations in Teaching and Learning), a master’s degree in project planning and management and a bachelor’s degree in Education (Early Childhood Development and Education). Her work with KIX involves managing and providing technical oversight to projects while directly supporting the Africa 19 hub. Prior to joining IDRC, she led the pilot of an early childhood development programme at UNICEF, focussing on strengthening multisectoral coordination for integrated Early Childhood Development.


Sangay Jamtsho
Senior Program Officer
India
Sangay is a Senior Program Officer with the Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX). He holds a PhD in Education from the University of Melbourne (Australia). He also holds a Graduate Diploma in International Community Development. Before joining IDRC, he worked as an Education Specialist in UNICEF. He worked for nearly two decades as a teacher educator at Samtse College of Education, Royal University of Bhutan. His areas of interest and expertise include teacher education, early childhood learning, student wellbeing, and educational change.


Serhiy Kovalchuk
Program Officer
Canada
Serhiy Kovalchuk is Program Officer with the Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX). He received his doctorate in curriculum studies and teacher development with a specialization in comparative, international and development education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. His expertise and research interests include comparative and international education, democratic citizenship education, and post-socialist education transformations. He is a co-editor of Reimagining Utopias: Theory and Method for Educational Research in Post-Socialist Contexts (2017) and Democratic Citizenship Education in Non-Western Contexts: Implications for Theory and Research (2019).


Erin Gilchrist
Program Management Officer
Canada
Erin Gilchrist is the Program Management Officer (PMO) with the Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX) at the International Development Research Centre. She holds a Master’s in Political Science with Specialization in the Political Economy of International Development from the University of Toronto and a Bachelor’s in Political Science and French Studies from the University of Ottawa. Erin has worked at Parliament and in the NGO sector in Ottawa, and with community-led organizations across East Africa, in program and partnership management, stakeholder engagement and advocacy. As the KIX PMO, Erin contributes to overall program operations and supports research, communications and monitoring and evaluation activities.


Tayib Fall
Program Officer
Senegal
Tayib Fall is a Program Officer with the Knowledge Innovation Exchange. He provides technical oversight to projects primarily in the Africa 21 region. He has 10+ years of experience in education policy and strategic management having led programs in the sub-saharan Africa region for Google academic outreach department and a World Bank Education implementing unit. He was both a Fulbright and a Chevening Scholar where he respectively explored funding of public schools in US urban contexts as well as system coherence for learning in Senegal. He is a graduate of the Institute of Education at University College London.


Patrick Walugembe
Program Officer
Kenya
Patrick Walugembe is a Program Officer with the Knowledge and Information Exchange (KIX). He holds a PhD in Population Studies, a Masters in Sociology and in Program Evaluation. He has spent over 15 years working with the most vulnerable communities in Sub Saharan Africa around Research, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning. Prior to joining KIX, he was part of the team that developed the global remote learning monitoring toolkit at UNICEF HQ and was also involved in piloting a digital learning initiative with UNICEF Uganda amongst rural schools and refugee communities. His previous work with USAID projects in Uganda involved leading the revamp of the Uganda National Knowledge Management portal. His work with KIX involves managing and providing technical oversight to projects.


Vanessa Estephan
Program Assistant
Canada
Vanessa Estephan is the Program Assistant for the Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX) at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). She has worked at IDRC for many years in a variety of roles such as Accounts Payable Administrator and Facilities Management Assistant.


Hanna Mekonnen Belayneh
Program Management Officer
Canada
Hanna is a Program Management Officer (PMO) with the Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX) at the International Development Research Centre. Hanna has an undergraduate degree in French Literature from the University of Poitiers, France. She holds a master’s degree in education from the University of Paris-Est Créteil and a second master’s degree in French Literature and Linguistics from the University of Bordeaux. Hanna has worked in social justice organizations in Africa and Canada in policy and advocacy, program development and partnership management. Most recently, she was Policy and Advocacy officer with Results Canada.