Progress and priorities of the KIX Africa 21 Hub

24 July 2020
Map of countries where KIX works in West and Central Africa and Indian Ocean.
Credit: Blossom Communications

The Regional Hubs are a key knowledge exchange and knowledge brokering mechanism for KIX. Since March 2020, the hubs have been steadily setting up their operations, identifying their regional agenda, contributing to the development of KIX’ latest funding opportunity and adapting their work to accommodate the current COVID-19 pandemic. In this news item, we provide an update on the progress and priorities of the KIX Africa 21 hub.

Latest activities

The KIX Africa 21 Hub has just completed a priority identification exercise consisting of a wide consultative process, including data collection through surveys and interviews with representatives of a cross section of the stakeholders as well as analysis of major policy and strategic documents and frameworks. This exercise will feed into the development of a regional call for proposals to be launched on July 31, 2020.

The first meeting of the Steering Committee (a 10-member committee drawn from the key stakeholders in the region-ministries of education, OIF specialized agencies working in education, GPE regional representatives in Africa and NGOs and CSOs) of the Hub took place on July 15, 2020. It reviewed and approved its terms of reference, the 2020 work plan and the recent activities implemented between April and July 2020. It also approved the hiring of the manager/coordinator of the Hub.

 

Summary of key regional priorities

To identify the priorities of the GPE-member countries that the hub oversees, KIX Africa 21 hub led a process from March to July 2020 to identify shared policy challenges for public education systems. The process 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. The report on the results of the process, revealed the following top priorities:

1. Pre and in-service teacher training

2. Equity, inclusion

3. Gender and Equality

4. Quality of teaching and learning in bilingual and multilingual environments

Adaptation to COVID-19

To cope with the measures put in place to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 (lockdown, ban on travels, social distancing, etc.), the leaders of the Hub’s consortium designed contingency plans that include the following: (i) Setting up of a Moodle online platform to create a virtual community of practice, (ii) acquisition of virtual meeting applications to facilitate interactions and consultations with members of the Hub, (iii) a revision of the work plan and budget to adjust to the constraints imposed by the pandemic.