Education researchers, government officials and partners meet in Addis Ababa to uncover research and evidence needs in Ethiopia's education system
On 3 July 2026, the Global Partnership for Education’s Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (GPE KIX) Africa 19 Hub, UNESCO International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa, and Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) convened GPE KIX-funded researchers, officials from Ethiopia's Federal Ministry of Education (MoE) and education partners in Addis Ababa for a half-day dialogue. The goal was to create a space for researchers to share their findings on Ethiopia's education system, and for government officials to voice their evidence needs. Connecting research evidence directly with national education priorities, the event identified practical steps to integrate evidence into policies and action.
In her opening remarks, GPE KIX Program Leader Tricia Wind said, “Oftentimes, we spend more time producing the research than we do supporting its use. More time doing new studies than consolidating what we already know." Representing a long-standing GPE donor, the Embassy of Canada to Ethiopia highlighted the importance of translating innovation into practice as the donor's rationale for support.
Ethiopia's education reform is anchored in the 2023 Education and Training Policy and the forthcoming five-year national Education Sector Development Programme (ESDP VII). Agreed between the Government of Ethiopia and the Global Partnership for Education, the Ethiopia-GPE Partnership Compact aligns government and partner financing and support behind the reform. Key reform priorities include foundational literacy and numeracy, equity and inclusion, and decentralized planning.
The recent mid-term review of the Ethiopia-GPE Partnership Compact reported satisfactory progress on indicators such as the digitalization of the national Education Management Information System (EMIS) and a new teacher-education framework. A more sobering finding, however, is that little has changed yet in classroom teaching, while professional development still relies on workshops and training of trainers, with workshop participants acknowledging some training fatigue. Persistent concerns include teacher incentives, insufficient secondary school teachers, and a thin evidence base on whether reforms are improving learning.
Against this backdrop, five research initiatives funded by GPE KIX in Ethiopia presented education evidence aligned with national priorities:
● Geneva Global shared evidence on the nationally scaled Accelerated Education Program, helping develop policy guidelines and address the absence of out-of-school children from EMIS.
● The Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE)’s “Tuseme” project tested a student-voice approach in settings with people on the move (e.g., refugees), enabling girls and other marginalized learners to identify challenges, express their needs, and contribute to solutions. The approach has since been taken up in education sector planning.
● The GPE KIX Observatory conducted assessments of education system resilience, feeding directly into the drafting of Ethiopia’s ESDP VII.
● Link Community Development Malawi generated evidence on gender-sensitive teaching practices, finding that the key to making lasting improvements was having enough trained people at the middle level (e.g., school leaders and district officials), who could support teachers through ongoing coaching and guidance.
● UNICEF’s work on disability-inclusive early childhood education prompted Ethiopia’s Ministry of Education to establish a core team to develop national guidance on how to put an inclusive pre-primary curriculum into practice.
To translate evidence into action, partners agreed on clear pathways. UNESCO IICBA offered to build a shared, centralized repository of education research on Ethiopia to improve information sharing. GPE KIX researchers will engage with technical directorates at the Ministry of Education, each responsible for specific areas of education policy and implementation, to ensure government ownership.
In closing, IDRC encouraged researchers to work beyond individual projects, always keeping in mind the overarching Compact priority of improving learning outcomes with equity. Coordination remains key as a coherent body of evidence is more useful for education decision-makers and planners to put into practice.
