Progress and Activities of the KIX Africa 21 Hub

19 November 2021
The teacher calls the students back to class after recess.
Credit: GPE/Olivier Badoh

The Regional Hubs are a key knowledge exchange and knowledge brokering mechanism for KIX. The hubs lay the groundwork for multi-year inter-country learning exchange, facilitate engagement with key in-country partners and define national and regional priorities in education. The priorities identified informed the regional calls for proposals issued in 2020, and set the stage for the newly funded regional grants projects. In this news item, we provide an update on the progress of the KIX Africa 21 hub.

Encompassing 21 countries in West and Central Africa and the Indian Ocean region, the KIX Africa 21 hub’s approach is three-pronged, looking to:

Foster regional knowledge exchange and building the capacity of hub members to identify, use, share, and mobilize evidence within priority policy challenge areas

Produce and disseminate relevant knowledge and evidence syntheses to relevant actors

Advance effective regional mobilization and knowledge and evidence uptake.

Over the past year, the KIX Africa 21 hub has organized a series of events and activities, where it served as a platform to exchange relevant educational innovation and knowledge. For instance, the identification of the region’s priority policy challenges made clear that there was a need to address teacher training and capacity building in the education sector. In response, the hub organized a series of roundtable discussions to highlight the role of teachers in achieving high-quality education that meets the demands of the 21st century.

In response to another pressing regional challenge - ensuring equity and inclusion in education - the hub gathered education and policy stakeholders from the 21 countries it represents to organize a virtual discussion. By bringing cross-country stakeholders together, the hub can monitor country commitments on equity and inclusion in the implementation of SDG4. Furthermore, these discussions allow for policy agenda setting and research commitments from the team members of the partner countries involved.

Along with discussions based on thematic priorities, the hub has convened educational stakeholders and country representatives for workshops and capacity-building sessions. Focusing on specific skills, like making use of knowledge exchange platforms and innovative learning assessment systems, the hub continues to contribute and disseminate new and emerging knowledge throughout the region.

Looking forward, the hub is consistently organizing new events and discussions with the regional community it has fostered. Ensuring that discussions and knowledge mobilization are regionally relevant has been central to the hub’s design and plans for the future.