The Prospective, Stocktaking Review
of Education in Sub-Saharan Africa
Bringing to the fore promising experiences in African education
Since 1998, ADEA has undertaken a major exercise referred to as the
"Prospective Stock-Taking Review of Education in Africa".
The results of the review so far will provide the basis of discussions
at the Johannesburg meeting. A major assumption underpinning the exercise
is that there is, within Africa, a wealth of knowledge and experience
to guide innovative solutions and cost-effective policies required
for the development of education in Africa.
The Prospective Stocktaking Review of Education in Sub-Saharan Africa
is linked to the origins of the ADEA itself which date back to the
publication of the 1988 World Bank report Education in Sub-Saharan
Africa: Policies, for Adjustment, Revitalization and Expansion.
One of the specific concerns raised by the 1988 report was the inadequate
coordination of international development agencies that provide technical
and financial assistance to education in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
The report identified poor donor coordination as a problem that encouraged
competition between agencies and placed high demands on the management
and coordination capacities of recipient governments. It also recommended
the establishment of a forum to improve the exchange of information
and coordination among development agencies. In 1989, that forum was
established under the name of Donors to African Education (DAE). It
soon became clear, however, that effective coordination of agencies
working for the development of education in sub-Saharan Africa would
be greatly enhanced by the active participation of the leaders of
African education systems. Thus, DAE was transformed into an association
of agencies and African ministers of education and became the Association
for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA). Over time, ADEA
has striven to become a partnership between ministries and development
agencies for the development of education in the region.
Taking stock of progress made ten years later
In 1998, after ten years of operation, the ADEA Steering Committee
decided to mark its ten years by taking stock of the progress made
toward the development of the education sector since the 1988 World
Bank report. At the meeting of the ADEA Steering Committee held in
Uganda, a strategic decision was made to undertake a Review that would
specifically focus on successful and/or promising experiences in addressing
the well-documented challenges facing the development of education
in the region. It was decided to focus on: (i) the expansion of equitable
access to education; (ii) the improvement of the relevance and quality
of education; and, (iii) the development of capacities for the effective
delivery of education and training to all.
The review proceeded from a premise that while there are numerous
challenges to the development of education in Sub-Saharan Africa,
there are also successful and/or promising interventions for tackling
those challenges. Africa's education systems aren't just full of problems
and failures. They also offer a wealth of valuable experiences and
lessons worthy of exposure and sharing.
Purpose and approach
Compared to its precursors, the Prospective Stocktaking Review of
Education in Sub-Saharan Africa has significant and noteworthy points
of departure. First and foremost, it focuses on what works, as defined
and identified by the concerned parties. Previous reviews of education
in Africa have tended to highlight weaknesses and challenges and overlooked
strengths and successes. While understandable, the tendency to focus
on weaknesses has made it difficult to develop knowledge of what works
in education in Africa. Consequently, Africa has missed out on opportunities
to learn from successful experiences and to improve on them. Even
within Africa, the norm has been to reflect on, investigate and study
failures while taking success for granted. Understandable as this
may be, the tendency to take successes for granted has undermined
the capacity to critically analyze and understand what works in education
in Africa and why it works. It has underdeveloped the capacity to
learn from successful experiences and to continuously refine them.
The focus of this exercise is to make more visible the achievements
of African education systems, unravel the dynamic processes behind
them, highlight emerging lessons, and facilitate the sharing of those
lessons. The first objective of this exercise, therefore, is to bring
to the fore successful and promising experiences from African education
systems, identify and analyze factors that explain successes, highlight
emerging lessons and facilitate the sharing of those lessons. This
Review seeks to facilitate the continuous refinement of processes
and strategies that lead to an effective development of education
in sub-Saharan Africa. By emphasizing the sharing of lessons, it is
hoped that this exercise will contribute to a culture of intra-African
exchange of information, experiences and worthy lessons.
Second, is the search for viable policies and innovative responses
to education challenges within Africa. Because of the prior focus
on failures, a tendency has evolved over time to look outward for
responses to challenges facing education in Africa. This has undermined
the development of indigenous capacities to effectively redress weaknesses
in the education system. It has also fostered dependency on externally
generated knowledge. Indeed, a key criticism of technical assistance
from within Africa is that it tends to undermine the development of
Africa's indigenous capacity to propel its own development. Therefore,
the second objective of this Review is the furtherance of one of the
key aims of ADEA - the strengthening of Africa's capacity to effectively
analyze, develop, plan for, and manage viable policies for the development
of its education sector. Capacity development is an integral part
of this exercise. By focusing on viable solutions, the Review also
seeks to strengthen the orientation of the ADEA partners to look toward
and not away from Africa for viable responses to challenges facing
education in the region.
Third, is the emphasis on process as a means, as well as a key result.
More than just documenting achievements, this exercise emphasized
the need to document and critically reflect on the processes that
led to those achievements. A central result of this exercise is the
very process that has been initiated, that of getting Ministries of
Education engaged in a sustained critical introspection on their successes
and why they occur. The processes that individual countries followed
in order to produce their case studies are, therefore, at least as
important as the country case study reports that followed. Unlike
reports, the process is expected to develop into an enduring culture
of periodically stepping back to reflect on the distance covered,
how and why that has happened, and the nature of the road ahead. The
third objective of the review is to contribute to the institutionalization
of a culture of critical and selective learning from past experiences
and bringing those experiences to bear on future developments.
Fourth, is the deliberate avoidance of the "objectification"
of Ministries of Education and their efforts. In the past, reviews
of education systems have mostly been conducted by actors far-removed
from the daily running of those systems. In contrast, this Review
followed a self-study approach. To this effect, the countries that
participated in the Review did so through self-selection. Ministries
of education identified what, in their views, were successful or promising
experiences. The critical analysis of processes that led to those
successes was conducted predominantly by Ministry officials with assistance
from national experts selected by Ministries.
The self-study approach was preferred in order to engage Ministries
in a process of assuming the responsibility for periodic reviews of
their education systems. Ordinarily, external actors who study Ministry
processes and experiences are not engaged in the implementation of
their recommendations. No matter how good their analyses and reflections,
the external nature of the actors often renders their efforts unsustainable.
Since the objective of this exercise is to contribute to the development
of a sustained culture of critical self-reflection within Ministries
of Education, the stimulation of a potentially sustainable process
took precedence over analytical sophistication. Another reason why
this approach was selected was because it was recognized that Ministry
officials have the firsthand experience of the successes reported
in the Review. They possess the undocumented institutional memory
of the processes that brought about the successes.
Participation
Twenty-five countries chose to participate in the Review. Twenty-one
of the country case studies focused on the expansion of access, ranging
from early childhood education to higher education. A good number
of the cases focused on efforts to attain universal primary education.
Fifteen countries focused on their efforts to improve education quality.
These efforts ranged from improving human resource capacities, especially
teachers, to improving the physical infrastructure such as classrooms
and furnishings. Only eight cases presented successful stories of
building system-wide capacities. These included the development of
human resources for the education sector, capacities for student assessment
and examinations systems, Education Management Information Systems
and curriculum development systems. Six of the ADEA Working Groups
also presented case studies of their experiences.
Three levels of consultation
To a large extent the Review has remained faithful to its aims and
ethos. It has been a fairly critical, reflective, educative, consultative,
inclusive and process-oriented endeavor. Its inclusiveness started
with the definition of its character and focus, which were done jointly
by the ADEA partners. In most of the countries that chose to participate,
the case studies enlisted the participation of a broad base of the
education community. Critical reflection did occur at the national
level, generally in the context of national seminars. This was the
first level of consultation.
The second level of consultation consisted of regional
seminars/workshops held in Botswana and Benin. These forums provided
an opportunity for critical peer review and intense sharing of experiences
and learning from each other. The preparation of final country reports
benefited from the comments made during these regional seminars. The
preparation of the synthesis document has also gone through several
iterations, benefiting from critical comments of the country teams
and of the ADEA Steering Committee.
The 1999 Biennial meeting is the third level of consultation. Comments
made on the process of this Review and on the draft synthesis report
will be integrated into the final report. The dissemination of the
final report itself will be yet another level of sharing of information
and experiences. The Biennial meeting will also define appropriate
follow-up activities to this Review.
Mmantsetsa Marope
ADEA Lead Specialist for the
Prospective, Stocktaking Review of Education in Sub-Saharan Afric
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