ADEA Working Groups in 2000
Year of the Evaluation
What are the ADEA Working Groups? What are their objectives? What do they do? Who participates in their activities, and how do they operate? How can they be contacted? Our readers will find the answers to these questions in the current issue, which reviews the activities of the Working Groups during the past year.
ADEA currently has ten Working Groups. They play a central role in the activities conducted by the Association. They explore education-related issues that have been identified as deserving special attention in the African context: books and learning materials, distance education, early childhood development, education sector analysis, education finance, education statistics, female participation in education, higher education, nonformal education, and the teaching profession. They are the instruments used by ADEA's partners to formulate responses to the problems facing education in Africa. They also work to promote common understandings on these issues. For all these reasons, they are a vital component of ADEA--the "heart and soul" of the Association, as has often been said.
Leadership and coordination
Most of the Working Groups (WGs) were formed shortly after the publication of Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Policies for Adjustment, Revitalization and Expansion, the study that laid the groundwork for the creation of the ADEA, identified the problems that the Working Groups would need to tackle, and outlined their mandates. Three other groups were created more recently to address other concerns identified by the African educational community. They are: the Working Groups on Distance Education, Early Childhood Development and Nonformal Education. Leadership of the Working Groups is provided by development agencies, African ministries of education (for example, the education ministry of Mauritius acts as the lead agency for the Working Group on Distance Education) and African NGOs (the Working Group on Female Participation is led by the Forum for African Women Educationalists, or FAWE, based in Nairobi).
Although the Working Groups are mostly led by development agencies, in most cases African institutions are responsible for coordinating their activities. The Working Group on Finance and Education, for example, is coordinated by the Council for the Development of Social Sciences (Conseil pour le développement de la recherche en sciences sociales -- CODESRIA), based in Dakar. The activities of the Working Group on the Teaching Profession, francophone section, are coordinated by Côte d'Ivoire's Ministry of Education, and those of the Working Group on Female Participation by the Forum of African Women Educationists (FAWE), which also acts as the lead organization for this group. All Working Groups ultimately seek to transfer their leadership and coordination functions to an African country or institution. Hence the Working Group on Higher Education has worked in close partnership with the Association of African Universities.
In 2000, ADEA conducted an evaluation of its Working Groups [See page 3]. The major objectives were to appraise the extent to which the WGs are responding to ADEA's partners needs and to assess their impact and visibility on the ground. Although the WGs present varied and contrasting situations, the articles in this issue reveal major trends about the way they operate which have been confirmed by the evaluation.
Broad-based networks...
Like ADEA itself, the Working Groups are informal networks of education specialists and professionals who take an interest in the problems addressed by the groups and who contribute their skills and professional concerns. The Working Groups bring together a great variety of stakeholders from both South and North--from African ministries of education, development agencies, research institutions, NGOs and in some cases civil society groups--and, as such, they have become genuine fora for consultation, sharing of experience and coordination. For example, the Working Groupon Books and Learning Materials, which works in a field where substantial economic interests are at stake, has managed to serve as a venue for fruitful interaction among many partners involved in the publishing industry: ministries of education, development agencies and NGOs, publishers, booksellers, book fairs, and users.
...anchored in Africa...
All of the Working Groups are concerned with establishing their roots firmly in Africa. Each in its own way seeks to anchor their activities in African countries. For example, the Working Group on Education Sector Analysis is currently giving priority to having African countries perform sectoral analyses themselves. The strategy adopted by the Working Group on Nonformal Education is to support local processes among educators and to form national WGs on the basis of national fora for nonformal education. The activities of the WGs on the Teaching Profession and on Finance and Education are carried out by national teams which include representatives of the main interested parties. The teams are given an official mandate from the minister of education at the outset, so that their work will receive government support and be incorporated into the country's education policy. In 1998, the WG on Education Statistics transferred its offices from UNESCO Paris to Harare, where the group's NESIS(1) regional center and sub-regional office for Eastern and Southern Africa are now located. A NESIS office for Western and Central Africa was opened in Dakar in 1999. The opening of these offices was an important step towards establishing a NESIS professional network in Africa and enhancing cooperation with countries in the region.
...that foster the development of professional communities
Since strengthening capacities is one of their primary activities (along with research, analysis and advocacy), the Working Groups contribute to the development of professional communities specializing in their respective areas of interest. For example, the NESIS program of the Working Group on Education Statistics, whose aim is to help develop sustainable national systems of statistical information on education, is taking part in developing a community of information management specialists in Africa. The real influence of these specialists can be seen in the fact that virtually all African countries took part in the Education for All (EFA) end-of-decade assessment in 2000.
However, this particular outcome is not to be attributed solely to ADEA. It is the illustration of ADEA's strengths in networking and underpinning the combined activities of other agencies and partners having similar objectives--in this case African governments, departments of planning of Ministries of Education, research institutions, universities, NGOs and development agencies of Sweden, the UK, the Netherlands and France as well as multilateral agencies such as UNESCO, UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA and the World Bank. These synergies are necessary as we pursue our efforts to improve the quality of education in Africa.t
1. The NESIS capacity building program is at the core of ADEA's Working Group on Education Statistics' activities.
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