Tackling Africa’s foundational learning crisis

Access to education in Africa has steadily improved over the past two decades, with more girls attending school and a higher number of students enrolling in tertiary education than ever before. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), school completion rates between 2000 and 2022 rose from 52% to 69% in primary education, from 35% to 50% in lower secondary education, and from 23% to 33% in upper secondary education.

Despite this progress, policymakers are deeply concerned about the poor learning outcomes in many schools. Approximately 90% of African children in school cannot read or understand a simple 150-word text by age 10, according to the UN. Similarly, around 84% of children in sub-Saharan Africa were not proficient in mathematics in 2015. This has led to a foundational learning crisis that, if left unaddressed, could transform Africa’s anticipated demographic dividend into a demographic disaster.

Foundational learning is basic literacy, numeracy, and transferable skills that are the building blocks for a life of learning. Without foundational learning, students often fail to thrive later in school or when they join the workforce.

“If the majority of children on our continent are not acquiring the essential skills needed for their future, we are facing what could be an existential crisis,” says Oby Ezekwesili, Nigeria’s former education minister and CEO of Human Capital Africa (HCA), an advocacy organisation dedicated to improving foundational literacy and numeracy outcomes in Africa. She tells African Business that the foundational learning crisis in Africa should be treated as a matter of “life and death”. She argues that while the focus on getting more children in school is noble, quality has been overlooked in the process. “Quality has taken a backseat to quantity, and foundational skills – reading, writing, basic math, and socio-emotional learning – are being neglected,” she states.

Empowering teachers

Ezekwesili believes that the solution to Africa’s foundational education crisis lies in empowering teachers. “Teachers are one of the most important stakeholders in the learning process. However, they are in short supply,” she says, pointing out that the continent needs 17 million additional teachers by 2030 in order to meet its universal education goals.

However, the problem is not just that the number of teachers in Africa is inadequate; existing teachers also lack access to the training they sorely need to successfully impart foundational knowledge and skills to learners.

“Many of the teachers who are currently available require additional training to effectively teach foundational literacy and numeracy, perpetuating a cycle of underachievement,” Ezekwesili says, adding that “there is a pressing need for more support and coaching for these educators, many of whom are also significantly underpaid.”

Turning around the situation demands that Africa learn from other regions in the developing world that have succeeded in tackling the foundational learning crisis. Sobral, a city in Brazil, is a fitting example, she says. The city made significant progress in foundational learning between 2000 and 2004, and has sustained that progress for over two decades. Some of the measures leaders took included setting ambitious goals for students to learn to read and understand a short text by the end of second grade, providing teachers with a learning sequence to guide their instruction, and holding teachers, principals, and policymakers accountable when they didn’t meet their standards. Additionally, the city had political leadership that was committed to learning and kept politics out of education policies.

Sobral inspired HCA to replicate similar models across Africa, Ezekwesili reveals. HCA is implementing Sobral-inspired model districts in Malawi and Uganda. “These districts are designed as proof points, demonstrating how evidence-based interventions like structured pedagogy, targeted teacher training, and robust monitoring systems can transform educational outcomes,” she notes.

By focusing on these pilot districts, HCA aims to create replicable models that can be scaled nationally and across other African countries. The goal is to show that with the right strategies and commitment, it is possible to reverse the learning crisis and significantly improve literacy and numeracy outcomes.

Partnerships to drive advocacy

Beyond these local efforts, HCA is leveraging its influence to drive advocacy at the continental level. Through high-level conventions and dialogues on foundational learning, HCA ensures that political leaders recognise the urgency of the learning crisis and commit to action. “A prime example of this advocacy is HCA’s partnership with the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) to establish the African Foundational Learning Ministerial Coalition. This coalition facilitates peer learning among education ministers, fostering collaboration and shared commitment to addressing foundational learning challenges,” she says.

The latest such meeting of African education ministers happened in November at the foundational learning exchange (FLEX) in Rwanda. It was organised by ADEA in collaboration with the Rwandan ministry of education and partners such as UNICEF.

Albert Nsengiyumva, executive secretary of ADEA, tells African Business that besides the regular meetings with education ministers – some of which are conducted virtually to ensure consistency – the organisation is also partnering with non-governmental organisations and private sector entities to roll out initiatives aimed at ending learning poverty.

“We have partnered with the Mastercard Foundation on the education skill data project which seeks to strengthen the capacity of up to 30 countries to produce reports and utilise data in education for decision making,” he says, stressing that evidence-based policymaking remains crucial to the success of initiatives to improve foundational learning. Nsengiyumva also highlights the partnership between ADEA and the LEGO Foundation to promote the uptake of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) at the basic education level. This, he says, is crucial for preparing the next generation of Africans to participate in the fourth industrial revolution.

Play-based methodologies

“We are promoting play-based learning with support from the LEGO Foundation. We just completed a five-country policy dialogue forum on integrating play-based methodologies and STEM education,” he says, noting that these forums took place in Eswatini, Kenya, Rwanda, the Gambia and Senegal. Nsengiyumva contends that free basic education, which has been implemented across the majority of African countries, has removed the financial barrier to education. “This should be encouraged and promoted to the extent that being free does not jeopardise quality learning.”

He notes that, within a tightening fiscal space, governments need increased support from development partners to keep up with the rising financial demands of supporting basic education – especially given that Africa’s population growth rate remains the highest globally.

“We have seen examples such as blended finance, with the Global Partnership for Education promoting debt swaps, and private entities introducing innovative corporate social responsibility initiatives to support some of the learning initiatives that governments would have ordinarily paid for.”

Supporting learners who fall behind

According to Titus Syengo, executive director of Teaching at the Right Level Africa (TaRL Africa), tackling the foundational learning crisis in Africa requires a massive overhaul of teaching methodologies. The problem, he explains, is that the education system in most countries is based on a curriculum specifying a progression of topics.

“The concepts you get now are applied in the next level. So if you missed a concept at the beginning you are left behind. There is no support system for those that do not acquire basic skills. They often don’t catch up and a lot of times end up dropping out,” he says.

The exam system is also designed to favour top learners, leaving the majority behind, he contends. “The stakes in exams are so high that the teachers focus only on those kids who are at the top. How much time do you have to focus on each child at their level, when in fact you are being assessed on finishing the curriculum on time? There are no mechanisms to help learners who fall behind.”

Learning methodologies in Africa must evolve to support every learner at their level, otherwise many will continue falling by the wayside, argues Syengo. “Systems of education should help children, not destroy them. If you can go through the education system and not learn to read or write and yet you don’t have special needs, that’s a serious problem. We do not want education to be a weapon of mass destruction.”

This is where TaRL Africa comes in, he states. TaRL is a teaching method that groups children by learning level instead of age or grade. The approach uses a simple assessment tool to evaluate children’s proficiency in foundational literacy and numeracy skills and then places them into groups based on their needs.

“At the centre of TaRL is understanding the level of the learner and tailoring instruction to what they really need rather than what is in the curriculum.”

How it works is that participating schools set aside time every day, often an hour, to provide tailored instruction in foundational literacy and numeracy to learners based on the specific needs and proficiency levels of learners.

“We’re supporting about 15 countries on the continent to adapt and contextualise TaRL’s innovative approach within their education systems and help children to acquire foundational literacy and numeracy skills within 100 days. We’ve been doing this for the last five years,” Syengo elaborates.

He notes that the initiative mainly focuses on public schools as this is where the need is most dire. “A lot of the children in need of help are in the public school system, they are the ones that are most disadvantaged.”

Citing the example of Zambia, Syengo points out that implementing TaRL in public schools has led to commendable improvements in foundational literacy. “In Zambia we have implemented the programme in about 75% of public schools, and after 100 days of implementation, we are seeing that two times more children are acquiring foundational skills. Two times more children is a big achievement and we’re seeing the same outcomes in Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria as well.”

Scaling up TaRL to make it available in more African countries could help replicate this success. However, there are challenges, Syengo acknowledges. A key challenge is the fact that TaRL is not part of the school curriculum, meaning that teachers and instructors often have to dedicate time outside their work schedule to implement it.

The role of philanthropy

Benjamin Piper, director of global education at the Gates Foundation, notes that there is increased awareness among African leaders about the root cause of the foundational learning crisis. “This issue of learning outcomes and whether kids go to school and actually get anything out of school wasn’t on people’s minds because we were looking at the wrong part of the system. We were looking at whether kids are leaving secondary and going to tertiary, or leaving primary and going to secondary.

“What’s changed now is that there is increased awareness about the fundamental problem and there is evidence on how to solve it,” he says, citing evidence-based instructional programmes such as structured pedagogy.

Piper explains that structured pedagogy is an approach that includes lesson plans, teacher training, student materials, and ongoing support. Structured pedagogy programmes have been shown to improve early-grade learning in different African countries, including Kenya, Liberia, and South Africa, he notes. “Approaches like this have worked and have worked at scale.”

He argues that philanthropies such as the Gates Foundation should champion these proven interventions and assist governments in adopting transformative technologies – especially educational technology and artificial intelligence – that can enhance learning outcomes.

“Philanthropy needs to be that innovation engine, using experts on the continent to help countries improve learning outcomes,” he states.

The private sector is leading the AI charge

Piper notes that when it comes to AI in Africa, the private sector is leading the charge and investing massively in new use cases. However, there is a gap in education – and this is where philanthropies can step in.

“The private sector is missing two main categories. It is missing education as a sector and it’s also missing the poor and the rural populations. How can we use philanthropic capital to de-risk these high-impact areas and bring other funders in?” he asks.

Piper notes that philanthropies and other partners can only complement governments’ efforts to tackle the foundational learning crisis in Africa. Success, he emphasises, ultimately hinges on the actions – or inaction – of leaders. Drawing on examples from countries such as India and Brazil, which have significantly improved foundational learning outcomes, he argues that strong political leadership and technical expertise are key to achieving similar progress.

‘You need political leadership’

“You need political leadership combined with technical guidance to make a change. In Africa, we know what works, we have evidence-based instructional programmes. The task now is to have the senior level political leadership say this is a priority and we expect every teacher to implement it and we want the whole society to be behind it,” he concludes.