Education

Dakar/Harare/Nairobi/Yaoundé, 24 January 2024 – On the International Day of Education, dedicated to Learning for Lasting Peace , we reaffirm our commitment to supporting governments in Africa to provide universal access to quality education for every child. Recognizing education as an inherent right and a fundamental pillar for peaceful societies…

DAKAR, 22 December 2023 – A forecast 46.7 million children face another year of humanitarian need in West and Central Africa mainly due to ongoing conflict and insecurity, including in the central Sahel region and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the massive displacement of women and children into Chad from Sudan. UNICEF in the region is…

DAKAR, 11 October 2023 – UNICEF today signed a partnership framework with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which is expected to kick-start a major new investment collaboration in West Africa, focused on education. The partnership aims to bring together the collective strength, mandates, experiences and resources of the two…

It’s 11.30am on a Wednesday morning in Tchaourou. The atmosphere at the public secondary school is quiet: all students are in class while a group of women are preparing lunch in the school central yard, under the tree. In one of the classes, we hear the voice of Ganirath, a fourteen-year-old student, who, only a few months ago, had seen her dreams…

This documentation identifies, maps, reviews, and assesses effective and scalable interventions implemented in West and Central Africa over the past five years that aimed to reduce primary and middle school dropout, especially by girls; increase access to alternative learning pathways, and/or help adolescents develop employability skills. June 2023

Sub-Saharan countries have been working for many years to introduce local languages into their education systems, alongside the official languages inherited from their colonial history. This report showcases the results of studies conducted in central Sahel countries, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, aimed at evaluating the existing bi/plurilingual…

In 2022, UNICEF and its partners continued to sustain critical programme interventions for transforming children's lives in Sao Tomé e Principe. Despite the aftermath of the pandemic and the global impact of the war in Ukraine, significant results were achieved for children. Check the UNICEF Sao Tomé e Principe 2022 Annual Report for more details…

In the lead up to the Transforming Education Summit, UNICEF launched an initiative to hear directly from young people in Africa about their perceptions on education in their countries. Nearly five million responses from over 600,000 young people across 13 countries in Africa were gathered, leading to key recommendations for what must urgently be…

Every child has the right to an education. And over the past two decades, Africa has improved children's access to education thanks to commitment and action by the continent's leadership. While progress has been promising, challenges remain. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 9 out of 10 children cannot read and understand a simple text by age 10.  By 2050, …, A high-level event on transforming education in Africa, On 20 September 2022, the African Union, UNICEF and partners convened a high-level side event on transforming education in Africa to provide space for Heads of States, development partners and young people to come together to galvanize actions for speed and scale in transforming education systems in Africa. UNICEF 2022, The time to act is now!, We must tackle the learning crisis through increased investment in foundational learning. If Africa’s children are equipped with solid numeracy and literacy proficiencies, they will be better positioned to obtain higher-level knowledge and skills in the future. Ms. Catherine Russell, UNICEF Executive Director UNICEF 2022 Transforming education in…, Spread the word on social media, By 2050, Africa will be home to 1 billion children & adolescents. The growing, young population urgently needs quality education, adequate skills and opportunities for their development & to contribute to continued progress in Africa. #TransformingEducationSummit pic.twitter.com/kdEXKsZf90 — Marie-Pierre Poirier (@MariePierre_P) September…

Dakar, Friday 9 September 2022 – On the occasion of the International Day to Protect Education from Attack,  Joining Forces,  an alliance of the six largest international NGOs working for and with children, and UNICEF, are calling on Sahelian governments, ECOWAS and the African Union to adopt specific policies and laws to better prevent and…

Fifty-seven million children, adolescents and youth are barred from attending school in the Central and West Africa region, representing 24.1 per cent of the 236 million out of school worldwide, warn the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in a…

“The answer is 4,” said ten-year-old Patricia, smiling brightly before she walked to the chalk board with confidence to write the answer to the maths problem in class that morning. Division was the topic of today’s primary 2 math lesson at Afoko District Assembly School in Sandema, district capital of Bulisa North in Ghana’s Upper East region and…