By: Helmut Mahongo
Last Friday, the African Union Commission (AUC) and other stakeholders officially launched another Continental Education Strategy for Africa under the Emergencies and Resilience (EiE) Cluster through its Department of Education, Science, Technology and Innovation (ESTI).
The EiE cluster was established as the main group of ideas of the Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA 2026-2035), the successor of CESA 16-25) which ran from 2016 to 2025.
Speaking at the launch, Sophia Ashipala, who is the head of the Education Division at the African Union Commission, described the establishment of the EiE Cluster as an important shift from creative emergency responses toward comprehensive prevention, preparedness, system resilience, and sustainable recovery.
Ashipala also underscored how educational crises severely impact foundational learning, causing long-term exclusion that disproportionately affects girls, displaced learners, and children with disabilities.
She further stressed that protecting education during emergencies is fundamental to peace, security, human capital development, and the achievement of Agenda 2063.
According to the AU, the EiE Cluster provides a platform that serves as an important continental coordination mechanism designed to safeguard the continuity of learning.
Some of its purposes are to help with the strengthening of institutional resilience and the protection of learners and educators from disruptions, especially those caused by armed conflict and climate-related shocks.
Moreover, it provides a platform for continental commitment to national-level coordination, while strengthening the capacity of national education systems to anticipate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergencies.
The strategy also aims to advance equitable, inclusive, resilient and quality education systems across Africa that are centred on key concepts like teacher development, foundational learning, inclusion, digital transformation, and financing and education governance.
Spotlight on Basic Education Completion and Foundational Learning in Africa, a 2024 report by UNESCO, estimates that 25% of the world’s population will be African by 2050.
This gives Africa the largest potential source of global growth; however, it has been noted that the potential of the population can only be realised if it is supported by education of good quality.
During the seventh breakout session at the Continental Education Conference in 2024, it was revealed that approximately 80 million African children were affected by conflict, representing one in three children on the continent.
It was also revealed that in Nigeria’s northeast alone, attacks were reported on 313 schools since 2009, more than 2,000 teachers had lost their lives, and over one million children have been forced out of school, with girls being affected the most.
South Sudan’s experience highlighted the generational impact of prolonged conflict on education.
After more than four decades of intermittent conflict, the country faced one of sub-Saharan Africa’s lowest literacy rates.
In 2024, South Sudan ranked third on the list of least literate countries in the world, coming in third behind Mali and Chad, who ranked second and first respectively according to the US Career Institute.
The situation in South Sudan is further complicated by displacement, with many children residing in refugee camps across neighbouring countries.
The launch of EiE, according to the AUC, is meant to send a continental message that education cannot wait for crises to end.
