Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Seth Asare Okyere, Visiting lecturer, University of Pittsburg and Adjunct Associate Professor, Osaka University, University of Pittsburgh

Humans are walking beings. Walking is intrinsically linked to our physical development from childhood and enables our connections with people and places. We can say it is essential to our physical and mental well-being.

Walking can also help create inclusive and sustainable cities. Most western cities incorporate this need in their spatial planning.

In African countries like Ghana, however, the fact that most people walk doesn’t always mean they prefer to. They need to walk because it’s cheaper than using motor vehicles. But many African cities are not friendly to pedestrians.

More than 70% of the urban population in Africa walk daily for various purposes. To deal with the challenges pedestrians encounter, some African cities have incorporated policies and strategies for walking into their motorised transport policies. For instance, in Nigeria, the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority has developed a policy that aims to create a safe and pleasant network of footpaths, greenways and other facilities that serve everyone in the city.

In Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), a similar policy was developed. Its objective is to increase the number of people who walk by investing in walking facilities and improving connectivity to public transport.

The strategies in these documents are commendable, but they have met practical challenges like funding, public perception and technical capacity.

Ghana also has several transport and local development planning policies. Yet most urban areas in Ghana don’t have walking infrastructure and a safe walking environment.

As scholars interested in sustainable urban development planning and policy, we reviewed some of these policies to explore how they treat walking as a way of getting around. The research also assessed institutional perspectives and residents’ everyday lived experiences of walkability in Accra, the capital city. We found that both policies and urban plans paid little attention to making the walking experience enjoyable.

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Read more: City streets: why South Africa should design more people-friendly spaces

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The study

The Ghana Transport Survey Report indicates that over three-quarters (75.3%) of the country’s population make up to ten daily trips on foot, and most urban areas lack walking infrastructure. Pedestrians account for about 42% of road deaths in Ghana.

We chose two study sites in Accra, the capital, where many come to find work. The sites represented inner-city and suburban areas. The research used in-depth and semi-structured interviews with 80 people to capture the perspectives of institutional representatives and community residents. We explored walking experiences in terms of accessibility, safety and enjoyment.

Findings

Accessibility: The national transport policy seeks to provide dedicated, safe, reliable and appropriate facilities for users across all transport modes. What we found, however, was an absence of infrastructure to enhance pedestrian access to facilities and services.

One resident commented:

The roads are not only in poor condition but they have no sidewalks. It is not hard to assume that these were built for car owners, not pedestrians’ everyday use.

Safety: The research revealed a chasm between policy ambitions for walking and realities at the community level. Municipal development plans don’t say how they will address the frequent crashes that result from commuters, vendors and motorists competing for space. The most at risk are pedestrians, who represent 42% of transport-related fatalities. This is because of noncompliance with bylaws that regulate activities on the roads and pedestrian pathways.

One municipal official said:

Look at the streets: Motorists, street vendors, school children on the same street space. There is encroachment, reckless driving, illegally parked cars on road shoulders. School children and the disabled face constant risks. But the plan aims to make the neighborhoods walkable. Just words as always.

Enjoyment: Enjoyment was the least considered aspect of walkability in both national policy and municipal development plans. The absence of facilities and infrastructure that offer comfort, aesthetics and other pleasures for pedestrians provides a clear indication of this.

A community leader complained:

Flooding and poor sanitation create an unpleasant walking environment. Clogged waste, poor drains, and rubbish along streets and alleyways are a problem. There is nothing pleasant about walking: the smell, the dust, the noise and the heat. You walk because you have no choice.

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Read more: New forms of urban planning are emerging in Africa

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Towards cities that are walkable

The deep gulf between what the policies say and everyday experiences in our study calls for new ways of thinking and implementation within the urban transport in Ghana’s development planning regime.

We suggest that there is a need for transport planners, urban and development planners, and policymakers to consider coproduction strategies in identifying, framing, developing, and implementing interventions. This will help harness the potential for walking as a social equaliser and its contribution to healthy, safe, equitable cities and communities.

Here, action-oriented collaborative strategies like workshops that consider communities as partners can transition African urban residents from captive walkers to walkers who enjoy it.

– Accra is a tough city to walk in: how city planners can fix the problem
– https://theconversation.com/accra-is-a-tough-city-to-walk-in-how-city-planners-can-fix-the-problem-253636

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Rachel Silver, Assistant Professor, York University, Canada

Coverage of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns on girls in Malawi emphasised the risks they faced as a result of not attending school. In particular, concerns about pregnancy garnered significant media attention.

The United Nations Children’s Fund, for example, published an article in March 2021 entitled “Schoolgirl shakes off COVID-19 regret: Lucy’s return to school”. Under a glossy photograph of a smiling girl, readers learn about 16-year-old Lucy, one of 13,000 Malawian students who became pregnant during COVID-19 school closures. The story went on to detail the dire consequences of sexual activity to Lucy’s well-being, and the redemptive power of an eventual return to school.

The Unicef piece echoed thousands of similar publications circulated after March 2020 that analysed COVID-19’s unique risk for girls in the global south and lamented lost returns to girls’ education.

In response to COVID-19 surges, Malawian schools closed for over seven months, during which the percentage of pregnancies to young women aged 10-19 did increase from 29% to 35% of total pregnancies.

Yet, our research has demonstrated that international development organisations and media outlets focused mostly on narrow, sexualised framings of risk to African girls and women rather than on the many intersecting and ongoing barriers to their well-being and school retention. These challenges both predate and extend beyond COVID-19.

As scholars of international development education who have conducted research in Malawi for over a decade, we decided to join Malawian educational activist and collaborator Stella Makhuva to research how girls themselves narrated their experiences of the COVID-19 years. What did they consider a risk to their schooling?

Together, we designed a longitudinal study from 2020 to 2023 that included multiple rounds of interviews and participatory journalling methods with 22 upper primary and secondary school girls in southern Malawi.

We found that for girls in our study, COVID-19 was less a rupture – an unusual event that threatened their education in unprecedented ways – than an added variable in the already complex calculations girls and their families made about whether and how to remain in school.

We argue that it was not pregnancy itself, but escalating resource constraints, that kept girls from school. And that interventions must do something about the real problem: inequitable systems.

The stories told by the girls illustrate this. (All the names are pseudonyms.)

Their stories

When Faith joined our study in 2020, she was attending a peri-urban primary school near her home. She lived in a mud and grass-thatched house with her parents, both subsistence farmers who supported Faith’s and her siblings’ education. During school closures, she studied with friends to keep up with academic content when she was not helping with her parents’ farm.

Yet school costs threatened Faith’s return to school upon reopening. Despite primary school being officially “free” by government mandate, students at her school were required to contribute 800 Malawi kwacha (close to US$1 at the time) per term to a school fund for infrastructure projects and upkeep. Not paying into the fund resulted in exclusion from classes.

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Read more: Does free schooling give girls a better chance in life? Burundi study shows the poorest benefited most

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When Faith eventually passed the Primary School Leaving Certificate Exam and enrolled in secondary school, the costs to schooling rose from 5,000 kwacha (about US$6.50 in early 2021) to 20,000 kwacha (about US$19 in late 2022). Faith worried about whether her parents, whose maize and tomato yields suffered from poor rains, would be able to pay.

On top of this, Faith paid other costs, from exam fees and bicycle rental fees to supplemental lessons in which she learned material never covered during school hours. She said she and her family often sacrificed eating sufficiently to save money.

Still, Faith was repeatedly pushed out of school until her fee balance was met. Before, during, and after COVID-19 school closures, girls like her were pushed out of school for a lack of regular fee payments.

Faith’s school-going was also threatened by warming temperatures and new rain patterns that left her family with diminished food and income. Added to this were volatility in government agricultural subsidies to small farmers, inflated school fees, and the increasing privatisation of public education in Malawi.

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Read more: Malawi faces a food crisis: why plans to avert hunger aren’t realistic and what can be done

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Like Faith, all of the girls in our study worked to supplement their schooling with part time lessons, holiday classes, or by repeating grades given educational quality concerns. Based in under-resourced schools with low exam pass rates, girls knew that they were provided an incomplete education.

According to Brightness,

We do not learn fully what we are supposed to cover, and some teachers tend to be absent during their lessons. This makes us lag behind … As a result during exams they ask some questions which some of us … did not learn.

Empirical evidence has shown how teacher engagement has long been influenced by the region’s high disease burden, especially due to HIV/Aids. This has left teachers both ill and caring for ill relatives.

While teacher disengagement, therefore, reflected factors such as competing care responsibilities, professional dissatisfaction and stress, girls were deeply frustrated by what felt like abandonment.

Rethinking pregnancy and parenting

Mainstream discourses that missed key barriers to girls’ school retention and performance, such as privatisation and food insecurity, misrepresented student pregnancy as an emergent “crisis”.

Prior to the pandemic, sexuality and school-going already overlapped for many girls in Malawi, where adolescent pregnancy rates were threefold the global average. Still, girls in our study countered the idea that schooling and sex were incompatible. They also challenged the idea that school was inherently safe and that it was pregnancy that kept them from school.

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Read more: Education and gender equality: focus on girls isn’t fair and isn’t enough — global study

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Many of the girls’ stories emphasised continuity with what came before the pandemic.

We have found this in past research. Schooling and sexuality are not necessarily opposed; but parents and teachers try to protect girls from sexuality; and parenting and non-parenting girls alike face significant resource-related barriers to schooling.

Conclusion

If girls’ choices, particularly around sexuality, do not represent the greatest or only source of risk for girls’ schooling, interventions must respond to this reality. They should support well-being and address the broader conditions in which girls live and learn. The problem is inequity, not pregnant girls.

– What keeps girls from school in Malawi? We asked them and it’s not just pregnancy
– https://theconversation.com/what-keeps-girls-from-school-in-malawi-we-asked-them-and-its-not-just-pregnancy-258401

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Benta A. Abuya, Research Scientist, African Population and Health Research Center

The Kenyan government launched a big attempt in 2015 to promote gender equality in and through the education sector. This was guided by principles of equal participation and inclusion of women and men, and girls and boys in national development.

The Education and Training Sector Gender Policy aligned with national, regional and global commitments. This included the constitution, and Sustainable Development Goals 4 on quality education and 5 on gender equality.

Years later, however, it became clear that the government wasn’t achieving some policy’s objectives. Gaps remained in reducing gender inequalities in access, participation and achievement at all levels of education.

The government decided to review the causes of these challenges and what could be done differently.

This led to a two-year joint study in partnership with the African Population and Health Research Center. The study began in 2022. Its overall objective was to provide evidence for action on mainstreaming gender issues in basic education in Kenya. Gender mainstreaming generally refers to being sensitive to gender when developing policies and curricula, governing schools, teaching and using learning materials.

The study specifically aimed to:

1. examine how the teacher-training curriculum prepares teachers to implement gender mainstreaming strategies within the basic education sector

2. examine how gender mainstreaming is practised in classrooms during teaching and learning

3. assess the relationship between teaching practices and students’ attendance, choice of subjects and academic performance

4. evaluate the availability of institutional policies, practices and guidelines to mainstream gender issues and the extent to which they influence gender mainstreaming in education.

I’m a gender and education researcher and was part of the team from the African Population and Health Research Center that collected data for the policy review. This data came from 10 counties with high child poverty rates and urban informal settlements. These indicators highlight an inability to access one or more basic needs or services.

The study involved teacher trainers and trainees. We also spoke to education officials, and learners in primary and secondary schools. We carried out classroom observations, knowledge and attitude surveys, questionnaires, key informant interviews and focus group discussions.

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Read more: 6 priorities to get Kenya’s curriculum back on track – or risk excluding many children from education

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The data showed gaps in teacher training, as well as institutional and teaching practices at the basic education level. Policy wasn’t being carried through in practice.

The gaps

Our study found that Kenya needs to review its teacher education curriculum to make it more gender responsive.

Teachers also need more training to follow practices that are gender responsive. These practices include extending positive reinforcement to girls and boys, maintaining eye contact and allowing learners to speak without interruption.

Deliberate steps should be taken to ensure that schools and teacher training colleges are gender inclusive in their practices, guidelines and programmes.

More specifically, our study found:

• Teacher trainees had a relatively good understanding of gender-equitable teaching and learning practices. But there was a need to place greater importance on this in lesson planning and in supporting girls in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

• Gender mainstreaming is not built into the teacher training curriculum. It isn’t taught as a standalone unit. Teacher trainees learnt about it mainly from general courses, such as child development and psychology, or private training. And teacher trainees were unaware that they were being tested on this.

• There were no significant gender differences in how teachers in pre-primary and primary school taught boys and girls. At the secondary level, however, teachers engaged boys more than girls during during literacy and STEM lessons.

• At both primary and secondary levels, gender-equitable practices positively influenced learning outcomes in English and STEM subjects. These practices improved academic performances in English at the primary level. They led to improvements in biology, English, mathematics and physics at the secondary level.

• The odds of school attendance increased if teachers treated boys and girls in equitable ways.

• The odds of boys selecting chemistry and physics at the secondary level increased if the teacher of the subject was approachable and if the subject was considered applicable to future careers.

• More than 40% of primary and secondary schools didn’t have guidelines on sexual harassment and gender-based violence for teachers and students. And most of the schools that said they had these guidelines couldn’t provide them to the research team. These guidelines help mainstream gender issues in schools and communities.

What next

To advance gender equality, Kenya must move beyond policy awareness. It must be more responsive to gender in teacher training, classroom practices and institutional leadership.

Our study recommends:

• creating a positive and inclusive learning environment where both boys and girls feel valued, capable, and motivated to learn

• teaching gender mainstreaming as a standalone unit, or integrating it into the teaching methodology

• coaching, mentorship and modelling of best practices to trainee teachers

• financial support for gender mainstreaming in all areas of teacher education

• encouraging girls to pursue STEM subjects and careers at an early age through formal mentorship programmes

• encouraging and empowering women teachers and parents to take up leadership positions in schools to provide role models for students.

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Read more: Kenya’s decision to make maths optional in high school is a bad idea – what should happen instead

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Our findings offer a critical evidence base for the education ministry and other stakeholders. They should put accountability mechanisms in place.

Only through sustained, data-driven action can Kenya achieve a truly inclusive and equitable education system.

– 10 years ago Kenya set out to fix gender gaps in education – what’s working and what still needs to be done
– https://theconversation.com/10-years-ago-kenya-set-out-to-fix-gender-gaps-in-education-whats-working-and-what-still-needs-to-be-done-255400

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Sioux McKenna, Professor of Higher Education, Rhodes University, South Africa, Rhodes University

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is trained on enormous bodies of text, video and images to identify patterns. It then creates new texts, videos and images on the basis of this pattern identification. Thanks to machine learning, it improves its ability to do so every time it is used.

As AI becomes embedded in academic life, a troubling reality has emerged: students are extremely vulnerable to its use. They don’t know enough about what AI is to be alert to its shortcomings. And they don’t know enough about their subject content to make judgements on this anyway. Most importantly, they don’t know what they don’t know.

As two academics involved in higher education teaching, we argue that there are four key dangers facing students in today’s world of AI. They are:

• blind trust in its abilities

• using it to side-step actual learning

• not knowing how it works

• perpetuating the gap between expertise and uncritical yet confident noise.

Given our experiences as academics who have developed curricula for students and who research generative AI, we think there are three things universities can do. They should teach critical AI literacy, emphasise why developing knowledge is important, and teach students why being an expert matters if they’re going to engage meaningfully with AI.

The four dangers

Blind trust in AI’s false confidence. A recent Microsoft report showed that those who know the least about a topic are the most likely to accept AI outputs as correct. Generative AI programs like ChatGPT and Claude produce text with remarkable confidence. Students lacking domain expertise can’t identify when these systems are completely wrong.

Headlines already demonstrate the consequences of this in the workplace: lawyers submitting fabricated case citations generated by AI, and hospitals using AI transcription tools that invent statements never actually made.

Generative AI can get it wrong because it doesn’t understand anything in the human sense of the word. But it can identify and replicate patterns with remarkable sophistication. These patterns include not only words and ideas but also tone and style.

Missing the power of education. A core purpose of higher education is to give students a new way of understanding the world and their place in it. When students use AI in ways that sidestep intellectual challenges, they miss this essential transformation.

When students simply outsource their thinking to AI, they’re getting credentials without competence. They might graduate with degrees but without knowledge and expertise.

The false confidence trap. Even students who develop critical awareness about AI’s limitations face what Punya Mishra, a learning engineer professor at Arizona State University, calls “the false confidence trap”. They might recognise that AI can produce errors but lack sufficient subject knowledge to correct those errors.

As Mishra puts it:

It’s like having a generic BS detector but no way to separate truth from fiction.

This creates a dangerous half-measure where students recognise AI isn’t perfect but can’t effectively evaluate its outputs.

Perpetuating the knowledge gap. As AI becomes ubiquitous in workplaces, the gap between those with genuine expertise and those relying solely on AI will widen. Students who haven’t developed their own knowledge foundations will be increasingly marginalised in a world that paradoxically values human expertise more, not less, as AI advances.

Answers

There are three steps universities can take.

Integrate critical AI literacy. Students need to understand how generative AI works – how AI is trained on massive databases of human-created texts and images to identify patterns by which to craft new outputs.

It’s not enough to have an “Intro to AI” course. Every discipline needs to show students how AI intersects with their field and, most significantly, empower them to reflect on the ethical implications of its use. This includes engaging in questions around the use of copyrighted materials for the training of generative AI, the biases inherent in AI generated texts and images, and the enormous environmental cost of AI use.

Emphasise knowledge development. Higher education institutions must actively counter the view that university is merely about the provision of credentials. We need to help students see the value of acquiring domain expertise. This is not always self-evident to those students who understand higher education only as a means to a job, which encourages them to engage with knowledge in an instrumentalist way – and thus to use AI in ways that prevent engagement with complex ideas. It is a personal relationship with knowledge that will prepare them for a future where AI is everywhere. Advocating for the power of knowledge needs to be a central part of every academic’s job description.

Model dual expertise. Academics should model what Mishra calls “the dual expertise challenge” — combining domain knowledge with critical AI literacy. This means demonstrating to students how experts engage with AI: analysing its outputs against established knowledge, identifying biases or gaps, and using AI as a tool to enhance human expertise rather than replace it.

As AI becomes increasingly sophisticated, the value of human expertise only grows. Universities that prepare students to critically engage with AI while developing deep domain knowledge will graduate the experts that society needs in this rapidly evolving technological landscape.

We have our work cut out for us, but expertise remains highly valued.

– AI can be a danger to students – 3 things universities must do
– https://theconversation.com/ai-can-be-a-danger-to-students-3-things-universities-must-do-255652

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Fridah Gatwiri Kiambati, Post Doctoral research scientist, African Population and Health Research Center

Literacy – being able to read, write and understand written or spoken language – is a cornerstone of educational achievement. Yet, for millions of children worldwide, acquiring basic literacy skills is a significant challenge.

This is a result of systemic inequalities, poverty, conflict, displacement and gender disparities. A Unicef report on global literacy levels in 2023 found that 89% of 10-year-olds in sub-Saharan Africa were unable to read or comprehend a basic story.

In Kenya, the gap in foundational literacy is stark. A nationwide evaluation of over 44,000 children across 1,973 primary schools in 2023 found that three in 10 grade 6 learners aged 11 struggled to read grade 3-level (age 8) texts.

These numbers highlight the critical need to address reading difficulties in early grades to ensure that learners do not fall behind irretrievably.

When learners aren’t able to read, they are likely to fall behind in literacy and other learning areas. This is because foundational learning skills – which include literacy (reading) and numeracy (basic maths) – are the building blocks for learning in later years of schooling and for lifelong learning.

I am an inclusive education researcher. I was involved in the Developing Readers Study. It set out to design and pilot an intervention to improve literacy skills among grade 2 and 3 learners who are furthest behind in reading.

The study, implemented by the African Population and Health Research Center, was aimed at providing policy-relevant evidence on how support for struggling readers can be formally and systematically incorporated into school timetables and education systems.

In 13 weeks, more than a third of the learners had become fluent readers.

The study

The Developing Readers Study was implemented in 15 schools in Kiambu County, which neighbours the Kenyan capital Nairobi. This was strategic to design, test and refine the intervention before scaling up.

The intervention started with the preparation of instruction materials. These included a teachers’ guide and assessment booklet, as well as homework packets for the learners. Teachers were trained on how to deliver the structured intervention while accommodating individual learner needs.

Learners were assessed to identify those with reading difficulties. Out of 2,805 learners from 15 schools screened, 920 (33%) learners had reading difficulties.

They were then categorised into three groups as per their reading levels at baseline:

• module 1 for non-readers, who numbered 410 (45%)

• module 2 for beginning readers, who could read 1-9 correct words per minute (212 learners, or 23%)

• module 3 for intermediate readers who could read 10-16 correct words per minute (298 learners, or 32%).

The learners were then taken through remedial lessons for English and Kiswahili for 13 weeks. Each lesson lasted 30 minutes. During the intervention period, teachers received support from curriculum support officers, and quality assurance and standards officers in Kiambu County.

In addition, these officers observed the lessons to identify the support needed. Cluster meetings were held to gather teacher feedback on the implementation process.

Parents were also engaged through homework packets. This encouraged a supportive home environment for learning.

The results

The study led to significant improvements in literacy outcomes among participating learners over the 13 weeks.

1. The proportion of non-readers who couldn’t read any correct word per minute reduced from 43.3% (following a few dropouts) to 18.9% at endline. This improvement highlights the power of targeted instruction to transform learning outcomes for struggling readers.

2. Both boys and girls benefited from the programme. However, girls consistently outperformed boys in tasks like syllable and oral passage reading. These insights highlight the importance of designing interventions that address gender-specific learning needs.

3. The programme equipped teachers with practical tools and strategies to give learners individual attention according to their needs. By the endline assessment, 92% of teachers were closely following the structured lesson guides, demonstrating increased confidence and competence.

4. Parents played a pivotal role in the programme’s success. Weekly homework packets provided opportunities for learners to practise reading at home.

5. Over a third of the learners (37%) advanced to emergent and fluent reading levels, meaning they no longer required remedial support. This progression was particularly notable among younger learners in grade 2, underscoring the value of early intervention.

The developing readers intervention stands out because it goes beyond addressing literacy challenges at the classroom level. It also brought in education officials, rigorous teacher training and contextualised learning materials.

Its findings demonstrate that structured, targeted interventions can effectively address foundational literacy gaps. This same model can be used elsewhere.

What next

The study provides a roadmap for addressing Kenya’s literacy crisis. Its positive outcomes demonstrate that early, targeted interventions can put struggling readers on the path to success.

Scaling up this programme offers an opportunity to ensure no child is left behind in acquiring foundational literacy skills.

To achieve this, policymakers must make sure remedial interventions take place at schools. They must also provide resources for teacher training and promote home-school collaboration.

With sustained investment and a commitment to evidence-based strategies, Kenya can bridge its literacy gap and pave the way for a brighter future for its learners.

– We set out to improve literacy among struggling readers in Kenya – what we learnt
– https://theconversation.com/we-set-out-to-improve-literacy-among-struggling-readers-in-kenya-what-we-learnt-253252

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Frederik Wild, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Heidelberg

Teenage pregnancy rates remain high across many parts of the developing world: In Africa, on average, about one in ten girls between the ages of 15 and 19 has already given birth. These early pregnancies often come with serious consequences for young mothers and their children. They are linked to lower education levels, poorer health outcomes, and reduced economic opportunities.

Scientists, development agencies and NGOs have long heralded education as a powerful tool to reduce early childbearing. Education may directly influence women’s reproductive behaviour, but it can also improve their employment and income-generating opportunities, leading them to postpone pregnancy.

But does access to basic education for young girls result in such successes uniformly across population groups?

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Read more: Ghana’s free high school policy is getting more girls to complete secondary education – study

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We are economists who conducted a study to explore the effect of primary school education on fertility and its related outcomes in Burundi. A bold education reform took place in that country in 2005: the government abolished formal school fees for primary education. As a result, many children who had been excluded from school by cost were able to get a basic education.

The free primary education policy displays a natural experiment for researchers interested in the effects of education. Because the reform applied only to children young enough to be in school, we could compare girls who were eligible for free schooling with those who were just too old to be eligible (but similar in other ways). This allowed us to track the policy’s direct and causal effects.

Indeed, we see that Burundi’s free primary education policy increased educational attainment of women by 1.22 years on average. Our findings also provide new, robust evidence that education can reduce downstream effects, as we see teenage childbearing reducing by as much as 6.9 percentage points. In other words, while about 37% of teenage women who did not benefit from free primary education had given birth before the age of 20, only 30% of those eligible for free primary education had done so.

Importantly, and new in our findings, education conferred the greatest benefit to girls from the poorest segment of society. Our study thereby underscores an important lesson for policymakers: education policies can be highly effective, but not necessarily for everyone in the same way.

A natural experiment in Burundi

We used nationally representative data from Burundi’s Demographic and Health Surveys to establish the effects of education. We compared women born between 1987 and 1991 to those born between 1992 and 1996 – aged 14-18 and 9-13 respectively when the free school policy took effect. We applied modern econometric techniques to identify the increase in years of schooling induced by the policy. We then examined the effect of this increase in schooling on girls’ outcomes, including teenage pregnancy, literacy, and the likelihood of working for cash income, among other outcomes.

The results were striking. Girls who had been young enough to benefit from free schooling gained, on average, 1.22 more years of education thanks to the programme. That corresponds to a 34% increase in the years of education compared to similar women who missed out on the policy. Crucially, this increase occurred across the board – both poor and wealthier women gained more education.

But there was a twist: only young women from poor backgrounds seemed to reap broader benefits from that extra schooling.

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Read more: Burundi at 60 is the poorest country on the planet: a look at what went wrong

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For girls from very low-income households, one additional year of schooling reduced the likelihood of becoming a teenage mother by nearly 7 percentage points.

It also decreased their desired number of children and boosted their literacy and chances of working for a cash income outside their own home. These are all powerful indicators of women gaining autonomy and making more informed reproductive choices.

While girls from wealthier households experienced an increase in education too, this additional schooling showed no measurable effect on fertility, literacy, or employment outcomes for them. Thus, we did not find any statistically significant impact of increased schooling for these girls.

In other words, the free primary education programme in Burundi increased the number of years of education for girls in general but the downstream effects of that education appear to have materialised only for the very poor.

Why does household wealth matter?

Why would women from the relatively wealthier families not benefit equally from more education?

One reason could be that somewhat wealthier households had already ensured higher levels of education for their daughters, even before school fees were abolished in Burundi. The education reform thus made less of a difference in their lives. Very poor families, on the other hand, were far more likely to be constrained by the costs of primary education. When that barrier was removed, their daughters could finally access schooling, and this had transformative effects also for sexual and reproductive health.

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Read more: Girls thrive with women teachers: a study in Francophone Africa

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For the most disadvantaged, education is more likely to open up new economic opportunities. We found that policy-induced education increased their likelihood of working outside of their own household for a cash income, which raises the opportunity cost of early childbearing. The classic economic theory by Nobel prize laureate Gary Becker and Jacob Mincer suggests that when women have better employment prospects, they are more likely to postpone childbirth. And they invest more in their children but tend to have fewer of them. This is precisely what we observed in our data.

Education also seems to empower women by increasing their knowledge and capacity to access information. We found that literacy rates among poor women rose significantly with each added year of schooling. Another prominent theory in the literature on education is that educated women are more likely to understand and use contraception, make informed reproductive decisions, and challenge traditional gender norms.

Rethinking one-size-fits-all policies

Our study underscores an important lesson for policymakers: education policies can be highly effective, but not necessarily for everyone in the same way.

When evaluating the success of reforms like free primary education, we must go beyond average effects. Aggregated data can mask substantial differences between population groups. If we had only looked at average outcomes, we might have concluded that free schooling had little effect on teenage childbearing. But by disaggregating our data by household wealth, we see a different and far more hopeful picture. Free schooling has powerful effects – if we know where to look.

– Does free schooling give girls a better chance in life? Burundi study shows the poorest benefited most
– https://theconversation.com/does-free-schooling-give-girls-a-better-chance-in-life-burundi-study-shows-the-poorest-benefited-most-253634

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Philip Harrison, Professor School of Architecture and Planning, University of the Witwatersrand

South African president Cyril Ramaphosa met senior leaders of Johannesburg and Gauteng, the province it’s located in, in March 2025 to discuss ways to arrest the steep decline in South Africa’s largest city.

Ramaphosa announced a two-year-long presidential intervention to tackle some of the city’s most pressing issues. It is to be led by the Presidential Johannesburg Working Group with eight cross-governmental and multi-stakeholder workstreams.

Johannesburg was established 130 years ago, where the world’s largest-ever gold deposits were discovered. It grew rapidly in the early 20th century and became the country’s economic heartland and largest population centre. Like all South African cities, it was deeply scarred by apartheid policies. People were divided by racially defined groups. Good services and a strong economy benefited a minority, and a black majority were pushed into impoverished ghettos.

But, for about the first two decades of post-apartheid rule from 1994, Johannesburg led the country with innovation and progressive change. It pioneered the new local government system, institutional reforms, new practice on city strategy and planning, pro-poor service delivery, and modern transport infrastructure.

Today, however, the city is in a dire state. Over the past decade, roughly coinciding with the arrival of messy coalition governance in 2016, sound political leadership, administrative stability and financial management have crumbled. Underinvestment in infrastructure maintenance has led to collapsing services. Public trust is deteriorating among increasingly frustrated communities. This was evident in local election results. It also shows up in recent data released by the Gauteng City-Region Observatory on public trust in local government.

The local economy has stagnated. The city’s official unemployment rate of 34.3% is higher than the national average of 32.9%. Mounting joblessness and dwindling incomes have intertwined with depleted trust to knock levels of payment for property rates and service charges. In turn this has deepened the financial and service maintenance crisis.

Corruption in many parts of the city is an endemic complicating factor.

The presidential intervention is designed to address this complex interplay between embedded legacies and failings post-apartheid. The workstreams involving city officials and concerned stakeholders are generating ideas for priority actions. There is also a new energy in the city government, with the executive mayor and members of his mayoral committee making turnaround promises.

This long overdue attention is heartening. But some caution is called for. While some “quick wins” are needed, there will be no easy turnaround. The best prospect is likely to be a process of recovery that will require patience and methodical attention over the long term. A city cannot be repaired in the way an automobile can. A city has a trillion moving parts and is in a constant state of makeover, as dynamics of economy, technology, demography, environment, society, politics, and more, interact and produce change.

The question is not whether a city is fixed – it can never finally be – but rather what trajectory it is on. For Johannesburg, the question is how to exit the downward spiral and begin the process of reconstruction.

We are a group who previously worked in the City of Johannesburg as officials, who are now academics with decades of experience observing local governance trends and dynamics, or scholars engaged in civil society coalitions or communities mobilising around the crisis. Some of us have been involved in the Presidential Johannesburg Working Group over the last few months.

Our view is that there are four areas needing urgent but sustained attention.

Focus areas

The first is the need for a joint effort across national, provincial and municipal government to resolve the crisis. We are pleased that this has begun. The political leadership in the city (and of the province) failed to grasp the opportunity provided by the post-2024 election national compromises to put together a broad-based government of local unity to lead reconstruction. There is no option now but to pursue an inter-governmental initiative led by national government with the committed involvement of the other spheres.

Only genuine collaboration will succeed.

In this respect, the Presidential Johannesburg Working Group holds promise. But what will be needed is careful, concerted work focused first on short-term priorities. Then, over years, on key structural challenges facing the city.

Second, the city needs civil society in all its forms to hold a careful balance between keeping up the pressure on municipal government, constantly holding it accountable to its residents, and working with government to help it solve problems. The Joburg Crisis Alliance, Jozi-my-Jozi, WaterCAN and similar initiatives are claiming well-recognised and respected voice in the affairs of the municipality.

Johannesburg needs a city government that is open to this scrutiny, accepting the need for transparency, and open to the help that civil society can offer.

To raise the level of accountability and collaboration, a clear programme of restoration has to be communicated openly to the public. Milestones and expenditure requirements need to be set that allow for constant monitoring. There must be open council meetings, and regular online and in-person briefings.

Also required are new mechanisms for citizen-based monitoring. These may include trained citizen monitors reporting on service delivery. Alternatively, the establishment of a sort of “Citizen’s Council” which meets regularly to receive reports from these monitors and the city administration.

International examples include the Bürgerrat model. This is now fully institutionalised in parts of Germany and Austria to strengthen local democracy and accountability. In this model, citizens are randomly selected to sit on a council which monitors performance of local government and provides new ideas.

Another approach could be for civil society organisations to be invited to a Citizen’s Council that would act in support of the oversight processes of the elected Municipal Council.

Third, there has to be a solution to unstable coalition governments. These seem to be structured to facilitate separate political fiefdoms where spoils can be divided in the allocation of portfolios. At minimum, the presidential intervention must provide for a check and balance on processes where bureaucratic appointments and budgetary allocations may serve the interests of cronyism. For example, there should be transparency and rigour in appointments to the boards of Johannesburg’s municipally owned companies.

Regulatory reforms are required in the political arena. This should include rules for the distribution of seats on the municipal executive and the election of mayors. Between January 2023 and August 2024 a tiny minority party held the mayoralty because the larger parties could not agree on a mayoral selection or, more cynically, to ensure that the executive mayor could not call large parties to account.

More importantly, though, there has to be a change in political culture. This is a longer-term process.

Fourth, the problems run far deeper than what bureaucratic reorganisation can achieve.

The longer-term project is to build a capable administration with clear political direction and oversight but insulated from personal agendas and factional battles. The administration became confused and demoralised because of the political instability over an extended period. There are, however, still many capable and committed public servants in the city bureaucracy. The focus should be on working with them to rebuild the administration, making it a place where talent and initiative are recognised and rewarded.

Restored political leadership and a rejuvenated administration is needed for a long term process, extending far beyond the quick wins. This process will involve refurbishing the decaying network infrastructure, restoring financial stability, reestablishing social trust and returning confidence to the city’s economy.

2025 marks 30 years since the first democratic local elections. National government is looking seriously at sweeping municipal reforms. And the next municipal election – likely to be held at the end of 2026 – is an opportunity to make a deep transformation effort. Citizens can ensure that parties contesting the election place Johannesburg’s recovery at the heart of their agenda.

– Johannesburg’s problems can be solved – but it’s a long journey to fix South Africa’s economic powerhouse
– https://theconversation.com/johannesburgs-problems-can-be-solved-but-its-a-long-journey-to-fix-south-africas-economic-powerhouse-256013

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Misheck Mutize, Post Doctoral Researcher, Graduate School of Business (GSB), University of Cape Town

Over the past two decades, African countries have increasingly turned to international capital markets to meet their development financing needs. For example, Kenya and Benin raised a combined US$2.5 billion through bond issuances during the first half of 2025. Proceeds were used to repay maturing bonds. This means new bonds, with unfavourable terms, are being issued to pay previous lenders.

Yet African bonds are substantially mispriced, resulting in excessively high yields that are not justified by fundamentals – based on economic, fiscal and institutional strengths. Mispricing occurs when a country has high economic growth, stable institutions that support government policy implementation, rule of law and accountability, yet its bonds trade at higher yields than those of its peers. In other words, there will be every reason for investors to trust that the country will repay what it owes, but they still expect a higher return. This is happening because of lack of information and biases perpetuated by global entities that are facilitating bond sells in Africa.

Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal have strong growth (5% to 6.5%), yet they face high yields on their bonds (7.8% to 8.2%) compared to Namibia and Morocco with approximately 3% growth and bond interest of 6%.

This mispricing imposes a heavy debt servicing burden on already constrained public budgets.

At the same time African countries face a puzzling paradox: while they’re paying more for the debt they’re raising, the demand for these bonds is much higher (oversubscribed). All bond issuances in Africa are subscribed by as much as over five times. This has only been common in Africa. It is puzzling why governments are not leveraging on the high demand to bargain for lower interest rates.

In my view, based on my bond pricing modelling expertise, I believe that mispricing of Eurobonds in Africa – debt instruments issued by a country in a currency different from its own – is not a market anomaly. It shows internal capacity failures in African countries, structural market biases and insufficient understanding of the complex mechanics of global debt markets.

Oversubscription of Eurobonds should be a source of power for African governments, not a missed opportunity. African countries can move from being price takers to price negotiators. They should be able to reduce debt costs, freeing up resources for development.

But to get there African countries need to address the power imbalance in the markets.

Governments need to invest in bond pricing expertise to increase their negotiating power.

The false success signal of oversubscription

There are several reasons why African bonds remain mispriced at a higher interest despite the oversubscriptions.

Firstly, a lack of technical expertise in primary bond issuance in the debt management offices of the majority of African governments. Very few on the continent have intelligence systems for gathering information on financial markets and formal investor relations programmes. Neither do they have in-house quantitative analysts or pricing specialists capable of engaging investment banks on an equal footing during roadshows and negotiations.

The debt management offices are unable to engage confidently and critically with financial intermediaries to challenge assumptions, simulate pricing scenarios and conduct their own comparative market analysis.

After initial public offers, most governments don’t engage with holders of their bonds on the secondary market. Nor do they monitor bond post-issuance performance. The lack of interest in the secondary market has created a feedback loop where poor market intelligence has contributed to high coupons on new issuances.

Secondly, advanced economies engage investors regularly through briefings, roadshows and timely reports. Communication by African governments is often ad hoc and usually limited to the period around a new bond issuance.

This prevents investors from forming informed, long-term views. It leads to a default risk premium in pricing.

Thirdly, debt issuance by African governments is often politically driven rather than strategically timed. Often this leads to rushed or ill-prepared entries.

Sometimes it’s done when the cost of debt is rising globally, close to election cycles, or because governments are facing a financial crunch caused by falling reserves.

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Read more: African governments have developed a taste for Eurobonds: why it’s dangerous

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Fourth, African sovereigns often approach the Eurobond market with weak negotiating power. They are heavily reliant on a small pool of western investment banks as technical advisors to manage the bond issuance. These banks tend to be more inclined towards their own global investment client networks. Their incentives are not aligned with achieving the lowest possible yield for the issuers.

African issuers often accept the initial price guidance from advisors and agree to high yields even in oversubscribed situations. Even when demand could support a lower yield, African issuers fail to negotiate pricing downwards. Issuing syndicates have no incentive to push for optimal pricing for the issuer as they receive transaction-based fees.

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Read more: African countries aren’t borrowing too much: they’re paying too much for debt

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The role of bond issuing syndicates is a major factor in the mispricing. In bond issuance, a syndicate is a group of financial institutions that structures the bond, price and market (also known bookbuilding), underwrite the unsold portion of the bond, sell the bond to their investors, and ensure compliance and documentation. These syndicates set coupon rates higher than necessary as a conservative hedge against perceived investor scepticism.

African governments have become passive participants rather than active price-setters. African-based bond syndicates are systematically bypassed despite growing regional capacity and distribution networks. Bond issues are also allocated to offshore buyers, sidelining local institutional investors.

Breaking the cycle of mispricing

To correct the systemic Eurobond mispricing and reduce debt servicing costs, African countries must undertake reforms.

First, governments should invest in debt management capacity.

Second, they must actively monitor secondary market trading to identify opportunities such as bond buybacks and exchanges that could improve the debt profile. Real-time analytics on bond trading performance should inform future issuance terms and investor communication strategies.

Third, governments must build institutional routines for submitting data, and proactively engage investors and rating agencies. This will challenge and influence risk assumptions. Investors need consistent assurances, especially on the ability to easily exit positions.

Fourth, African countries need to maintain and monitor up-to-date benchmarks from peers with comparable pricing data. Without accurate comparisons, it is difficult to know whether the proposed bond pricing by syndicates is fair and accurate. They must stop solely relying on what investment banks recommends.

Lastly, African governments should involve at least one African-based syndicate member, prioritise allocation to African institutional investors and promote regional arrangements with international banks to ensure knowledge transfer and equitable participation.

– African countries are bad at issuing bonds, so debt costs more than it should: what needs to change
– https://theconversation.com/african-countries-are-bad-at-issuing-bonds-so-debt-costs-more-than-it-should-what-needs-to-change-257128

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Julie Zollmann, Digital Planet Fellow, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

Many argue that gig work involves exploitation, as research and media coverage have highlighted. But that doesn’t seem to deter ride hailing drivers on platforms like Uber and Bolt.

In Kenya, in fact, many new drivers continued to join platforms even as fares were slashed starting in 2016.

As a PhD student studying the role of digitalisation in development, I spent several years trying to understand how digital drivers experienced the quality of their work. My research found that in 2019, a typical digital driver in Nairobi worked about 58 hours a week and earned well below the minimum wage on an hourly basis. What made this work attractive? Why did drivers stay?

In a new paper, I draw on a 2019 survey of 450 drivers in Nairobi and 38 subsequent qualitative interviews in Nairobi and Kenya’s second largest ride hailing market, Mombasa, in 2021 that explored drivers’ experiences in detail.

In addition to measuring working hours and incomes, my survey team asked drivers if they considered their work “dignified”. Nearly eight in ten (78%) of our survey participants said yes. While that specific share of drivers may have changed since then, the underlying reasons drivers found the work dignified remain unchanged.

In the global north, scholars have rung alarm bells about what “gig work” means for the erosion of standard jobs with legal protections around working hours, minimum wage and other benefits. But the drivers my team and I spoke with in Kenya felt that digital driving was a step towards formalisation rather than a drift away from an ideal formal job. Driving had diginity in contrast to the indignities of low-wage work and the vast informal sector, which was their realistic alternative for making a living.

My findings highlight that workers’ experiences on global platforms like Uber are not universal and that digitisation may deliver some improvements in work quality relative to informal work in African contexts.

How did digital work deliver dignity?

Drivers explained that app companies imposed rules and structure that provided “discipline” in a transport sector more broadly associated with rudeness, unruliness, and disrespect towards passengers. Requirements for things like driving licences, proof of insurance, and ratings seemed to make drivers feel more professional and make passengers see them as such.

Drivers felt proud to be part of a driver community that behaved professionally under these conditions. A 38-year-old male driver in Nairobi who had been working on the platforms for three years told us:

We are very respected … Everyone trusts you to carry them. It’s not like the old days, when the taxi driver might rob you and dump you or even kill you. We are getting attraction from the society, even in the slums. They know you are an app driver, and they trust you because app drivers are good people. They know you can deliver, that you will be honest.

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On platforms, drivers were matched digitally with riders. Respondents said this brought dignity by ensuring drivers would receive a fairly steady stream of clients. This meant that a driver could rest assured he would earn money every day.

The alternative was to “hustle” in the informal economy to shake loose opportunities and constantly solicit those who might use their labour and beg for payment after a job was done. Constant solicitation and bargaining were exhausting and degrading.

One driver explained:

Most of us are poor. I have never walked out every morning sure that I would do a job. But now I know that if my car has been serviced and my phone is charged and working, I am going to work and not to some charity job. I used to wait at the base all day without getting a customer. Now, ….. at least two, three days are going to be good for you.

Digital matchmaking also meant that drivers were not limited to serving the few clients they already knew or who happened to pass them at a fixed base. They found themselves serving new parts of the city and carrying important people, including business people, celebrities and local politicians. Serving these high-end customers made them feel proud and important. Wealthy neighbourhoods, luxury hotels and high-end restaurants felt more open to them in otherwise exclusionary and segregated cities.

Some drivers felt that digitalisation had removed barriers to entry for taxi driving, like paying to join a parking base and building a client list.

The app did away with parking bases, and about half of drivers joined the system through a “partner”, paying a fixed weekly fee to rent their car instead of buying it themselves.

In efforts to make rides cheaper, in 2018 app companies in Kenya allowed smaller, less expensive cars on their platforms, lowering costs of ownership. Drivers in our survey showed that both formal and informal financiers were willing to offer loans to digital drivers, knowing they would have regular revenue to service their debt.

Buying a car was seen as a huge, dignifying accomplishment. One driver in the survey told us:

Growing up, I thought vehicles were owned only by the rich, but now digital driving has provided a means for me to own one and earn the respect of society.

David Muteru, then chairman of the Digital Taxi Association of Kenya, echoed this sentiment: “Owning a vehicle, that’s an asset”.

Dignity not always guaranteed

The dignifying value of order was only possible when app companies enforced their own rules and did so fairly. Drivers preferred the stringent rule enforcement of one major app over the lax enforcement of another, which made for more stressful and undignified interactions with riders.

When the rules were enforced, drivers could be sure that the app company would help if a rider refused to pay or if there was a dispute with the client. Drivers felt the stricter environment kept bad actors out.

Over time, though, app companies slashed prices, competing for market share. Drivers felt less respected by riders who saw them as desperate for money. Low fares pressed drivers to negotiate with riders for offline trips and higher rates, reintroducing the indignity of haggling.

Lessons for the future

Digitally mediated work raises many questions about labour standards.

This research shows how important it is to keep local context in mind. Digital driving is not the same experience for drivers in every context. Where people suffer indignities and deprivations in the informal sector, digitalisation may offer gains. But this potential depends on rule enforcement and pay. Material and subjective dignity are intertwined.

– Kenya’s ride-hailing drivers say their jobs offer dignity despite the challenges
– https://theconversation.com/kenyas-ride-hailing-drivers-say-their-jobs-offer-dignity-despite-the-challenges-257845

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Richard Calland, Emeritus Associate Professor in Public Law, UCT. Visiting Adjunct Professor, WITS School of Governance; Director, Africa Programme, University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, University of Cambridge

With the Trump administration slashing US Agency for International Development budgets and European nations shifting overseas development aid budgets to bolster defence spending, the world has entered a “post-aid era”.

But there is an opportunity to recast development finance as strategic investment: “country platforms”.

Country platforms are government-led, nationally owned mechanisms that bring together a country’s climate priorities, investment needs and reform agenda, and align them with the interests of development partners, private investors and implementing agencies. They function as a strategic hub: convening actors, coordinating funding, and curating pipelines of projects for investment.

Think of them as the opposite of donor-driven fragmentation. Instead of dozens of disconnected projects driven by external priorities, a country platform enables governments to set the agenda and direct finance to where it is needed most. That could be renewable energy, climate-smart agriculture, resilient infrastructure, or nature-based solutions.

Country platforms are a current fad. They were the talk of the town at the 2025 Spring meetings of multilateral development banks in Washington DC. Will they quickly fade as the next big new idea comes into view? Or can they escape the limitations and failings of the finance and development aid ecosystem?

The Independent High Level Expert Group on Climate Finance, on which I serve, is striving to find new ways to ramp up finance – both public and private – in quality and quantity. I agree with those who argue that country platforms could be the innovation that unlocks the capital urgently needed to tackle climate overshoot and buttress economic development.

The model is already being tested. More than ten countries have launched their platforms, and more are in the pipeline.

For African countries, the opportunity could not be more timely. African governments are racing to deliver their Nationally Determined Contributions. These are the commitments they’ve made to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions as part of climate change mitigation targets set out in the Paris Agreement. Implementing these plans is often being done under severe fiscal constraints.

At the same time global capital is looking for investment opportunities. But it needs to be convinced that the rewards will outweigh the risks.

Where it’s being tested

In Africa, South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Partnership has demonstrated both the potential and the complexity of a country platform. Egypt and Senegal also have country platforms at different stages of implementation. Kenya and Nigeria are exploring similar mechanisms. The African Union’s Climate Change and Resilient Development Strategy calls for country platforms across the continent.

New entrants can learn from countries that started first.

But country platforms come in different shapes and sizes according to the context.

Another promising example is emerging through Mission 300, an initiative of the World Bank and African Development Bank, working with partners like The Rockefeller Foundation, Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, and Sustainable Energy for All. It aims to connect 300 million people to clean electricity by 2030.

Central to this initiative are Compact Delivery and Monitoring Units. These are essentially country platforms anchored in electrification. They reflect how a well-structured country platform can make an impact. Twelve African countries are already moving in this direction. All announced their Mission 300 compacts at the Africa Heads of State Summit in Tanzania.

This growing cohort reflects a continental commitment to putting energy-driven country platforms at the heart of Africa’s development architecture.

Why now – and why Africa?

A well-functioning country platform can help in a number of ways.

Firstly, it can give the political and economic leadership a clear goal. The platform can survive elections and show stability, certainty and transparency to the investment world.

Secondly, national ownership and strategic alignment can reduce risk and build confidence. That would encourage investment.

Thirdly, it builds trust among development partners and investors through clear priorities, transparency, and national ownership.

Fourthly, it moves beyond isolated pilot projects to system-level transformation – meaning structural change. The transition in one sector, energy for example, creates new value chains that create more, better and safer jobs. Country platforms put African governments in charge of their own economic development, not as passive recipients of climate finance.

The country sets its investment priorities and then the match-making with international climate finance can begin.

Making it work: what’s needed

Developing the data on which a country bases its investment and development plans, and blending those with the fiscal, climate and nature data, is complex. For this reason country platforms require investment in institutional capacity, cross-ministerial collaboration, and strong coordination between finance ministries, environment agencies and economic planners. And especially, in leadership capability.

African countries must take charge of this capacity and capability acceleration.

Second, development partners can respond by providing money as well as supporting African leadership, aligning with national strategies, and being willing to co-design mechanisms that meet both investor expectations and local realities.

Capacity is especially crucial given the scale of Africa’s needs. According to the African Development Bank, Africa will require over US$200 billion annually by 2030 to meet its climate goals. Donor aid will provide only a fraction of this. It will require smart, coordinated investment and careful debt management. Country platforms provide the structure to govern the process.

Seizing the opportunity

Country platforms represent one of the most promising innovations in climate and development finance architecture. Properly designed and led, they offer African countries the opportunity to take ownership of their climate and development futures – on their own terms.

Country platforms could be the “buckle” that finally enables the supply and demand sides of climate finance to come together. It will require commitment, strategic and technical capability, and, above all, smart leadership.

– Development finance in a post-aid world: the case for country platforms
– https://theconversation.com/development-finance-in-a-post-aid-world-the-case-for-country-platforms-257994