Source: APO
By Benjamin Piper and Nompumelelo Mohohlwane.
Africa stands at the edge of a historic demographic shift. By 2050, one in three young people in the world will be African. This represents an extraordinary opportunity for the continent to shape global innovation and economic growth. But the promise of this moment depends on something very simple: whether every child in Africa learns to read and do basic maths in the early grades.
Why Learning Levels Remain Low
While we’ve seen steady progress from country governments committing to improving learning outcomes, we risk missing the mark if this prioritisation isn’t accompanied by high-quality, evidence-backed solutions. One of the most consistent patterns we have seen is that too many programmes are either poorly funded, poorly designed or poorly implemented. Materials arrive late or are misaligned to children’s needs. Teachers receive training but no follow-up coaching. Programmes spread quickly but thinly, without the depth required for real instructional change. Even in countries that have committed to improving foundational learning, there is a real risk that reform is not matched by high-quality programme design.
Yet this is not the full story. Across the continent, several African literacy programmes are built on strong evidence platforms. The key question is how to learn from what works — and expand it. In our new GEEAP-endorsed report, Effective Reading Instruction in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: What the Evidence Shows (https://apo-opa.co/4pM8nhq), we look closely at how countries can move from a scenario where only 10% of children can read by age 10, to one where strong foundational literacy skills for all children becomes the norm.
In South Africa, for example, the Northern Cape is the most recent province to use the evidence from previous structured pedagogy programmes (particularly the Early Grade Reading Programme II) in the design of their literacy programme. The programme, endorsed by the Department of Basic Education, has been expanded to support multilingual classrooms with delivery in the languages students speak at home, particularly Setswana in the Northern Cape and English. While the design elements of Northern Cape’s programme are strong and grounded in the evidence presented in the new GEEAP report, effective implementation is critical to achieve intended learning gains.
The Good News: Rapid Progress Is Possible
The evidence is building on what works. The GEEAP report shows rapid gains in literacy are possible even in resource-constrained settings. Crucially, these gains are also achievable in local African languages. Research conducted on eight of the highest-performing large-scale reading programmes in lower- and middle-income (LMICs), including five programmes from sub-Saharan Africa, found that these interventions provided explicit, systematic instruction on the core reading subskills, including phonics-based decoding. The Tusome programme in Kenya showed substantial learning gains, quite rapidly. Applying the key instructional areas that the GEEAP report suggests, Kenyan children’s English reading outcomes jumped by roughly the same amount (https://apo-opa.co/49JCwIb) as would normally be expected from an additional full year of schooling.
The GEEAP report addresses the critical issue of “why” these programmes work and how they will work in various contexts including providing specific suggestions for the implementation realities of literacy programmes, including that literacy instruction should be explicit, systematic, and comprehensive. When programmes are well designed technically, follow the best evidence of language of instruction choices, and implemented with fidelity, children across Sub-Saharan Africa learn to read quickly. But the report also explains that high-quality implementation is not a given, and countries that are applying the best evidence-based practices need to ensure that implementation quality is high and there is substantial monitoring data to course correct.
During the ADEA Triennale 2025, where the GEEAP report was launched, His Excellency Leo Elias Jamal, Secretary of State for Technical and Vocational Education, Mozambique, reminded us, that weak foundational skills don’t stay in the early grades. Instead, they become bottlenecks in TVET, STEM pathways, and the broader labour market. The entire system depends on a strong foundation.
If every child, regardless of background, gains solid reading and maths skills, countries build the base for innovation, productivity, and long-term economic growth.
What Makes This Paper Different
Past literacy research has largely focused on English or European languages taught in high-income contexts, leading to concerns that evidence from the Global North was being imported into African classrooms where the linguistic realities were very different. The new GEEAP report updates the evidence on the “science of reading” to apply to low and middle-income countries, generally, and Sub-Saharan Africa in particular. It draws on a growing body of new evidence, including more than 50 studies from sub-Saharan Africa and focuses specifically on LMIC contexts and African languages, offering guidance aligned to the linguistic realities of African classrooms. Both of the authors of this blog have been working on language issues in Sub-Saharan Africa for years and have been concerned about the dearth of Africa-specific language evidence in general – this report changes the status quo substantially – we now know substantially more about how to improve learning across a variety of languages and language groups. The paper provides general principles that are applicable across languages. We suggest that countries apply expertise on the specific languages to design the programmes, but we know much more about the specific methods that will apply in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The report highlights that the choice of language used for teaching can have a substantial impact on whether children in LMICs can learn to read successfully. While a multitude of technical and societal factors shape language of instruction policies, the evidence is clear: when children are initially taught to read in a language they do not speak at home, their reading development suffers. In sub-Saharan Africa the scale of the language mismatch problem, where children are taught to read in a language other than their home language, is staggering and affects 80% of children (https://apo-opa.co/4b8ZbAa).
We recognise, however, that teaching in home language is not always feasible. In such cases, we outline alternative evidence-based approaches that still enable children to learn effectively, even when instruction occurs in a second or even third language.
What are the Key Components of an Effective Literacy Programme?
Reading with comprehension is a complex process that relies on multiple, interconnected skills. These skills can be grouped into two broad domains: decoding and language comprehension. Decoding is the ability to recognise written symbols (e.g., letters) and convert them into the sounds they represent to recognise words. Language comprehension involves understanding the meaning of words, sentences and texts. Decoding and language comprehension skills constantly interact while reading, and both are essential. To develop decoding and language comprehension skills, children need explicit and systematic instruction in six core sub-skills:
- Oral language development: this includes listening and speaking skills, and vocabulary development.
- Phonological awareness: this is the ability to identify and manipulate the individual sounds in spoken language. Systematic phonics instruction: this refers to teaching children the specific relationships between letters and sounds, and how to combine these to form words. Reading fluency: this is the ability to read text accurately, quickly, and with appropriate expression.
- Reading comprehension: as part of reading instruction, children also benefit from explicit instruction in specific techniques to understand texts, such as monitoring their own comprehension and building knowledge about the world.
- Writing: a growing evidence base, including emerging research from LMICs, demonstrates that writing instruction—including letter formation, spelling, and composing texts—significantly supports reading development and reinforces the other core skills.
These approaches are not expensive nor complicated. They simply require focus, consistency, and political will.
What Leaders, Teachers, and Partners Can Do Now
We have the evidence, and we know what works. Here are some suggested changes to literacy programmes partners can consider adopting.
- Governments can adopt evidence-based literacy programmes, prioritise early-grade instruction as a funded area, and ensure teachers receive the support, materials and coaching they need.
- Teachers can use structured routines, provide daily practice, and check for understanding through simple assessments.
- Partners and donors can move beyond fragmented pilots and small pockets of success to invest in scale-up of programmes that follow the science of reading and collaborate to respond to government demand for evidence-based interventions.
A Moment for Action
During his June 2025 visit to the African Union headquarters, Ethiopia and Nigeria, Bill Gates underscored a truth African educators know well: “By unleashing human potential through health and education, every country in Africa should be on a path to prosperity—to power Africa’s next chapter.” But unleashing that potential requires solving the foundational learning crisis at its root.
Africa’s youth are its greatest asset, but only if all children gain foundational literacy skills – learning, growing, and competing. The GEEAP literacy report shows that change is not only possible; it is achievable, and it’s already happening in countries across the Global South.
The opportunity now is for leaders to take these lessons to scale. Transforming outcomes for millions begins with something powerful and achievable: a child who can read, understand, and apply what they learn.
Nompumelelo Nyathi-Mohohlwane is a co-author of the GEEAP-endorsed literacy report and Deputy Director in Research Coordination, Monitoring and Evaluation at South Africa’s Department of Basic Education. She is part of the government-led Early Grade Reading Study research team and holds a doctorate in Education Policy from Stellenbosch University.
Benjamin Piper is a GEEAP member and co-author of the GEEAP-endorsed literacy report and leads the Gates Foundation’s work on improving foundational literacy and numeracy in low- and middle-income countries. He previously led large-scale education programmes and randomized controlled trials across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel (GEEAP).
