Venue: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

WHAT: Continental Education Strategy for Africa – (CESA) Inter-Cluster Coordination Meeting.

THEME: Accelerated implementation of CESA 16-25 - Revitalising and reinforcing clusters in the implementation of AUs Agenda for Transforming Africa’s Education systems

WHEN: 19^th – 21^st August, 2020

WHERE: Virtual (Link will be shared)

TIME : 10 AM Daily

WHO: The African Union through the Department of Human Resources, Science and Technology

Speakers:

• HE Sarah Anyang Agbor, HRST Commissioner.
• Dr Mahama Ouedraogo, Director, HRST
• Ms. Prudence Ngwenya, Ag Head Education Division

Background Information

Africa’s education system is facing four main crises - equity, learning, relevance and affordability. The Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA 16-25 ) was adopted in 2015 to respond to these crises by transforming Africa’s education system. The twelve (12) strategic objectives articulate high-level results that aim to reorient and provide qualitative and quantitative improvements to African education and training systems and provide the continent with requisite human resources for achievement of the African Union’s Vision and Agenda 2063.

Under each strategic objective, a set of intermediate-level goals, called action areas (AAs), are provided to specify the critical elements and results the CESA 16-25 must accomplish before achieving the strategic objectives. These action areas are the basis on which operational plans for implementing the CESA 16-25 will be developed.

CESA also serves as a platform for bringing together all Education actors across the continent behind a transformative Pan African agenda for education. It is in this regard that the thematic cluster approach was adopted to bring together various stakeholders in specific fields of education to contribute to the achievement of CESA's strategic objectives. To date, twelve CESA thematic clusters have been launched. The full potential of the clusters remains untapped as the clusters are in different stages of functionality and performance.

The COVID-19 Pandemic and its negative impact on Africa’s education systems is calling on all education stakeholders at the regional and continental levels to come together to act with speed and at scale up to implement innovative initiatives that improve the resilience of Africa’s education system and ensures continuous learning.

OBJECTIVES OF THE WORKSHOP:

The meeting is being called to revitalize and reinforce the role of clusters in CESA implementation. Its purpose is to take stock of how the clusters are responding to and contributing to CESA implementation, and agree on 2020-2021 priorities, deliverables, and ways of working. The meeting will be used to discuss the AU’s framework for transforming Education in Africa.

The specific objectives of the meeting are:

1. To set the contexts for the transformation of Africa’s education systems reinforce to the role of Clusters in CESA Implementation.
2. To take stock of division of labour, scope of work, composition, functioning, coordination, and performance of clusters against Key Performance Indicators (KPI), and promote inter-cluster synergies.
3. To agree on the 2020-2021 cluster and inter-cluster priorities, work plan, ways of working and reporting mechanisms and frequency.

For further information contact :

Caseley Olabode Stephens| Policy Officer-Education -division| Department of Human Resource, Science and Technology, African Union Commission | Email: StephensC@africa-union.org

Media Contact:

Faith Adhiambo | Communications Officer-Agenda 2063 | African Union Commission | E-mail:OchiengJ@africa-union.org|