Education in Africa: What Are We Learning?

Abstract

Countries across Africa continue to face major challenges in education. In this review, we examine 145 recent empirical studies (from 2014 onward) on how to increase access to and improve the quality of education across the continent, specifically examining how these studies update previous research findings. We find that 64% of the studies evaluate government-implemented programs, 36% include detailed cost analysis and 35% evaluate multiple treatment arms. We identify several areas where new studies provide rigorous evidence on topics that do not figure prominently in earlier evidence syntheses. New evidence shows promising impacts of structured pedagogy interventions (which typically provide a variety of inputs, such as lesson plans and training for teachers together with new materials for students) and of mother tongue instruction interventions, as well as from a range of teacher programs, including both remunerative (pay-for-performance of various designs) and non-remunerative (coaching and certain types of training) programs. School feeding delivers gains in both access and learning. New studies also show long-term positive impacts of eliminating school fees for primary school and positive impacts of eliminating fees in secondary school. Education technology interventions have decidedly mixed impacts, as do school grant programs and programs providing individual learning inputs (e.g., uniforms or textbooks).

The effectiveness of technology‐supported personalised learning in low‐ and middle‐income countries: A meta‐analysis

“…In addition to considering effect sizes, whether a programme should be implemented also depends on its potential to scale at reasonable cost (Angrist et al., 2020; Bakker et al., 2019; Harris, 2009). Educational technology interventions may not always lead to higher learning gains compared to low‐ or non‐technology initiatives once the effect of the technology use is isolated (Evans & Acosta, 2020; Ma et al., 2020). As such, the question should not be whether a technological approach could address a problem in the educational system, but rather whether it is the most effective and cost‐effective way to do so (Rodriguez‐Segura, 2020).…”

Cohort changes and drivers of education-specific union formation patterns in sub-Saharan Africa

“…Women born after 1980-84 are presumably the most beneficiaries of the policies that promoted girls' school participation in the early 1990s. These are also birth cohorts that are supposedly assumed to have experienced the most deterioration in education quality due to the influx of schools (Bold, Filmer et al 2017, Filmer, Rogers et al 2020, Evans and Mendez Acosta 2021, the most improvements in early school enrolment and grade progression rates (Ndaruhutse 2008, Lucas and Mbiti 2012, Grant 2015, World Bank 2020 and limited employment opportunities outside the family (Al-Samarrai andBennell 2007, Filmer andFox 2014). Thus, the observation that age at marriage among women with secondary education increased over these birth cohorts in Central and East Africa suggest that these conditions (poor education quality e.t.c) might not be inevitably the central mechanism that influenced stalls in marital timing in SSA regions.…”

“…The expansion of girls' school participation in SSA coincided with improvements in school completion rates. For example, Evans and Mendez Acosta (2021) estimated that the primary school completion rate increased from 40% to nearly 60% between 1975 and 2015. This shift means that, on average, women who attended school in recent years spent more years in school than women from previous generations.…”

“…Thus, in many SSA countries, early marriages may be perceived as practical means to girls' financial security, even among those who have completed primary or secondary education. Furthermore, SSA witnessed a deterioration of education quality in recent decades (Bold, Filmer et al 2017, Filmer, Rogers et al 2020, Evans and Mendez Acosta 2021, mainly due to the influx of schools following free primary education. For example, students complete their primary schooling in some countries without attaining the necessary reading and writing skills (Bold, Filmer et al 2017).…”

Female labour force participation in sub-Saharan Africa: A cohort analysis

“…Both enrolment in education and educational attainment have substantially increased in SSA over the past decades. According to Evans and Mendez Acosta (2021), the median primary completion rate in SSA countries soared from about 40 per cent to 70 per cent between 1995 to 2015. Simultaneously, the median lower secondary completion rate has doubled from 20 per cent to 40 per cent.…”