Africa Day 2024: Educate an Africa fit for the 21st century

The African Union declared 2024 as the year of education under the theme: " Educate an African fit for the 21st century: Building resilient education systems for increased access to inclusive, lifelong, quality, and relevant learning in Africa".

But access to quality education remains a challenge for many children in Africa. In particular, sub-Saharan Africa has the world’s largest out-of-school population, according to a recent report by the African Union and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

In Ghana, access to education has been enhanced by its government’s policies to provide free compulsory primary education since 1996, and free secondary school education since 2017.

ACEIR researchers are now investigating the consequences of these free schooling policies. The project will provide evidence on trends in education and labour market dynamics; the socioeconomic consequences of the reform to free education; and how these differ for men and women.

Another major contribution of the project is to collate a database of information on education, jobs, gender, and labour market activities; and to conduct training on data management and analysis.

The research is a collaboration between the Siyaphambili Post-school Research Initiative of the Southern Africa Labour and Development Resesarch Unit of the University of Cape Town and researchers from ACEIR’s Ghana and South Africa nodes. 

Read more about the project.

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