By Kwame Akyeampong, Professor of International Education and Development at the Open University (OU), UK, and Founder of its Centre for the Study of Global Development (CSGD and Sean Higgins, Lecturer in Education and International Development at the Institute of Education, University College London. Across Africa, the phrase ‘learning crisis’ has become shorthand for the […] The post Reconceptualizing the ‘learning crisis’ in Africa: Putting children, communities, and languages at the center appeared first on World Education Blog.
By Kwame Akyeampong, Professor of International Education and Development at the Open University (OU), UK, and Founder of its Centre for the Study of Global Development (CSGD and Sean Higgins, Lecturer in Education and International Development at the Institute of Education, University College London.
Across Africa, the phrase ‘learning crisis’ has become shorthand for the continent’s education challenges. As the 2022 and 2024 Spotlight Reports on Africa show, however, the learning crisis is not new. Nonetheless, the crisis framing risks narrowing our vision. When learning is reduced to assessment results, we overlook children’s lived experiences, teachers’ professional agency, and the linguistic and cultural worlds shaping classrooms. Assessment is essential, but when scores define success, they erase relational and contextual forms of knowledge. A relational understanding of learning recognizes that knowledge is built through interaction, meaning-making, and connection to community – processes that make learning deeper and more sustainable.
Across much of sub-Saharan Africa, children start school in languages they do not understand, teachers work within rigid systems that limit creativity, and communities are treated as beneficiaries rather than co-educators. Children learn to repeat rather than reason; teachers are implementers rather than innovators.
An alternative vision, grounded in Ubuntu – the African philosophy of relationality, care, and collective responsibility – sees education as a relationship of mutual recognition between teacher and learner, school and community, local language and national aspiration.
In our latest book, Reconceptualizing the Learning Crisis in Africa: Multi-dimensional pedagogies of accelerated learning programs, we propose three key shifts to reimagine basic education around dignity, belonging, and agency:
- Recognizing African children’s knowledge and agency rather than viewing them through a deficit lens.
- Valuing teachers’ local experience and multilingual competence as resources for innovation.
- Embedding community and language in the curriculum as enablers of deep learning.
Accelerated learning programs: Ubuntu in practice
These ideas are already visible in three Accelerated Learning Programs (ALPs) in Ethiopia, Ghana and Liberia. Together, they have reached hundreds of thousands of learners who had dropped out or never enrolled. Their success rests not on imported models, but on locally grounded, relational pedagogies – Ubuntu in practice.
- Ethiopia’s Speed Schools
Launched in 2011 in Ethiopia’s multilingual Southern Nations, Nationalities and People’s Region (SNNPR), Speed Schools offer a second chance for children aged 9–14 who missed early schooling. By 2017, over 200,000 learners had been reached. Schools are managed by local NGOs under the Accelerated Learning for Africa initiative, which runs a ten-month program that condenses the Grades 1–3 curriculum and delivers it in children’s mother tongues, in line with national policy.
This linguistic grounding produces strong results: learners master literacy and numeracy and transition smoothly into government schools at Grade 4. Mothers’ self-help groups complement learning through microfinance and entrepreneurship training, helping families sustain children’s education. The model demonstrates how mother-tongue instruction, community engagement, and economic empowerment can together restore learning for marginalized children.
- Ghana’s Complementary Basic Education (CBE) program
Since 2012, Ghana’s CBE program has provided a nine-month pathway for out-of-school children in northern Ghana, reaching over 250,000 learners. Classes of up to 25 pupils, taught in 12 community languages by local facilitators, are held in the afternoons to fit farming schedules. CBE achieves over 95% completion, with equal participation by girls, and transition rates into formal schooling rose from 84% to 95% between 2012 and 2017. Evaluations show strong gains in both local-language and English literacy as well as numeracy. By aligning instruction with community life and linguistic identity, CBE reframes basic education as a shared community project that restores dignity and motivation to excluded learners.
- Liberia’s Second Chance
Liberia’s Second Chance program, led by the Luminos Fund and local NGOs, applies the same accelerated, inclusive model in a post-conflict setting. The ten-month course condenses three years of curriculum for children aged 7–11 who have never attended school, reaching about 5,000 learners by 2022. Trained community facilitators use phonics-rich, activity-based teaching in small classes, while Parental Engagement Groups address barriers to attendance. A 2023 randomized control trial found that children read four times faster and solved twice as many math problems as peers outside the program. Beyond academic gains, children reported greater confidence and pride. With national scale-up planned, Second Chance shows how community-driven, mother-tongue-based accelerated learning can drive inclusion and educational recovery.
Across these programs, three insights stand out:
- Language matters: Children learn best in languages they understand, unlocking confidence and comprehension.
- Relationships matter: Supported teachers humanize learning through responsive pedagogy.
- Community matters: When schools value local knowledge, education gains meaning and legitimacy.
These lessons echo the 2024 Spotlight Report’s finding that sustainable progress depends not only on what is taught but on how and in what language it is taught.
Policy goals aligned with the 2024 Spotlight Report
The 2024 Spotlight Report highlights three system levers with strong evidence for improving foundational learning: curriculum and materials alignment, teacher support, and language of instruction. Evidence from the ALPs reinforces and extends these recommendations.
- Teach in the home language for longer – and train teachers accordingly
Mother-tongue instruction for at least six years strengthens literacy, numeracy, and motivation, yet many systems still follow ‘early exit’ models and switch to colonial languages after Grade 3. Evidence from Ghana, Ethiopia, and Liberia suggests that longer bilingual transitions yield stronger outcomes.
Policy goals:
- Conduct linguistic mapping to identify community language profiles.
- Produce curriculum materials and assessments in appropriate local languages.
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