Repurposing the Global Development Education Agenda for Africa’s Future

The University of Cape Coast, Ghana in collaboration with the Centre of the Study of Global Development at The Open University, UK are organizing an International Conference on Education Research for Development in Africa (ICERDA) at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana from 19 th to 21st September 2023 under the theme: “REPURPOSING THE GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION AGENDA FOR AFRICA’S FUTURE”

Over the last four decades, Africa’s education development agenda has been shaped by global actors and organisations without much contribution from African education scholars, researchers, and policy makers. The SDG 4 goal and its targets have been used to frame new research agendas and policies improving education in Africa. Global data shows that as a continent Africa is lagging in improving the quality of education for most of its marginalised and disadvantaged groups. The prognosis in many research outputs and review of education performance often paints a depressing deficit in education performance leading to prescriptions that often ignore some of the deep-rooted challenges that can be traced to the legacy of colonial education. There is very little discussion on what is working in African context that is based on insights from African researchers and their analysis and interpretation of the education challenge. This conference will re-examine the challenges of education in Africa through a post-colonial lens to present a response that starts with an interrogation of how education research in Africa has been framed, what it misses and how it should be redefined. The conference will re-examine the learning crisis discourse in the African context, and how legacies of colonial and post-colonial education continue to hamper progress, silencing the voices and contributions of local researchers, actors, and practitioners. The conference will present sessions that showcase research by Africans, research organisations and centres all responding to the following questions – how should education research, policy and practice be reframed to provide sustainable solutions to Africa’s education challenges? How should researchers from outside Africa work with African researchers to tackle problems of education, what should be the nature of partnerships and how can an interdisciplinary approach provide better answers and solutions to education performance for Africa’s development.