Our work in this theme aims to bring new perspectives on how to create a sustained impact on education and future skills development through building strategic partnerships with governments, civil society leaders, youth-led and youth-serving organizations, and academic institutions. We generate robust evidence to inform solutions and strategies that drive the education sector in Africa through implementing and evaluating multi-faceted programs targeted at holistic human development. We endeavor to lead the implementation of high-quality and policy-relevant research in education to test innovations and identify cost-effective programmes that have the potential for scale, aiming to improve access and quality of education, school readiness, and transitions among marginalized populations. Our focus is to collaborate with local, national, and global stakeholders to foster knowledge mobilization and enhance local institutions’ capacity to scale the impact of educational innovations while aligning interventions to the country’s development goals. Considering that over a third of Africa’s young people are unemployed, there is an increased youth bulge, and the formal market cannot address the job crisis, we work to identify income-generating entrepreneurial training and employment opportunities, among other strategic interventions. These strategies are integral to enable the most vulnerable demographic groups of youth access to dignified and fulfilling work.
It is always challenging moving from knowledge production to its application and utilization to guide everyday decision-making processes. There is a heightened expectation that knowledge