Working with the African Union (AU)

GESCI collaboration with the African Union on CESA (Continental Education Strategy for Africa (2016-2025)

CESA is fundamentally an implementation-orientated framework to “reorientate Africa’s education and training systems to meet the knowledge, competencies. skills, innovation and creativity required to nurture African core values and to promote sustainable development at the national, sub-regional and continental levels.”

Dr. Beatrice Njenga, Head, Education Division; Department of Human Resources, Science and Technology, African Union, refers to CESA as an education strategy to implement Agenda 2063, reflecting the aspirations of Agenda 2063 and informed by the outcome of an evaluation of the Second Decade of Education for Africa (20016-2015). CESA consists of African priorities incorporated in the Global Education 2030 programme and is Africa’s response to the Strategic Development Goal 4.

Thematic clusters of partners and experts have been set up to focus on activities relevant to the strategic objectives and key issues of CESA. Thematic clusters have already been established on areas such as teacher education, STEM, ICT in Education and TVET.

GESCI is honoured to chair and coordinate the activities of the ICT in Education Cluster.

This cluster has a mandate to harness the capacity of ICT to improve equality of access to education and to exploit the vast potential that ICT holds to raise the quality of teaching and to enhance learning outcomes. GESCI is also delighted to be a member of the TVET cluster and the STEM Cluster.

In conjunction with the African Union  Commissioner for Human Resource Science and Technology (HRST) H.E. Professor Sarah M.E. Anyang Agbor and in close cooperation with Dr.Beatrice Njenga ,Head of Education Division ,HRST , the following activities were carried out by the CESA ICT In Education Cluster in 2016/17/18:-

• Launch of the ICT in Education Cluster in Nairobi. November 2016

• Launch of the African Digital Schools Initiative (ADSI) in Kenya. November 2016

• Study mission to the Oporto Forum on developing large-scale ICT integration programmes. April 2017

• Study of ICT integration in education in West Africa in conjunction with UNICEF

• Contribution on ICT in Education and the ICT cluster at ADEA Triennale 2017. Dakar, Senegal, March 2017

• Co-hosted with Millennium@Edu a dedicated session on ICT integration and sustainable development in Africa during the UN General Assembly week. September, New York

• Presentation of ICT in Education Cluster activities and the implementation of African Digital Schools initiative in Kenya, Tanzania and Côte d’Ivoire at the Second Ordinary Session for the Specialised Technical Committee on education, Science and Technology (STC-EST) October 2017, Cairo.

• Presented ADSI and the role of the ICT in Education Cluster at PIPSE Convening, October 2017, Kampala, Uganda

• Panel and presentation on ICT in Education, ADSI initiative and role of the ICT in education cluster at the Third African Forum on Science, technology and Innovation (STI), December 2017.

• Organization of the Digital Skills for African Youth Forum, Tunis, April 2018. www.digitalskills4africanyouth.org