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Sankofa: Appreciating the past in planning the future of
early childhood education, care and development in Africa
Alan Pence, Patrick Makokoro, Hasina Banu Ebrahim, Oumar Barry (eds.)
Sankofa: Appreciating the past in planning the future of early childhood education, care and development in Africa
The Global Education 2030 Agenda
UNESCO, as the United Nations’ specialized agency for
education, is entrusted to lead and coordinate the
Education 2030 Agenda, which is part of a global
movement to eradicate poverty through 17 Sustainable
Development Goals by 2030. Education, essential to
achieve all of these goals, has its own dedicated Goal 4,
which aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality
education and promote lifelong learning opportunities
for all.” The Education 2030 Framework for Action
provides guidance for the implementation of this
ambitious goal and commitments.
UNESCO – a global leader in education
Education is UNESCO’s top priority because it is a
basic human right and the foundation for peace
and sustainable development. UNESCO is the
United Nations’ specialized agency for education,
providing global and regional leadership to drive
progress, strengthening the resilience and capacity
of national systems to serve all learners. UNESCO
also leads eorts to respond to contemporary
global challenges through transformative learning,
with special focus on gender equality and Africa
across all actions.
Published in 2023 by the United Nations Educational, Scienti c and C ultural Organization,
7, place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP, France
© UNESCO 2023
ISBN 978-92-3-100582-4
This publication is available in Open Access under the Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/).
By using the content of this publication, the users accept to be bound by the terms of use of the UNESCO Open Access Repository
(http://www.unesco.org/open-access/terms-use-ccbysa-en).
The present license applies exclusively to the text content of the publication. For use of any other material (i.e. images, illustrations, charts) not clearly identi ed
as belonging to UNESCO or as being in the public domain, prior permission shall be requested from UNESCO. (publication.copyright@unesco.org)
The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part
of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.
The ideas and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors; they are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization.
Editors: Alan Pence, Patrick Makokoro, Hasina Banu Ebrahim, and Oumar Barry
Cover photo: rhibas95/Shutterstock.com
Designed and printed by UNESCO
Printed in France
Sankofa is a principle derived from the Akan people of
West Africa that one should remember the past to make
positive progress in the future.
Image credit: rhibas95/Shutterstock.com
SHORT SUMMARY
Africa has the greatest concentration of young children globally. Yet, the world hears
too little about early childhood education, care and development from the continent.
Stories and perspectives of early education in Africa, and other parts of the world,
are rich, diverse and full of local knowledge and traditions. But that diversity is not
represented and recognized at the global level today.
Sankofa seeks to address long-standing concerns and inequities regarding the missing
voices, data and knowledge in this eld from Africa. It aims to tell African stories and
experiences through their own, contextualized understandings of education for their
youngest citizens.
This publication brings together 34 experts and scholars, 85% of
whom are African citizens, to look at this eld through African
lenses to better guide future policies. Early childhood care
and education has yet to write and tell its authentic full
story. Sankofa is one step in that direction. By broadening
and decolonizing the discourse on this crucial period of
every child’s life, it sets a way forward for Africa’s future
generations.
Stories and perspectives from Africa are
crucial for the future of early childhood
care and education
By 2050,
2 in every 5
children will be
born in Africa
“Since wars begin in the minds of men and women,
it is in the minds of men and women that the
defences of peace must be constructed.”
Sankofa: Appreciating the past in planning the future of
early childhood education, care and development in Africa
Alan Pence, Patrick Makokoro, Hasina Banu Ebrahim, Oumar Barry (eds.)
5
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Table of contents
Executive summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Foreword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Abbreviations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Section 1 – Reections on ECCE/ECD: Country experiences
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Alan Pence
ECCE/ECD country experiences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
KENYA Margaret Kabiru. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29
GHANA Ruth O. Q. Addison. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35
ZANZIBAR (UNITED REPUBLIC OF TANZANIA) Bishara Theneyan Mohamed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
SOUTH AFRICA Eric Atmore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
NIGERIA Margaret Akinware and Kayode Oguntuashe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
MALAWI Chalizamudzi Elizabeth Matola and Mary Phiri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
SENEGAL Ndahirou Mbaye and Diaga Diop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
ETHIOPIA Fantahun Admas and Belay Tefera. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73
Section 2 – Transformative events 1990-2000
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Patrick Makokoro
Chapter 1: The Consultative Group on ECD and the Twelve WhoSurvive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Robert G. Myers, Judith L. Evans, and Patrick Makokoro
Chapter 2: The Rise of ECD networks in Africa (1990-2000) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Patrick Makokoro
Chapter 3: Key Inuencers – Seen and Not Seen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Mary Eming Young and Patrick Makokoro
Chapter 4: African Perspectives and Africentrism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Patrick Makokoro and Thérèse Tchombe
Section 3 – Assembling “all hands on deck”: 2000-2010
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Alan Pence
Chapter 5: African International ECD Conference Series. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Alan Pence and Emily Vargas-Barón
Chapter 6: The ADEA Working Group on ECD (WGECD). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Patrick Makokoro and Rokhaya Diawara
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Chapter 7: Promoting capacity and cohesion Through the Early Childhood
Development Virtual University (ECDVU) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Alan Pence and Esther Oduolowu
Section 4 – Seeing Africa through African lenses
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Hasina Banu Ebrahim
Chapter 8: African ECD scholars – Challenges and prospects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .189
Godfrey Ejuu
Chapter 9: Measurement in Early Childhood Development in Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Robert Serpell
Chapter 10: Professionalization of Early Childhood Development in Africa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .219
Hasina Banu Ebrahim, Edith Sebatane, Fortidas Bakuza, Mando Banda, Janet Ndeto, and Patsy Pillay
Chapter 11: Leveraging Early Childhood Education, care, and development at the margins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Auma Okwany and Elizabeth Ngutuku
Section 5 – ECD/EDC in francophone Africa
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Oumar Barry
Chapter 12: On the coexistence of Early Childhood Development systems in Africa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .253
Oumar Barry and Yatma Diop
Chapter 13: The intersectoral nature of ECD/EDC and the need for understanding across sectors. . . . . . . .265
Ibrahima Pierre Louis Giroux
Chapter 14: Participatory planning of national multisectoral ECD policies in Francophone Africa . . . . . . . . 277
Emily Vargas-Barón
Section 6 – Building forward better: Reections on Sankofa
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
Alan Pence, Hasina Banu Ebrahim, Patrick Makokoro, and Oumar Barry
Chapter 15: Sankofa reections on ECCE/ECD country stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Alan Pence
Chapter 16: Sankofa reections on the 1990s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
Patrick Makokoro
Chapter 17: Sankofa reections on the 2000s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Alan Pence
Chapter 18: Sankofa reections on seeing Africa through African lenses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
Hasina Banu Ebrahim
Chapter 19: Sankofa reections on ECD/EDC in francophone Africa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
Oumar Barry and Alan Pence
Conclusion: Sankofa and GPS “Building Forward Better’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
Alan Pence, Hasina Banu Ebrahim, Patrick Makokoro, and Oumar Barry
Afterword: A reection from Africa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .319
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Executive summary
1 There are many acronyms used to describe multisectoral early childhood education, care and development. The acronym ECD has a long history
of use in Africa, however some countries and UNESCO use ECCE. UNESCO and the editors support the use of ECCE/ECD or ECD in this volume.
UNESCO’s Global Partnership Strategy for Early
Childhood issued a call in December 2021 for “building
forward better in a post-pandemic world” (2021, p. 6).
When, or even if, the world will be “post-pandemic”
is currently open to conjecture, but even if that
particular post- arrives, there are other uncertainties
that humanity faces, the most long-term and far-
reaching being the impacts of global warming. It is a
sobering time and when one considers that much of
what humankind faces today is the result of those who
professed to be “building forward better’—an eort to
look to the past, as well as to the future, is called for.
That advice, to look to the past when planning for the
future, is the essence of the Akan term Sankofa. That
term and humankind’s current dilemmas resonated
with the Africa-focused UNESCO Tri-Chairs for Early
Childhood Education, Care and Development:1 Profs.
Alan Pence, Hasina Banu Ebrahim and Oumar Barry,
as well as with a recent PhD scholar and experienced
ECCE/ECD professional: Dr. Patrick Makokoro.
Makokoro’s initial immersion into the history of ECCE/
ECD in Africa led him to ask: “Why didn’t I know
these things when I began to undertake ECCE/ECD
developmen
t work?”. His question complemented:
the admonition of Sankofa, the aspiration of UNESCO
GPS, and the concerns and experiences of the UNESCO
Tri-Chairs. The four formed an editors” group early in
2021 to plan Sankofa: Appreciating the past in planning
for the future of Early Childhood Education, Care and
Development in Africa.
The editors were committed to ensuring that voices
from Africa were central to the book and that all of the
contributors were deeply engaged and experienced
in ECCE/ECD. This was not to be a book viewed
from outside Africa, but from inside. The world hears
too little about early childhood education, care and
development in Africa, let alone coming from inside
Africa. This is particularly concerning when one
considers The World Economic Forum’s 2020 projection
that “By 2050 two in every ve children will be born in
Africa” (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/
the-children-s-continent/). Consider that 40% of the
world’s children statistic alongside the analysis of
Jerey Arnett in 2008 that there were no (0%) African
primary authors out of 2,531 articles reviewed from
six American Psychological Association (APA) journals
and only two African co-authors out of 6,294 articles
reviewed (p. 604). Arnett and colleagues updated
that research in 2021 and noted that: “Majority world
authors and samples (4-5%) are still sorely lacking
from the evidence base [less than 1% from Africa].
Psychology still has a long way to go to become a
science truly representative of human beings.” (p. 116,
Thalmayer, Toscanelli, and Arnett).
Arnett and colleagues’ research takes on even greater
signicance when one considers the work of Joseph
Henrich and colleagues (Henrich, Heine, Norenzayan,
2010; Henrich, 2020) about a “...truly unusual group:
people from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich
and Democratic (WEIRD) societies….who form the
bulk of the database in the experimental branches
of psychology, cognitive science and economics, as
well as allied elds…(the behavioral sciences).” The
authors go on to note that “...WEIRD subjects are
particularly unusual compared with the rest of the
species—frequent outliers.” (2010, p. 1). However, that
unusual/WEIRD population is the basis for much that
is considered normative, including elds such as ECCE/
ECD.
It is largely against such a concerning backdrop that
this book was conceived and authored: 1) the greatest
concentration of young children globally is currently in
Africa, and it will become more so in the future (UNICEF
and World Economic Forum data); 2) the psychological
development literature authored by African scholars
to date is almost non-existent (Arnett and colleagues);
and 3) the behavioural sciences literature that prevails
is “WEIRD” and of questionable relevance for much
of the Majority World, including Africa (Henrich and
colleagues).
Certain actions have been taken “in the West” that
herald a growing awareness of these and related
“concerns”. For example, in 2021 the American
Psychological Association (APA) apologized for “long
standing contributions to systemic racism” (https://
8
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2021/10/
apology-
systemic-racism), and in 2022 the respected journal
The Lancet noted it will: “…reject papers with data from
Africa that fail to acknowledge African collaborators, in
the interest of building African research and of promoting
integrity, equity and fairness in research collaboration…”
(emphasis added) (Waruru, University World News,
https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.
php?story=20220603115640789#).
This book, Sankofa, stands with those who seek
to address long-standing concerns and inequities
regarding “missing voices”, missing data, missing
knowledge – not just from Africa, but from the
majority of the “Majority (Developing) World”. Sankofa
has sought to do so not only through having 85%
of the 34 authors African citizens, but through its
structure:
● The opening section of the volume features the
ECCE/ECD-focused experiences of eight dierent
sub-Saharan African countries told by individuals
who were born there, have lived that experience,
and played a key role in their country’s ECCE/ECD
development. Through these stories the diversity
of African experiences becomes clearer—there is
no singular “Africa” and no singular ECCE/ECD.
● Sections 2 and 3 work to capture what has
already begun to slip away from the decades of
the 1990s and 2000s. Both decades have already
lost leaders, lost knowledge holders and lost
repositories. The chapters in these two sections
are very much “Sankofa-relevant”, identifying
undertakings from ECCE/ECD’s past that can be
valuable for the future of ECCE/ECD in Africa.
● Section 4 continues Sankofa’s emphasis on
“Seeing Africa through African lenses” and
considers several contemporary topics. These
include: issues in measurement; challenges
facing African scholars; limitations in dominant
narratives regarding professionalization; and ECCE/
ECD at the margins. At any given time ECCE/ECD
has experienced global initiatives (including at
present), but these should always be sensitive
to culture and context and open to the diverse
realities of peoples around the world.
● Section 5 focuses on ECD/EDC in Francophone
Africa. A number of the initiatives described in
Sections 2-4 have had restricted accessibility
and impact in Francophone Africa. Indeed, one
metric, the number of ECCE/ECD undergraduate
and graduate level programmes was not only
signicantly lower for Francophone Africa than
Anglophone Africa, but less than Lusophone
Africa as well. That being said, Section 5 provides
readers with key examples of work that has been
undertaken in Francophone Africa.
● Section 6 brings Sankofa back to a consideration
of the December 2021 GPS document—its
strategies, challenges, possibilities and what
“building forward better” might look like given
information and ideas from the preceding sections
of the book.
Section 6 also emphasizes that Sankofa does
not claim to be exhaustive nor the “nal word’—
indeed, the editors “hope that the volume will be a
stimulus for more words being spoken and written
about ECCE/ECD in Africa, as well as for other
regions of the Majority World.”
References
American Psychological Association. 2021. APA apologizes
for longstanding contributions to systemic racism.
(Press Release.) Available at: https://www.apa.org/
news/press/releases/2021/10/apology-systemic-
racism
Arnett, J.J. 2008. The neglected 95%: Why American
psychology needs to become less American.
American Psychologist, Vol. 63, No. 7, pp. 602-614.
Henrich, J. 2020. The weirdest people in the world: How the
west became psychologically peculiar and particularly
prosperous. Farrar, Straus and Girioux publishers.
Henrich, J., Heine, S.J. and Norenzayan, A. 2010. The
weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain
Sciences, Vol. 33, No. 2-3, pp. 61-135.
Waruru, M. June 3, 2022. The Lancet rejects papers that
exclude African researchers. University World News.
Available at: https://www.universityworldnews.com/
post.php?story=20220603115640789#
Thalmayer, A.G., Toscanelli, C. and Arnett, J.J. 2021.
Neglected 95% revisited. American Psychologist,
Vol.76, No. 1, pp. 116-129.
9
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Foreword
Setting global goals rallies countries around a shared vision of the future. Translating them into
national action, however, requires local knowledge, local capacity and cultural sensitivity.
This fascinating volume illustrates the point, standing at the crossroads of anthropology, sociology,
history and education. Bringing together the UNESCO Tri-Chairs for Early Childhood Education, Care
and Development and over 30 African experts and scholars, it looks at this eld of early learning
through African lenses to better orient future policies.
The initiative grew out of the Global Partnership Strategy on Early Childhood launched by UNESCO
in 2021 to build forward better in a post-pandemic world. Just over 30 years ago, the Jomtien
World Conference on Education for All had armed that learning begins at birth, boosting
awareness of the impact of investing in the early years. Ten years later, the Dakar Framework for
Action comprised a goal on “expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and
education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children”. The United Nations”
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes a specic target (4.2) “to ensure that all girls
and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so
that they are ready for primary education.”
These early years are ones during which ties to families, caregivers and communities are most
tightly knit, making sensitivity to culture and context all the more vital for programmes to take hold
and inspire trust. This volume oers insight into pioneers of early childhood care and development
in Africa, through case studies of eight countries. It chronicles the rise of ECCE/ECD networks in the
region and the recognition of children’s rights within their own Africa’s context, namely through the
African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of Children, complementing the global UN Convention
on the Rights of the Child. Finally, it provides African perspectives on child development and the
need for an “Africentric” vision to take forward ECCE/ECD programmes, drawing on indigenous
knowledge and value systems.
Such respect for culture, context, and diverse knowledges resonates with UNESCO’s long-standing
approach, starting with the launch of the General History of Africa project in the 1960s to reconstruct
the continent’s history and promote an African perspective from the beginning of time to the
present. Its eight volumes form the intellectual reference for an ongoing project to integrate this
vision into school curricula, valuing Africa’s history, languages and common heritage. Our Futures
of Education Report, led by an International Commission chaired by the President of Ethiopia,
further stressed the importance of valuing dierent ways of knowing in order to reimagine our
futures together and forge a new social contract for education. This work guided the framing of
the Transforming Education Summit, convened by the Secretary-General in September 2022 in
response to the global crisis in education, and to mobilize solidarity, ambition and action around
transformation starting from the earliest years.
This volume therefore could not be more timely, as the international community adopted the Tashkent
Declaration and Commitments to Action for Transforming Early Childhood Care and Education in
November 2022 which urged for expanded investment in the rst eight years of life - one of unmatched
brain development inuencing a child’s cognitive, social, and emotional development over a lifetime”. The
Conference came at the heels of the Transforming Education Summit (TES) where the UN’s Secretary General
recalled that universal access to early childhood education is one of the most important investments to
improve educational outcomes and oers governments and families a critical tool to prevent and reverse
inter-generational inequalities.
It invokes the wisdom of Sankofa, a principle derived from the Akan people of West Africa inviting us “to go
back to the past and bring forward that which is useful.” By broadening and decolonizing the discourse on
early childhood care and education, this volume not only sets a way forward for Africa’s children, but for all
regions of the world as they seek to leave no child behind.
Stefania Giannini
Assistant Director-General for Education, UNESCO
11
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Contributors
Ruth O. Q. Addison is a Child and Youth
Development Consultant and Advisor from Ghana.
Fantahun Admas is Associate Professor, Center for
Early Childhood Care and Education, Addis Ababa
University, Ethiopia.
Margaret Akinware is an ECCE/ECD consultant and
on the Board of Trustees for the Foundation for the
Promotion of Childhood Care and Development in
Nigeria.
Eric Atmore is Extraordinary Associate Professor,
Department of Education Policy Studies, University of
Stellenbosch, South Africa.
Agnes Mando Banda is the Head of Primary
and Early Childhood Education atZambian Open
University, Lusaka, Zambia.
Fortidas R. Bakuza is Assistant Professor, Aga Khan
University, Institute for Education Development East
Africa, Dar es Salaam, United Republic of Tanzania.
Oumar Barry is the Head of the Department of
Psychology, Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar
Senegal, and UNESCO Co-Chair for ECD.
Rokhaya Fall Diawara is an Education Programme
Specialist and Global Early Childhood Care and
Education (ECCE) lead at UNESCO Headquarters in
Paris, and she is the past lead for the ADEA African
Working Group on ECCE (WGECD) for UNESCO BREDA,
Dakar, Senegal—then Chair of the entity.
Diaga Diop is Inspector of Preschool Education,
specializing in training, and former Executive of the
Senegalese Ministry of Education, Diourbel, Senegal.
Yatma Diop is a doctoral candidate in Child
Development at Michigan State University, researching
parent-child interactions in Senegalese families and
language development.
Hasina Banu Ebrahim is Research Professor in the
Department of Early Childhood Education, University
of South Africa, UNESCO co-Chair in ECD, and
consultant and convener for Knowledge Generation in
the African Union CESA ECD cluster.
Judith Evans worked internationallyas an advocateto
include children birth to 6 on the agendas of UN
organizations, NGOs, foundations, and governments,
and she is the author of Early Childhood Counts and
other publications supporting quality early childhood
development.
Godfrey Ejuu is Associate Professor of Early Childhood
Education, and Department Head for Early Childhood
Education at Kyambogo University, Uganda.
Ibrahima P. L. Giroux is an ECD and cognitive
psychology specialist working in collaboration with
UNICEF in Senegal.
Margaret Kabiru is a consultant and trainer in early
childhood development and education in Kenya.
Patrick Makokoro is a social entrepreneur,
international development consultant and researcher
in early childhood development.
Chalizamudzi Elizabeth Matola is Programme Policy
Ocer-Consultant with the World Food Programme,
RBJ Johannesburg Regional Bureau.
Ndahirou Mbaye is an ECD and Community
Development consultant, former Adviser at the
Ministry of Early Childhood, Senegal, and former
specialist at Plan International and ChildFund Sénégal.
Bishara Theneyan Mohamed is a retired ECD ocer
with 18 years of eld experience in Zanzibar, Kenya
and Uganda.
Janet Ndeto Mwitiki is an Independent ECD
Consultant. She is the Founder of Nyota Care
Innovations, a social enterprise working on inclusion in
Nairobi, Kenya.
Robert Myers is founder of the Consultative Group on
Early Childhood Care and Development (CG) and has
devoted 45 years to research, evaluation and advocacy
related to programming for ECCD, working from bases
in UNICEF, the Ford Foundation, HighScope, and civil
society organizations in Mexico.
Elizabeth Ngutuku is a Research Fellow at the
Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa at the London School of
Economics and Political Science (LSE).
12
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Esther Oduolowu is Professor of Early Childhood
Care and Education, and immediate past Head of
Department of Early Childhood and Educational
Foundations at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
Kayode Oguntuashe is Adjunct Professor,
Department of Psychology at Lagos State University,
Ojo, Lagos, Nigeria.
Auma Okwany is an Associate Professor of Social
Policy at the International Institute of Social Studies of
Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
Alan Pence, Professor Emeritus University of Victoria
and UNESCO co-Chair for ECD (Africa focused),
began work as a frontline childcare worker in 1971,
commenced work as an academic in 1981, and
continues in retirement a life-long commitment to
promoting child well-being in context.
Mary Deborah Phiri is an ECD specialist and
consultant, currently working for Sub-Saharan Africa
Family Enrichment (SAFE) as Director of ECD and
GOGO Grandmothers programme.
Padmani Patsy Pillay is an ECD consultant and
currently Director of New Beginnings Training and
Development Organization in South Africa.
Edith Sebatane is a former lecturer at the National
University of Lesotho and currently an ECCE/ECD
specialist who often engages in consultancy work in a
wide range of change to early childhood matters.
Robert Serpell, Professor of Applied Developmental
Psychology, University of Zambia, Consultant and
Mentor, African Early Childhood Network, Kenya.
Thérèse Mungah Shalo Tchombe is Emeritus
Professor and Honorary Dean, University of Buea
Faculty of Education, Director of Centre for Research
in Child and Family Development and Education
(CRCFDE), and UNESCO Chair for Special Needs
Education.
Belay Tefera is Professor, School of Psychology, Addis
Ababa University, Ethiopia.
Emily Vargas-Barón is an international consultant in
ECD and ECI policy, programmes and research, and she
directs the RISE Institute that is based in Washington,
DC with projects in all world regions.
Mary Eming Young is senior advisor on early child
development for China Development Research
Foundation and Hupan Modou Foundation, China.
13
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Acknowledgements
The editors appreciate the leadership of UNESCO in
developing the Global Partnership Strategy for Early
Childhood, 2021-2030 (GPS). Each of the editors has
worked with UNESCO in regard to ECCE/ECD in Africa
in the past, and three of the editors currently comprise
the UNESCO Tri-Chairs for Early Childhood Education,
Care and Development. The opportunity to explore
the intersection between the Global Partnership
Strategy and plans that the editors had in regard to a
volume focused on ECCE/ECD in Africa came together
through the GPS’ call to “building forward better”
and the editors’ appreciation of the Akan Sankofa
admonition to: “go back to the past and bring forward
that which is useful”.
In undertaking Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in
Planning for the Future of Early Childhood Education,
Care and Development in Africa the editors enjoyed
connecting with ECCE/ECD leader-colleagues from
across Africa, as well as several beyond, who wrote
the various chapters. In a number of cases that
outreach renewed contacts going back decades and
in others established new relationships. The editors
acknowledge the work by “junior scholars” who joined
with senior scholars in producing chapters in this
book. That approach supported inter-generational
engagement and a bringing together of past and
present in support of the future of child well-being in
Africa.
This volume could not have been completed without
the support and dedication of individuals in our
respective organizations. Debbie Blakely, Laurence
Claussen, Jim Bisakowski and Lara Daher worked hard
to ease the challenges of tracking the manuscripts,
editing, planning design and administrative support.
The Centre for Global Studies (CFGS) at the University
of Victoria (UVic) has been a supporter of this work.
The University of South Africa’s (UNISA) College of
Education Research Directorate is greatly appreciated
for its enabling environment, and colleagues within
the Departments of Psychology and Sociology at
the Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) are warmly
thanked for their encouragement and support
throughout the development of the book.
The editors acknowledge the support from UNESCO
Headquarters and the ECCE Programme Specialist,
Rokhaya Fall Diawara. With her long history of
supporting ECCE/ECD in Africa, she appreciated the
importance of this volume and the need to ensure
it reached ECCE/ECD communities both within and
outside Africa.
Last, but not least, the editors acknowledge the
support from their families as they worked on this
volume.
Prof. Alan Pence (University of Victoria)
Dr Patrick Makokoro (University of Victoria)
Prof. Hasina Banu Ebrahim (University of South
Africa)
Prof. Oumar Barry (Université Cheikh Anta Diop)
14
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Abbreviations
ACRWC African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child
ADEA Association for the Development of Education in Africa
AfDB African Development Bank
AfECN Africa Early Childhood Network
AKF Aga Khan Foundation
ANC African National Congress
ANCTP Agence Nationale de la Case des Tout-Petits
AU African Union
BvLF Bernard van Leer Foundation
BREDA Regional Bureau for Education in Africa (UNESCO)
CG and CGECCD Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development
COMESA Common Market for East and Southern Africa
CRC Convention on the Rights of the Child
DAE Donors for African Education
DICECE District Centres for Early Childhood Education
ECCD Early Childhood Care and Development
ECCE Early Childhood Care and Education
ECD Early Childhood Education, Care and Development
ECDNA Early Childhood Development Network in Africa
ECDVU Early Childhood Development Virtual University
ECE Early Childhood Education
ECECD Early Childhood Education, Care, and Development
ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States
EFA Education for All
ESARO Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Oce (UNICEF)
FACAPEF Community Support Facilitators for the Promotion of Early Childhood
FAWE Forum for African Women Educationalists
GNCC Ghana National Commission on Children
IMR Infant mortality rates
IECD Integrated early childhood development
KIE Kenya Institute of Education
MDGs Millennium Development Goals
MINEDAF-V Ministers of Education and those Responsible for Economic Planning in African Member States
MoESAC Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture
NACECE National Centre for Early Childhood Education
NGOs Non-governmental organizations
NPO Non-prot organization
OAU Organization of African Unity
PNDIPE National Policy for the Integrated Development of Early Childhood
PROCAPE Building Local Capacity to Promote Integrated Early Childhood Care and Development
15
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
PRSPs Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers
RECE Re-conceptualizing Early Childhood Education
S.A. South Africa
SADC Southern Africa Development Community
SDGs Sustainable Development Goals
SSA Sub-Saharan Africa
TECDEN Tanzania Early Childhood Development Network
UDHR Universal Declaration of Children’s Rights
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientic and Cultural Organization
UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund
USA United States of America
USAID United States Agency for International Development
WCARO West and Central Africa Regional Oce
WFF World Forum Foundation
WGECD Working Group on Early Childhood Development (also “Working Group on ECCE”)
WGES Working Group on Education Statistics
WGFP Working Group on Female Participation
WGHE Working Group on Higher Education
WHO World Health Organization
17
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Introduction
This book has been many years in incubation –
considered, then put away, numerous times. In
2020, however, several forces converged to end this
incubation and launch the volume. Most signicant
was the catastrophic appearance of COVID-19 early
in the year, which then spread globally. The impact of
the pandemic was soon followed by an international
rallying cry to defeat the virus and “build-back-better,”
or as UNESCO GPS (2021) urged: “building forward
better.” With such a call, the time had come to think
about what “better” might look like within the world of
ECCE/ECD in Africa.
In considering the idea of “building forward better,”
the Akan (West Africa) image and the admonition of
Sankofa came to mind. The image is that of a mythical
bird with its feet planted forward, its head turned
backwards and a seed in its beak (as displayed on this
book’s cover). One translation of the word and symbol
is “go back to the past and bring forward that which
is useful”; another is: “it is important to fetch what is at
risk of being left behind” (Southern Illinois University
[SIU], n.d.).
Even before COVID-19 arrived, the history of ECCE/ECD
in Africa was already being left behind – forgotten.
As one of the co-editors of this volume, Patrick
Makokoro, a self-described “millennial” from Zimbabwe,
expressed: “why has my generation of ECCE/ECD not
known about what came before!” His curiosity (and
frustration) led him to adopt a historical methodology
when he commenced his doctoral studies in 2018 and
his dissertation in 2019. His focus was on two decades:
the 1990s and 2000s – an important period for ECCE/
ECD development across key countries and regions in
Africa. But he was hampered in this work by the earlier
passing of certain key ECD leaders for Africa and, with
them, the knowledge they held.
Other periods, and certainly those that are earlier in
Africa’s ECCE/ECD history, are also eclipsed or at risk
of “being left behind.” No single book could hope
to capture all of the relevant periods with the detail
they deserve, but some sense of what “came before”
is valuable for those who will be focused on “building
forward better” as COVID-19 relaxes its grip on peoples
around the world, leaving us to collectively reect:
“where now?”
Another facet of this book’s launch was stimulated
by the 2018 decadal anniversary of a broadly
representative picture of ECCE/ECD in Africa: Africa’s
Future, Africa’s Challenge: Early Childhood Care and
Development in Sub-Saharan Africa (Garcia, Pence, and
Evans, 2008). That book followed the third in a series
of African ECD conferences that took place in Accra,
Ghana in 2005 (see Chapter 5). A signicant number
of that volume’s authors had participated in the Accra
conference.
The 2008 edited volume was purposefully broad in
scope: from a rst chapter that focused on “The state of
young children in Africa” authored by a team from the
World Bank to a critique of such “external inuences”
that asked “Whose interests are addressed by ECD
in Africa?” authored by noted Afrocentric advocate
(and now, very unfortunately, deceased) Prof. Bame
Nsamenang of Cameroon. Other chapters provided:
a brief history of ECCE/ECD, nutrition and ECCE/ECD,
HIV and AIDS, child health, brain development, policy
development, fathering, special needs inclusion,
parenting, children in conict situations, and many
additional topics. As the introduction noted: “[the
book] seeks a diversity of views and values” (p. 1).
In contrast, this book did not seek such a broad
perspective or authorship. Its timeframe is more
focused and its authorship more fully and directly from
“Africa” – those who are born in or citizens of Africa
and those who have spent a major part of their lives
involved with ECCE/ECD in Africa. Nonetheless, the
book purposefully leaves room for additional topics,
time-periods, authors, and experiences. It hopes
that this volume will be part of a growing number
of volumes addressing diverse facets of ECCE/ECD in
Africa.
This book also seeks to elevate context, to hear “stories
out of Africa” that showcase what Africa has to oer
the world. It seeks to help secure a key place for Africa
in the global ECCE/ECD world, and in so doing leave
that door open for other regions to enter, for other
voices to be heard.
18
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
The book also hopes to contribute to a disruption of
dominance – one that began through colonization
and continues through hegemonic inuences of
wealth and a privileging of certain ideas, certain
practices, and certain ways of understanding the
world. This book seeks to inuence global ECCE/ECD
to shift from its long-established top-down approach
(from the West to the rest) and to instead learn from
“the rest” for the benet of all.
The purpose of this book, therefore, does not only
involve Africa, but also colonization at large, both
physical and mental. It concerns how Western
inuences continue to restrict and shape ECCE/ECD
(and countless other elds) around the world. Those
restrictions limit not only whose voices are heard, but
they limit the eld itself, and in turn the lives of the
children the eld impacts.
The book does not reject Western perspectives,
rather, it seeks to place them in perspective and
within a pantheon of world views, experiences,
and knowledges. Through ECCE/ECD’s failure to
acknowledge and to learn from the rich diversity of
human experience, the eld undermines itself and its
professed virtue and goals. The broader aims of this
book go beyond hearing from Africa. We hope that it
becomes part of a set of Sankofa-sensitive, “building
forward better” volumes from diverse regions of the
Majority World.2
The book, then, has multiple inspirations and intents;
but the seed in the mouth of the Sankofa bird, looking
back and remembering while moving forward to
plan and plant anew, was inspirational across its six
Sections. Each of those Sections has its own primary
section editor, and three of the editors comprise
the UNESCO Chairs for Early Childhood Education,
Care and Development for Africa. The UNESCO
Chair was established in 2008, with Alan Pence as its
initial chair-holder. Professor Hasina Banu Ebrahim,
an outstanding next-generation ECCE/ECD scholar
based in South Africa, joined as co-Chair in 2017, and
leading Francophone child development (CD) and
ECCE/ECD scholar Professor Oumar Barry of Senegal
completed the Tri-Chair structure in 2021. Those three,
joined by the aforementioned recent Ph.D. graduate
DrPatrick Makokoro from Zimbabwe, comprise this
book’s “editorial team”. Collectively, that team felt that
2 Majority World is a useful reminder that the pejorative terms “Third World” and “developing countries” are where the majority of the world’s
population live.
“building forward better” required an appreciation
of Africa’s contextualized ECCE/ECD history and
the messages of Sankofa in order to be maximally
successful.
The editorial team appreciates UNESCO, seeing it as
a key partner in bringing this publication to the eld.
Each of the co-editors has worked with UNESCO at
various points in time; indeed, UNESCO was a key “early
contributor” to a number of the Africa-wide initiatives
discussed in this book. Additionally, a major debt is
owed to UNICEF, which, through the leadership of Dr
Cyril Dalais in particular (sadly, now deceased), was
central to ECCE/ECD activities in the 1990s (Section2)
and 2000s (Section 3). The World Bank became active
in ECCE/ECD by the mid-1990s, and signicantly
supported the expansion of the UNICEF African
capacity development work in the late 1990s (with
thanks to Dr Marito Garcia in particular). The World
Bank went on to become a major and consistent
supporter of ECCE/ECD, including the ECD conferences
series from 1999-2009 and publication of the 2008
ECD in Africa volume that emerged from the 2005
Conference held in Accra, Ghana (see Chapter 5).
Some of the foundation donors for projects discussed
in this volume have a long history in regard to ECCE/
ECD in Africa. None of those is longer than the Bernard
van Leer Foundation, while others like the Open
Society Foundation came later but also provided key
funds for signicant ECCE/ECD activities during periods
discussed in the book.
The list of ECCE/ECD-supportive institutions, be they
UN-aliated, international organizations, country-
based or local in nature, is long. Two things come to
mind in considering those contributions: the rst is
how it is often an individual within the institution that
makes the dierence (and therefore relationships are
critical); and secondly, despite the decades of funding
and support that have gone into promoting ECCE/ECD
in Africa, the percentage of African countries” budgets
that go into supporting ECCE/ECD is worryingly low,
and the percentage of children receiving even a “good
level” of care is inadequate.
Solutions are sought for these concerns, but too
often the nancial resources and the ideas to address
the concerns are far removed from the problems
themselves, and too often those with the greatest
19
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
understanding of context and possibilities are not the
leaders nor conceptualizers of the responsive initiative.
This book “leans to the local”. It sees commonly used
“knowledge transfer processes” (typically from the
“greater” to the “lesser”) as imperfect and sometimes
destructive, and “knowledge generation” that uses
multiple sources of knowledge as a much stronger and
more empowering tool (Pence et al., 1993). The book
considers the present while reaching into the past, and
simultaneously seeks to envision a future that will be
stronger and more synergistically engaged.
ECD is a part of humankind’s story – it always has
been. When we think that it is only today’s science that
can tell us about ECD, about development, about “best
practice”, and what we need to know going forward,
we deprive ourselves of much of humankind’s – and
ECCE/ECD’s – learning and experiences. The legacy
of Sankofa is long – our contemporary insights short
indeed.
This book, with its focus on children and ECCE/ECD in
Africa, carries with it a level of global poignancy. After
all, this is the continent where proto-humans took
their rst bi-pedal steps; where social units evolved;
where Homo sapiens took their rst cultural steps,
and where almost 40% of the world’s children will live by
2050! (UNICEF, 2014). But now, in the 2020s, we live in
a world where children demonstrate, exhorting those
older than themselves, those generations in power,
to ensure that there will be a world that can sustain
them, as it has for Homo sapiens for eons. But as
paleoanthropologists remind us, not all species of the
Homo genus have survived, not all have been able to
adapt, and our current era, the Anthropocene, poses
the greatest risk yet for Homo sapiens.
The sections of the book
With the background and context described above,
the editors began to plan a structure for this volume.
What timeframe to use was one key question: where
to start and why? where to end and why? The question
of what period to begin with was left open initially,
but it was clear that the two-decades period of the
1990s and the 2000s would be central to the volume.
The period of 1990 to 2010 had a “reasonable level”
of documentation available (although it required
a good amount of “digging” and access to some
individual’s personal communications), and although
some key individuals were now deceased (particularly
those active in the early 1990s), a number remained
alive. Those two decades also had reasonably clear
bookends: several key initiatives launched in the
1989-1992 period (for example, the Education for All
initiative and the Convention on the Rights of the
Child), and some key African ECCE/ECD initiatives
saw a “falling o” in the early 2010s (for example,
the conclusion of the four-Conferences series held
from 1999 through 2009). In addition, the period of
the 2010s introduced some new organizations, new
“players,” and new dynamics into the ECD scene in
Africa. Given such changes, including the 2010s’ own
“bookend” of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was felt that it
was best to leave a 2010s and early 2020s “deeper-dive”
for a dierent volume that could properly address key
new players, structures, and activities from that era.
With the two decades of 1990-2000 and 2000-2010 “in
place” (Sections 2 and 3, edited by Dr Patrick Makokoro
and Prof. Alan Pence, respectively), attention then
turned to ECD/EDC in Francophone Africa, which
had been dramatically under-reported throughout
any period of time. It was very important to include
a section on Francophone Africa, and the updated
UNESCO Tri-Chair structure (2021-2025) provided the
perfect individual to lead that section: Prof. Oumar
Barry of Senegal. However, in considering such a
Francophone-focused section, it was felt that less
time-focused rigidity should apply. A few other topics
within Anglophone Africa were also deemed less time-
dependent, so Section 4 (edited by UNESCO Tri-Chair
Prof. Hasina Ebrahim) was envisioned to house those
topics and precede the Francophone-focused Section
5.
A concluding Section 6 was needed, but ideally it
would not simply “wrap up” all that the book had
covered. Section 6 was therefore envisioned as one
20
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
that brought the reader back to the central purposes
and concerns of the book – namely, Sankofa – and to
UNESCO’s GPS call for “building forward better.” Section
6 would consider what had been learned; what could
be “brought forward that was useful”; and how might
ECCE/ECD stakeholders in Africa best envision and
plan for “building forward better”.
With Sections 2-6 thus conceptualized, where
should the overall volume begin? Considerations
inuencing that decision are discussed in the following
introduction to Section 1. Each of the sections has
its own introduction designed not only to introduce
the chapters that appear in that section, but also
to explore some broader issues that relate to those
chapters.
References
Garcia, M., Pence, A. and Evans, J.L. 2008. Africa’s
Future, Africa’s Challenge: Early Childhood Care and
Development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, The
World Bank.
Pence, A., Kuehne, V., Greenwood, M. and Opekokew, M.R.
1993. Generative curriculum: A model of university
and rst nations cooperative, post-secondary
education. International Journal of Educational
Development, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 339-349.
Southern Illinois University. n.d. About the Sankofa Bird.
(School of Africana and Multicultural Studies.)
Available at: https://cola.siu.edu/africanastudies/
about-us/sankofa.php
UNESCO. 2021. Global Partnership Strategy for Early
Childhood, 2021-2030. Paris, UNESCO. (ED-2022/
WS/7.) Available at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/
ark:/48223/pf0000380077
UNICEF. 2014. Africa in 2050: Young and optimistic... with a
caveat. (UNICEF Connect.) https://blogs.unicef.org/
blog/africa-in-2050-young-and-optimistic-with-a-
caveat/
SECTION 1
Reflections on ECCE/ECD:
Country experiences
23
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Introduction
Alan Pence
As noted in the introduction to the book (and in more
detail in the introduction to Section 2), the years just
before and just after 1990 saw several key events take
place, fundamentally transforming and enhancing
the standing of ECD as a key facet of international
development and signicantly impacting Africa and
other parts of the Majority World. Those events, and
their later reverberations, marked the 1990s as a key
period to include in this volume. However, ECD in
Africa has its antecedents, and the editors wanted to
include some sense of what came before 1990.
While Africa, as the cradle of humankind, has stories of
childcare and development that encompass eons, the
book’s more recent focus and page limits restrict that
range. The events of 1989/1990 provided a signicant
marker for ECD that embraced all of Africa, but there
are few such “in-common” events that so transcend
Africa’s diversity.
Some come close, like the Berlin Conference in 1884,
commonly referred to as “The Scramble for Africa”.
That conference saw Africa partitioned among the
seven attending European powers, and while that was
not the beginning of colonization in Africa – 10% of
Africa was under European control in 1870, and this
increased to 90% by 1914 – the Berlin Conference was
a centrepiece for that transition. The impact of this
large-scale3 colonization and the imprint of European
languages and institutions across the continent still
fundamentally impacts much of Africa today. Indeed,
that Western inuence, along with the similarly
deeply embedded and ongoing inuences from the
Middle East in the form of Islam, are two of the three
inuences noted by Dr Ali Mazrui in his inuential
thesis regarding Africa’s “Triple Heritage” (Mazrui, 1986)
– the third and by far the oldest identied by Mazrui is
Africa’s Indigenous heritage.
Africa today is not composed of colonies and colonial
governments, although impacts from those many
years of colonization remain evident in myriad ways.
A similarly common experience felt across Africa was
3 Africa is larger than the land masses of the United States, China, India, Mexico, and most of Europe combined.
4 Ethiopia and Liberia were never colonized, so they do not appear in the list of liberated countries.
liberation and independence, but the timing of those
events is variable, taking place over decades, starting
with Ghana in 1957.4
Nevertheless, an advantage to considering the
“shared experience” of independence as a “starting
point” for this volume, even if it is not a specic
shared date, is that its dates are suciently recent
that there are individuals still involved with ECD in
many countries who were either active in ECD at
the time of independence or have worked closely
with key individuals who had been ECD leaders at
that time. Another reason to consider the period
of independence as a starting point was that it
represented a hopeful point of transition for the
continent as a whole. It was an opportunity not only
for African political leaders to shape their country’s
future, but for leaders across all sectors, from health to
nance and from post-secondary to ECD, and beyond,
to consider combinations of modications, removals
and creating anew. With this proposed demarcation,
the section editor approached long-standing ECD
leaders from eight countries, each of whom supported
the idea of authoring an ECD “Country Experience”
story as a lead-in for this book.
Voices from the countries
Each country story has its own “character,” as does the
country it discusses. No common, detailed template
was created for the authors, as is often a characteristic
of data gathering. Such exercises in specicity, in
measurability and in comparability can too easily
distort rather than clarify, lling a predetermined
“information box” that exists in the minds of the data
gatherers, but not necessarily in the minds of those
who call that place “home” (Scott, 1998). Such an
approach can easily lead to misunderstanding and
misinformation, rather than understanding, providing a
faulty foundation for whatever may follow. Section1’s
exercise was more open-ended than prescribed.
Another reason for starting a book such as this with
the voices of those who come from the place, who
have “stories” about the place (Chamberlin, 2004),
was to appropriately contextualize the diverse
environments covered. It was an eort to try to
limit the degree to which “outsider experiences and
assumptions” (be they from other parts of Africa or
24
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
outside Africa) become the narrative, eliminating
the possibility of other narratives. In this, we recall
Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie’s caution regarding “The
Danger of a Single Story” (2009). Arguably, such
restrictions and erasures are a central phenomenon
in the history of ECD, and much else, in Africa. The
country stories provided in Section 1 have not been
reported before. Most, but not all, hew fairly close
to the period of independence as a starting point,
but one goes boldly back over almost two millennia
in seeking “that which should not be left behind,”
providing a unique Sankofa Story (interestingly, this is a
country that had not been colonized).
One must remember, however, even when one
has individuals from “the place”, one cannot expect
that the voice has not in some way been shaped
by other forces. This point has been noted by the
aforementioned Mazrui, and more emphatically
emphasized by Apartheid martyr Steve Biko: “The
greatest weapon in the hand of the oppressor, is the
mind of the oppressed” (1977).
Such colonizing processes continue to the present,
and they exist not only in the context of countries and
cultures, but in professions and professional practices
as well – including ECD. Given that this is a volume
that focuses not only on Africa, but on ECD as well,
it is important to briey note resistance eorts that
have developed within ECD to counter perspectives
and ideologies that drown out the voices and
understandings of “the other” (the “other” that includes
Africa). It is not just the theories and ideologies of ECD
and child development (CD) that suck up most of the
available oxygen, it is also the professional practices of
the Western minority that dominate: the literature, the
consultant circuit, the keynotes of conferences; the list
goes on and on. Far too few of those who participate
in such domination appreciate the damage caused
by the veil of silence which prevents many voices
from being heard. Such a veil aects not only those
who are rendered silent, but also those among the
Western minority who do not realize that other ways
of understanding exist – ways that could be of value
not just for “the other” but for themselves, and globally,
as well.
5 Established in 1926.
As the editors of this volume believe that these
“resistance movements” and the critical reections they
provide are an important part of the present and the
future for ECD in Africa, two such movements: one in
ECD and another in child development (CD) will be
briey discussed. Each has opened up space for other
perspectives to be heard, thereby oering hope for
more African (and “other”) voices to be heard.
Resistance – an important aside
Fortunately, ECD in the early 1990s evolved a robust
“critical lens” in regard to better discerning and
understanding the downsides of good intents. The
origins of this are not singular, but one inuential
stream arose in the United States as resistance to
a document entitled Developmentally Appropriate
Practice (Bredekamp, 1987), published by the largest
early childhood professional organization in the United
States: the National Association for the Education of
Young Children (NAEYC).5 The ECE/ECD resistance
group called itself Reconceptualizing Early Childhood
Education (RECE, n.d.). Around approximately the same
early 1990s period, innovative Indigenous approaches
to ECE/ECD were coming to the fore, led in large
part by Maori and Maori-supportive ECD leaders in
Aotearoa/New Zealand (New Zealand Ministry of
Education, n.d.). A third early 1990s “column” emerged
through a collaborative intersection of critiques of
“normative ECD” arising in Europe and experiences
with Indigenous communities in Canada. That
collaboration levelled a critique against “Quality” at the
centre of its publication work (Dahlberg et al., 1999;
Moss and Pence, 1994).
These various internationally visible “ECE/ECD
resistance movements” have their own origin-
histories, but over time they have intertwined with
similarly inspired movements in various parts of the
Majority World, including Africa. One element those
movements have in common is the belief that “context
matters”, and that local actors best understand local
contexts.
While Africa has long had child development, and
some ECD, leaders critical of domination by Western-
centric theorists and researchers (see Chapter 4 by
Makokoro and Tchombe, Chapter 8 by Ejuu, and
Chapter 9 by Serpell), they have largely had to “swim
25
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
upstream” – the currents of academia were against
them.6 More recently, however, certain leaders within
the American Psychological Association (APA) and
other respected academic organizations have begun
to achieve wide visibility for their critical work, and the
APA itself issued a news release on 29October, 2021,
titled “APA apologizes for long-standing contributions
to systemic racism” (2021).
In 2008 Jerey Arnett published an article in the APA
journal American Psychologist titled: “The Neglected
95%: Why American Psychology Needs to Become
Less American”. In that article Arnett questioned “how
well do major APA journals represent the human
population?”. In short, the answer is “not well”. One
aspect of Arnett’s 2008 supporting documentation
notes: zero primary authors from Africa out of 2,531
articles reviewed from six APA journals, and only two
African co-authors out of 6, 294 articles surveyed.
Arnett exclaims: “I argue that research on the whole of
humanity is necessary for creating a science that truly
represents the whole of humanity” (p. 602).
A short time later, in 2010, Behavioural and Brain
Sciences published an article by Henrich, Heine and
Norenzayan that complements Arnett’s, but extends
the critique to a broader number of “WEIRD societies” –
Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic
(p. 1). And if the United States dominates the APA
literature, the WEIRD societies complete the process
with a near total shut out of “other voices”. Those
authors ask, given such skewing of research: “How
justied are researchers in assuming a species-level
generality for their ndings?” (p. 1).
More recently, in 2021, Thalmayer, Toscanelli and Arnett
published an article titled “Neglected 95% Revisited”,
where they noted “Majority world authors and samples
(4-5%) are still sorely lacking from the evidence base.
Psychology still has a long way to go to become a
science truly representative of human beings.” (p.116).
The statements made by Arnett, Henrich et al., and
Thalmayer et al. are not a surprise to those who are
from or whose work has long been based in Africa.
Those points have been made from “outside” APA and
other academic organizations before, but there is hope
that such often-cited breaches from inside the West’s
academic ramparts may have a greater impact and
may open doors a bit wider to hear from “the other”
6 The editors would like to note key contributions made to the Africentric literature by our departed colleague Prof. Bame Nsamenang,
author of an important, early (1992) CD volume: Human Development in Cultural Context.
– not about them, a story told by outsiders, but from
them – in their own words. Such “breaches” also allow
the global audience a greater opportunity to learn
more about itself, and not just about those with power,
privilege, and access to communication tools, but from
the less-heard majority of the world.
Building forward better
As we move forward into the third decade of the
twenty-rst century, it is important to remember
that we not only face the need to build back better
vis-a-vis COVID-19, but also to counter the avaricious
capitalism and industrial economy of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, which is destabilizing the
ecology of the entire world. Our need to do better goes
far beyond COVID-19, and to do so we need to view
the world as global citizens, sensitive to all of humanity.
This book, and the Country Experience stories that
follow, represent facets of an eort to promote such
learning. Section 1, like the other sections in this
volume, reached out to authors that “know the place”,
that are familiar with the contexts they write about. For
the most part, this book is an “insider’s guide to ECD
in Africa”. It seeks to illuminate, through words based
on personal, contextualized experiences, those things
co-editor Makokoro asked why he, and his generation,
did not know about.
26
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
ECD country experiences
Kenya
Section 1 begins with the words of a true pioneer for
ECD in Africa: Margaret Kabiru of Kenya. Margaret’s
life-long commitment to ECD and leadership for over
50 years brought her into contact with those who
were part of a rst wave of ECD following Kenya’s
independence in 1963. The name of one of the
programmes from that early period captures the spirit
that ECD could bring to a new era of freedom and
nation building: the Harambee Preschool programmes.
Harambee, a Swahili term meaning “all pull together”,
embodies the spirit of local engagement that ECD
can bring to a country. Margaret Kabiru’s long career
in ECD (as noted in Chapter 3) has brought her into
contact with virtually all of the major ECD initiatives
undertaken by Kenya (and Africa more broadly) since
its independence, which she summarizes in her Kenya
story.
Ghana
From East Africa, we proceed to West Africa, to
Ghana – the rst of the colonized African countries
to achieve independence from colonial rule, doing
so in 1957. Under the leadership of its rst President,
Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana played a central role in
advocating for African independence broadly and
was a co-founder of the Organization for African Unity
(OAU), the predecessor to the current Africa Union
(AU) organization. Ruth Addison, a long-time leader
for ECD in Ghana, has worked both within and outside
governmental organizations to advance ECD. In her
account, Addison briey describes the political history
of Ghana leading to its current stability and highlights
an evolution of ECD that is in many ways remarkable
for its long-term, multi-organizational, multisectoral
commitment to working together in support of
ECD. That broad-based foundation of support saw a
number of innovations both in programmes and in
education and training opportunities.
Zanzibar (United Republic of Tanzania)
Bishara Mohamed is another pioneer for ECD in Africa.
She reects on the diversity of ECD (and schools for
older children as well) that were in place in Zanzibar at
the point of independence in 1963. In the mid-1980s
the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), working
in consultation with the Perry Preschool Project in the
United States, developed a unique “hybrid” Swahili
and Western model in Mombasa, Kenya that was
strongly grounded in local leadership. In the early
1990s, Zanzibar, with a population that is 99% Muslim,
established their own Madrasa Preschool programmes,
followed soon after with a Madrasa Resource Centre
(MRC) oering support and training. Bishara Mohamed
was a key leader in opening up Madrasa programmes
and the MRC in Zanzibar. The number of programmes
started small, but over time the programmes (and
those in Kenya and Uganda as well) became a major
focus of interest in Africa and beyond. The possibilities
of such hybrid approaches to ECD remains of central
interest for much of Africa – and globally.
South Africa
South Africa has perhaps the most complex and
multi-layered social history in Africa. From some of
the earliest evidence of art and culture found in the
Blombos caves east of Cape Town, to technological
hubs of industry near Johannesburg, South Africa has
long provided unique inuences on virtually all aspects
of how societal institutions and social life might be
constructed – ECD included. Author Eric Atmore, a
long-standing leader for ECD in South Africa, describes
these complexities, with a major focus on ECD since
the end of Apartheid and the non-racial democratic
election of Nelson Mandela in 1994. While a policy for
a single year of education before formal school began
(called Grade R) followed soon after democratization,
an ECD advisory team insisted that there needed to be
signicant learning programmes for children before
Grade R. An interim ECD policy in 1997 provided for
such pre-R programmes. More recently, in 2015, the
South African Cabinet approved a National Integrated
Early Childhood Development Policy, embracing a
broad understanding of ECD.
27
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Nigeria
Margaret Akinware is another highly signicant
pioneer of ECD in Africa, and for this country report
she is joined by Prof. Kayode Oguntuashe. Nigeria,
with a population of over 206 million is almost twice
as large as the second most populated country in
Africa: Ethiopia, and over three times more populated
than South Africa. The political history of Nigeria
since independence in 1960, has seen democratic
elections as well as military rule for signicant periods
of time. The juxtaposition of a traditional agrarian
economy and related family values and structures,
versus the pull of urban centres and diverse economic
forces and family-impacting dynamics found in
Nigeria is not unlike many other countries in Africa –
countries in transition, with ECD and the well-being
of the next generation being a central concern. The
co-authors provide readers with a two-perspectives
understanding of ECD in Nigeria: paediatric and
educational.
Malawi
Malawi, although much smaller in population and in
GDP compared to Nigeria, has a number of similar
dynamics that ow from traditional vs. “modern”, rural
vs. urban transitions and tensions. One hears in the
words of long-standing leaders for ECD in Malawi,
Chalizamudzi Matola and Mary Phiri, echoes from a
number of the other country stories, including the
importance of traditional practices. The authors also
note impressive gains that have been made in ECD
policy and services development in Malawi since
2000, including capacity development initiatives at
the district level. The authors ag the importance
of groups like UNICEF, certain foundations, NGOs
and INGOs, and leadership programmes like the
ECDVU that have made a signicant dierence in the
evolution of ECD in Malawi. One also hears in their
words the importance of Sankofa – what should not
be left behind – as they face the future for children,
families, communities and ECD in Malawi.
Senegal
Francophone Africa is too often a missing voice for
ECD in Africa. A survey of Child Development (CD)
and ECD educational programmes that included
Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone countries
noted dramatically fewer such programmes in
Francophone Africa (WGECD, 2014). That being said,
the country report for Senegal, authored by Ndahirou
Mbaye and Diaga Diop, notes signicant new
directions for the country since adoption of a National
Policy for the Integrated Development of Early
Childhood in 2007. Those initiatives build, in part, on a
pilot project initiated by Plan International Senegal in
2006 focused on Building Local Capacity to Promote
Integrated ECD (PROCAPE). That work has undergone
various levels of evaluation and continues to be a
signicant inspiration for additional ECD developments
in Senegal.
Ethiopia
ECD leaders, Fantahun Admas and Belay Tefera,
provide a remarkable example of Sankofa – “bring
forward that which is useful” – not from just a
generation ago, or even two generations, but reaching
back approximately two millennia to when Coptic
Christianity came to Ethiopia. Displaying a sensitivity
both to Ethiopia’s incredibly long and rich Christian
history extending back to the rst century C.E., as
well as to contemporary challenges facing ECD in the
twenty-rst century, the authors structure a creative
argument that the future can and should learn from
the past at the nexus of Pre-Schools and Priest Schools.
The Ethiopian report reminds us that concerns for
children’s care and development is old – indeed, as old
as humankind itself. It was only through the survival
of the young that species could survive – and survive
we have (at least thus far). “Thus far” reminds us of
the challenges that we face in this moment of time:
individually and socially with the threat of COVID-19,
and also as a species with the threat of global warming
arising in what a growing number consider to be the
appropriately named Epoch of the Anthropocene.
It is through an appreciation of diversity that
humankind’s chances are enhanced – diverse ways of
facing what lies ahead informed in part by what has
worked in the past and by experiences in other parts
of the world. ECD is a key lynch pin for our collective
global future.
28
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
References
Adichie, C.N. 2009. The Danger of a Single Story. (TED
Talks.) Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/
chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_
single_story?language=en
American Psychological Association. 2021. APA apologizes
for longstanding contributions to systemic racism.
(Press Release.) Available at: https://www.apa.org/
news/press/releases/2021/10/apology-systemic-
racism
Arnett, J.J. 2008. The neglected 95%: Why American
psychology needs to become less American.
American Psychologist, Vol. 63, No. 7, pp. 602-614.
Biko, S. 1977. Quotes by Steve Biko. (South African History
Online.) Available at: https://www.sahistory.org.za/
archive/quotes-steve-biko
Bredekamp, S. 1987. Developmentally appropriate practice
in early childhood programmes serving children
from birth through age 8, 1st edn. Washington D.C.,
National Association for the Education of Young
Children (NAEYC).
Chamberlin, J.E. 2004. If this is your land, where are your
stories?. Toronto, Random House Canada.
Dahlberg, G., Moss, P., and Pence, A. 1999. Beyond quality
in early childhood education and care: Postmodern
perspectives. London, Taylor and Francis Ltd.
Henrich, J., Heine, S.J. and Norenzayan, A. 2010. The
weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain
Sciences, Vol. 33, No. 2-3, p. 61-135.
Mazrui, A.A. 1986. The Africans: A triple heritage. New York,
Little Brown and Co.
Moss, P. and Pence, A. 1994. Valuing Quality in Early
Childhood Services: New Approaches to Dening
Quality. New York/London, Teachers College Press/
Chapman Publishers.
New Zealand Ministry of Education. n.d. Te Whariki Online.
Available at: https://tewhariki.tki.org.nz
Nsamenang, B. 1992. Human development in cultural
context: A third world perspective. Newbury Park, CA,
Sage Publications.
RECE. n.d. Home. Available at: https://receinternational.org
Scott, J.C. 1998. Seeing Like a State. New Haven, Yale
University Press.
Thalmayer, A.G., Toscanelli, C. and Arnett, J.J. 2021.
Neglected 95% revisited. American Psychologist,
Vol.76, No. 1, pp. 116-129.
WGECD. 2014. Africa ECD Voice. ADEA WGECD Newsletter,
No. 2. Available at: https://www.adeanet.org/en/
newsletters/adea-wgecd-newsletter-africa-ecd-
voice-no2-january-2014
29
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
ECD country experience:
KENYA
Margaret Kabiru
Country background
Kenya is a country in the eastern part of Africa with
contrasting physical features rising from sea level
in the east, through plateaus to the highlands in
the central part, and tapering to medium altitudes
in the west including the Lake Victoria basin. Three
quarters of the country, lying in the north and north-
east, is arid or semi-arid. About 20% of the country is
suitable for agriculture, which is the mainstay of the
economy. The majority of the population lives in the
agricultural regions. There are 42ethnic groups in the
country falling into clusters of Bantu, Hamitic, and
Semitic groups. From pre-independence there were
small groups of European settlers, missionaries, and
administrators as well as Arab and Indian traders and
artisans.
The country gained independence from Britain in
1963 and became a republic a year later. Kenya had
been colonized from early in the twentieth century.
From the beginning, though, dierent community
groups had pressured the colonizers to grant them
independence. People detested mistreatment by
the colonisers through forced labour, taxation,
displacement, restricted movement, and alienation
of their land. The resistance gained momentum as
the African soldiers who had taken part in the world
wars were not given similar care and benets as the
European soldiers at the end of the wars. During
the 1940s, the Kenya African Union was formed and
served as a uniting force to ght for independence,
culminating in the Mau Mau Movement (1952-1960)
that nally pushed the British out of Kenya (Mbugua,
et al., 2006).
Mzee Jomo Kenyatta was the rst Prime Minister and
then President when the country became a republic.
At the time, there were three major political parties:
the Kenya African Union (KANU), Kenya African
Democratic Party (KADU), and African People’s Party
(APP). The three parties merged so that the country
was ruled by one party, KANU. However, in 1966
Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, who had been the leader
of KADU and the rst Vice- President, felt alienated, so
he left the government and formed another party, the
Kenya Peoples Union (KPU). Subsequently, the party
was proscribed in 1969 during a major political unrest.
Social and family dynamics
At independence Kenya had a population of about8.1
million. Life expectancy was 48 years (National Council
for Population and Development, 2013). The majority
of the population was rural, with less than 10% living
in the urban areas. Migration to the urban areas was
spurred by the need for employment and availability
of better infrastructure and services.
The rural populations maintained strong community
bonds and cooperated while undertaking economic,
livelihood, and social activities. Extended families lived
in close proximity and shared values, labour, resources,
and cultural activities. Land was communally owned
by clans and families. Individual families were allocated
land which they required for farming. However,
demarcation of land, which was started during the
colonial era, was enhanced after independence, giving
ownership of land to individual families. Some families
who had been displaced during the alienation of land
for the European settlers and during the freedom
struggle were resettled in some of the land previously
occupied by the settlers. Delocalization of people
is one of the factors contributing to the ongoing
disintegration of communal living and sharing of
immediate resources and weakening of shared values.
State of the economy
The government articulated the policy for national
and social development in Sessional No.10 of 1965
entitled “African Socialism and its Application to
Planning in Kenya” (Republic of Kenya, 1965), which
aimed to improve the quality of life of the people. It
declared its intention to ght the major challenges
of poverty, disease, and ignorance. The government
opted for a comprehensive, long-term centralized
approach to tackle these problems. This policy
promoted Africanization of the economy to stimulate
growth through public investment incentives for
private industrial investment which, at the time, was
by foreigners. The policy also encouraged smallholder
agricultural production of cash crops such as coee,
tea, and pyrethrum. Prior to this, European settlers
farmed these cash crops on large farms using cheap
African labour. For a long time, Africans were not
allowed to grow cash crops. During the rst few years
after independence agriculture accounted for 65% of
GDP and 65% of exports (Aseka, 2004). The majority of
the people in rural areas remained poor and continued
depending on subsistence farming and pastoralism.
The resources allocated centrally for rural development
did not reach many parts of the country.
Education policy
The post-independence government was convinced
that education held the key to promoting social and
economic development. Education would provide
qualied people to ensure continuity and enhance
growth of the social, economic, and administrative
institutions started by the colonizers. In 1964 the Kenya
Education Commission was formed; chaired by Prof.
Ominde, it proposed an education system that would
foster national unity and African Socialism (Onjoro,
2016). The Commission recommended an integrated
system of education and abolition of the racially
segregated schools. It proposed Africanization and
diversication of the curriculum to make education
more relevant to the people. Higher education
was to be expanded to meet the human resource
needs. The Commission did not make any specic
recommendations in relation to education of young
children below the primary education level.
Types of childcare arrangements
before independence
Children were highly valued in African communities.
They played a vital role in the family and the
community. Marriage legitimacy was sealed through
parenthood. A barren woman was a stigma. Both men
and women desired children as children gave their
parents a new status. Children were viewed as an
important source of labour, as an investment to care
for parents in old age, and to ensure continuation of
the lineage (Kenyatta and Kariuki, 1984; Kilbride and
Kilbride, 1990; Prochner and Kabiru, 2008; Swadener et
al., 2000).
At independence, the majority of families were still
living a traditional way of life. The expectations of
families and communities and the values they placed
on children inuenced how they cared for children.
Education and socialization were generally carried out
informally, in friendly and relaxed interactions. Children
had a lot of time for play and gained skills as they took
part in chores and production activities. However, each
community had its own specic system of education
through which children were socialized into its culture,
values, and traditions.
The education of the child began at the time of birth
and had to pass various stages and age-groupings
with a specic form of education dened for every
stage. Children were prepared to contribute to
strengthening the community. Children were
expected to acquire skills essential for food production,
protection, and mastery of the environment. Early
education transmitted important aspects of culture
and values such as sharing social responsibility,
belonging, mutual dependence, mutual respect,
continuity, obedience, respect for elders, cooperation,
fear of God, and the ability to relate with other people
(Kenyatta and Kariuki, 1984; Kilbride and Kilbride,
1990). Children learnt social etiquette and conduct,
for example, how to greet, sit, eat, and not interfere
with adult conversation. Misbehaviour was punished
through caning, denial of food, verbal threats or being
locked out in the dark for some time. In addition,
children were taught the history and traditions of the
family, clan, and the whole community.
Children learnt and were taught as they participated
in the daily living activities in the home, through
ceremonies, direct instructions, observation, and
apprenticeship. Beginning in infancy children were
taught through lullabies, songs, and games mainly
by their mothers, although other caregivers such as
grandparents, aunts and older siblings also assisted. As
children grew older, they received direct instructions
and were tested through questioning. Stories and
legends were used to instil morals and to teach
history and tradition. Fathers, elders, and neighbours
participated in the education and socialization of
older children. Grandparents played a special role of
teaching children sensitive topics such as sexuality
and transmitting morals, values, history, and traditions
through stories, legends, and light conversations.
Children began to be assigned major responsibilities
from the age of 7 years and were expected to gain
livelihood skills. Boys usually ran errands, looked after
livestock or took part in farm work. Girls took care of
younger siblings and undertook household chores
such as cooking, sweeping, and cleaning dishes. They
also worked in the farms alongside their mothers.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Children also acquired intellectual and social skills
as they played among peers in the neighbourhood.
Parents left children to indulge in games and play of
their own choice; as cited by Kenyatta and Kariuki,
“anyone observing children at their play will no doubt
be impressed by the freedom which characterizes
the period of childhood among the Gikuyu.” (1984, p.
61). Lenaiyasa (1999), also observes that the Samburu
children had a common playground where they
played many games during the day and at night when
there was moonlight.
In some cases, young children were brought together
in a group as a form of community-based early
childhood programme. The Samburu, for example,
had a communal childcare arrangement known as
Loipi. Children were left in a group under the care
of grandmothers, aunties, or neighbours when the
mothers are away. The caregivers ensured that children
took their milk when hungry from the gourds left by
their mothers. Caregivers also told children stories
and supervised them as they played (Lenaiyasa, and
Kimathi, 2002).
Koranic schools known as madrassa or dugsies were
prevalent at the coast, north, northeast, and in urban
areas. They played a part in the care and socialization
of young children. They enrolled children from the
age of 4 years. In such programmes, children began to
memorize the Koran and learn tenets of Islam (Hyde
and Kabiru, 2003).
There were also formal preschools and care services
that were established by missionaries and colonial
administrators. These were racially segregated. The
rst preschools were established in urban areas to
serve European and Asian children. These preschools
were modelled after English crèches, infant schools
and kindergartens and initially were run by expatriate
teachers. The curriculum in these institutions included
some academic activities and religious education.
Day care centres for African children from the age
of 2 years were established from the 1940s in the
agricultural plantations by the plantation owners to
provide custodial care while the mothers worked.
Caregivers would teach children games, songs, and
dances. Later some centres were started in the African
residential areas in the towns by the local authorities
to meet nutritional and medical care needs for the
poor children. These centres enrolled children from
the age of two and a half years. Many day care centres
were established in rural central Kenya during the
Mau Mau struggle for independence (1953-1960) to
provide custodial care while parents were engaged in
forced labour by the colonial government. Children
who had stopped breast feeding spent the day at
these centres. Missionaries, humanitarian organizations
and aid agencies such as the Red Cross provided
powdered milk, porridge, and medical care to children
enrolled in these centres (Gakuru, 1992; Kabiru, 1993;
Woodhead, 1996). The caregivers supervised children
as they played and taught them songs and dances.
Most teachers and caregivers were not trained. Many
served as volunteers or were paid token salaries.
A few of them were trained in childcare as part of
home economics. Training was oered in Home Craft
Training Centres run by the Government Department
of Community Development, Kenya Red Cross, or
missionaries.
Preschools and childcare in the early
post-independence period
Harambee preschools
There was a rapid expansion of preschool centres
after Kenya gained independence in 1963 and after
Jomo Kenyatta, the rst president, popularized the
Harambee motto. Harambee means “pulling and
pushing together”. It encompasses the principles of
community initiatives based on joint eorts, mutual
assistance, social responsibility, and community
self-reliance. Even at independence people were
hungry for education. They were convinced about the
importance of preschool education and expected that
preschools would prepare their children for the highly
competitive education system (Gakuru, 1992; Kabiru,
1993).
Parents and communities responded positively to the
harambee call and began to raise funds and mobilize
resources to establish preschool institutions, including
day-care centres, nursery schools, Koranic schools, and
kindergartens attached to primary schools. In many
cases, communities used their own expertise to put
up the buildings. They recruited the caregivers and
teachers. Parents and local communities managed
and ran these centres with limited nancial resources
and inadequate materials since they were poor and
were not able to pay even the little fee demanded. The
school buildings were not of good quality and were
32
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
poorly maintained. The schools lacked appropriate
teaching – learning materials and teachers were not
adequately remunerated.
There were other factors besides the call for
harambee that motivated parents and communities
to set up centres for young children. Even prior to
independence the country was experiencing social
and economic changes which, in turn, inuenced
childcare and socialization. Parents wanted their
children to receive formal education and they believed
that preschool would give their children a head
start. Many older children were attending school
and so would not assist with childcare. In addition,
greater numbers of young fathers were moving to
towns or commercial agricultural areas seeking wage
employment. There were more nuclear families living
on their own piece of land after the new land tenure
where the land was owned individually and not
communally. In the demarcated land, sometimes a
family lived a distance from close relatives. Women
were left to take care of children and undertake other
responsibilities with inadequate assistance. They were
often overburdened by these responsibilities.
Some women entered formal wage employment or
engaged in trade to supplement the family income.
Though grandmothers, neighbours or hired maids
known as ayahs assisted with childcare when the
mother was away (Kipkorir, 1993; Prochner and Kabiru,
2008), many families felt more condence in the
preschool centres as they would provide both care
and education. A survey carried out in 1969 by the
Institute of Development Studies and the Bureau
of Educational Research of the University of Nairobi
showed that about 200,000 children were enrolled in
4,800 day-care and nursery schools with a teaching
force of 5,000. Most of the teachers were not trained.
The enrolled children included about one quarter of all
children aged 3 to 6 years, who then numbered about
1.5 million (Kabiru, 1993).
However, due to pressure from parents and the fact
that teachers had little or no training, preschools were
very formal and were largely extensions of the primary
schools. Herzog (1969) reported that many parents
favoured academic instruction in the preschool. More
modern methods of teaching were found in the urban
kindergartens and nursery schools for upper and
middle classes. These schools were better resourced
and oered better quality services (Gakuru, 1976;
Kabiru, 1975).
Management of preschool institutions
As indicated above, parents and communities owned
and managed most of the centres in the rural areas
and urban informal settlements. Urban councils
provided and managed day nurseries in some estates.
Privately owned kindergartens mainly served the
upper and middle classes. Welfare organizations
such Lions Club, Red Cross, YMCA and YWCA, Child
Welfare Society of Kenya, Maendeleo ya Wanawake
Organization (the largest women’s organization),
religious organizations, and companies also supported
construction and running of the preschools.
Government involvement
The concern for and involvement of the national
government started, though in a limited way,
at independence. In 1963, the Young Children’s
and Young Person’s act mandated the Ministry of
Health and the Ministry of Home Aairs to inspect
preschool centres. The 1965/1966-1969/1970 National
Development Plan stated that preschools should be
planned and developed in consultation with district
development committees and be supervised by
community development ocers in the districts. By
1966, the Ministry of Cooperatives and Social Services
was allocated the responsibility of coordinating
preschool centres. Guidelines given by this Ministry
instructed preschools for Africans to be custodial,
non-academic, and non- teaching institutions and
developed a manual to aect these instructions. The
Ministry of Education also supported this view (Kabiru,
1993).
With the support of the German Volunteer services
and UNICEF, the Ministry of Cooperatives and Social
Services initiated short training courses for preschool
teachers and supervisors at four Community
Development Centres. Annual output of trained
teachers was about 120 per year. This could not meet
the needs for trained preschool teachers in the country
(Kabiru, 1993).
County councils, urban councils or municipalities
employed teachers and supervisors but left
management of centres to the local communities.
Some of the well–to-do local authorities such as
Nairobi and Mombasa also built day care centres and
provided feeding programmes and healthcare.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Preschool education continued to expand despite
limited government participation. Between 1972 and
1982, the Ministry of Education with the support of
the Bernard van Leer Foundation undertook a project
to explore and develop a preschool programme that
was relevant to the country. The project was based
at the Kenya Institute of Education. From 1980, the
government shifted the responsibility of preschool
education to the Ministry of Education. The Ministry
was expected to develop policy guidelines, train
teachers and supervisory sta, develop the curriculum,
register preschools, inspect and supervise the
programme, and continue to work in partnership with
parents, local communities, faith-based organizations,
NGOs and other development agencies.
Reections and conclusions
Indigenous education was designed to socialize
children so that they acquired core values, skills, and
knowledge crucial for the well-being of the society.
Children learnt informally as they participated in
the family activities. They also learnt as they played
and interacted with peers. Dierent members of the
family and the community shared the responsibility
of educating children. These elements of Indigenous
education should be revisited and strengthened.
The harambee spirit has been important in the
development of care and education of children
in Kenya. Involvement of parents and the local
communities has enhanced growth, relevance, and
sustainability of the service provision. This spirit should
be kept alive and burning.
Local governments have supported the community
initiatives since independence, and this is necessary. It
is good to note that this role of local governments has
been recognized and dened in the new Constitution
of 2010 that created a decentralized system of
government. There are 47 counties which are now
responsible for local support to the community-based
preschools and all services for children under 4 years
of age. It is also signicant that the private sector
has continued to provide early care and education
services. Religious bodies, NGOs and development
agencies have played a central role in providing
services and supporting local communities. It is
encouraging to see that the government recognizes
these bodies and supports continued partnership.
Government should take the lead for the development
of care and education for young children. Its
involvement is crucial for sustaining quality of
childcare centres and preschools. The government
had a slow start, but it has increased its responsibility
and inputs, such as provision of policy guidelines,
increased funding, training of teachers up to degree
level, development of the curriculum, and recently the
incorporation of two years of pre-primary (from four
years) as part of the formal education structure.
The indigenization of the curriculum has been a
central theme since independence. The country has
also borrowed relevant ideas from other countries
and from growing scientic ideas. Currently the
schools, including pre-primary level, are implementing
a competence-based curriculum. This curriculum
is expected to help learners acquire knowledge,
skills and attitudes of creativity, innovativeness,
entrepreneurship, and adaptability. The learners use
multiple approaches such as exploration, use of ICT,
participation in community activities and practical
learning. It is anticipated that this type of learning
will link the learners to real life and enable them to
envision possible solutions to challenges of today and
tomorrow.
34
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
References
Aseka, E. M. 2004. Politics, democratic transition and
development in Kenya. P.P. Ochola, J.O. Shiundu,
and H.O. Mondoh (Eds.), Governance, Society and
Development in Kenya. Addis Ababa, Organization
for Social Science Research in Eastern and
Southern Africa, pp. 1-19. Available at: https://www.
africaportal.org/publications/governance-society-
and-development-in-kenya/
Gakuru, O. N. 1976. Preschool Education in Kenya. Kenya
Education Review, Vol. 3, No. 2.
Gakuru, O. N. 1992. Class and pre-school education in Kenya.
Ph.D. thesis, University of Nairobi.
Herzog, J. A. 1969. A survey of parents of nursery children
in four communities in Kenya. Nairobi, University of
Nairobi Publishing.
Hyde, A. L. and Kabiru, M. 2003. Early childhood
development as an important strategy to improve
learning outcomes. Grand Bale, Mauritius, Association
for the Development of Education in Africa. (Working
Group on ECD: Report.)
Kabiru, M. 1975. Preschool Education Research Report.
Nairobi, Kenya Institute of Education.
Kabiru, M. 1993. Early childhood care and development:
A Kenyan experience. Nairobi, UNICEF Eastern and
Southern Africa Regional Oce.
Kenyatta, J. and Kariuki, J. 1984. Facing Mount Kenya.
Nairobi, Heinemann Educational Books.
Kilbride, P. L. and Kilbride, J. C. 1990. Changing Family life
in East Africa: Women and Children at Risk. University
Park, PA., Pennsylvania State University Press.
Kipkorir, L. 1993. Kenya. M. Cochran (Ed.), International
Handbook of Childcare Policies and Programs, p. 333-
352. Westport, CT., Greenwood.
Lenaiyasa, S. 1999. The Samburu Community ECD project in
Northern Kenya. Unpublished paper presented at the
International Conference on Early Childhood Care
and Development, Kampala, September 1999.
Lenaiyasa, S. and Kimathi, H. 2002. Samburu Community-
based Project. Unpublished paper presented at
the Regional Conference on Early Childhood
Development, Mombasa, February 2002.
Mbugua, N., Ondieki, C., Muraya, F., and Githongo, A. 2006.
Comprehensive Social Studies: Kenya and the World,
Pupils” Book 8. Nairobi, Longhorn Publishers.
National Council for Population and Development. 2013.
Kenya Population Situation Analysis. Nairobi, United
Nations Population Fund.
Onjoro, V. N. 2016. Education in Kenya since independence.
Available at: https://www.academia.edu/8029900/
EDUCATION_IN_KENYA_SINCE_INDEPENDENCE
Prochner, L. and Kabiru, M. 2008. ECD in Africa: A Historical
Perspective. M. Garcia, A. Pence, and J. L. Evans (Eds.),
Africa’s future, Africa’s challenge: Early childhood care
and development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington,
The World Bank, pp. 117-133.
Republic of Kenya. 1965. African Socialism and its
Application to Planning in Kenya. (Sessional No.10
of 1965). Available at: http://www.treasury.gov.za/
coopbank/publications/Kenya%20document.pdf
Swadener, B. B., Kabiru, M., and Njenga, A. 2000. Does the
Village Still Raise the Child?. Albany, State University of
New York Press.
Woodhead, M. 1996. In search of a Rainbow: Pathways
to Quality in Large-scale Programs for Young
Disadvantaged Children. The Hague, Bernard van Leer
Foundation.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
ECD country experience:
GHANA
Ruth O. Q. Addison
Country background
Ghana is a West African country located along the
coast of the Gulf of Guinea and facing the Atlantic
Ocean. With a population of less than ve million
before independence, it rose to over six and a half
million in 1960, almost 19million in 2000, and the
provisional population from the 2020 census is over
30.8 million.
Ghana was formerly known as the Gold Coast, in view
of the availability of gold as a natural resource and
was a British colony from 1821 until 1957. Before the
British colonization, (towards the end of the fteenth
century), the West Coast of Africa became a route/
transition point for the Atlantic Slave Trade to the
Americas. Thus, transactions in gold gave way to the
trading and export of slaves through the Gold Coast.
Relics of the forts and castles that were utilized during
the slave trade are still in existence and have become
tourist attractions.
Ghana became the rst sub-Saharan African country
to gain its independence from British colonial rule,
doing so on 6 March 1957 under the leadership of
DrKwame Nkrumah of the Convention People’s Party
(CPP). Subsequently, the country became a republic
on 1 July 1960. Incidentally, DrNkrumah is noted for
playing a lead role as a founding father, together with
Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Sekou Toure of Guinea, and
Julius Nyerere of United Republic of Tanzania, among
others, in the formation of the Organization of African
Unity (OAU) on 25 May 1963. That organization is
currently known as the African Union and has the
stated objective to promote the independence and
welfare of African States.
After independence, Ghana went through a phase
of intermittent military coups/regimes from 1966 to
1969 under the National Liberation Council (NLC), then
from 1972 to 1979 with the Supreme Military Council
1 and 2, which was toppled by the Provisional National
Defence Council (PNDC) 1 and 2 in 1979. The PNDC
administration was the longest lasting, continuing
until 1992 when the country reverted to constitutional
democratic rule. Since 1992 Ghana has enjoyed
peaceful transitions of political power between two
key parties: the National Democratic Congress (NDC)
and the New Patriotic Party (NPP). The NPP has been in
power since 2017 and is in its second term.
The country is currently made up of 16 regions that fall
within the coastal, middle, and northern belts. There is
a central and local governance system which cascades
to the Regional Coordinating Councils headed by
the Regional Minister and a somewhat decentralized
District Assembly system supervised by the District
Chief Executive. This is geared towards bringing
services closer to the doorstep of local communities.
Two hundred and sixty District Assemblies are
presently in place. The government ministries,
departments and agencies are represented at all of
these levels.
Socio-economic and cultural dynamics
The period just before independence in Ghana
was termed the “Guggisberg Economy”, and is
characterized by the exportation of primary products
such as cocoa, gold and timber. The majority of the
rural population were involved in farming, and many
of the urban citizenry were engaged in economic
ventures such as commerce, large-scale commercial
agriculture, banking, and industry, even though these
were predominantly controlled by foreign investors.
Traditional caregiving practices
The Ghanaian culture has always placed children at
the centre of its planning and welfare strategies. Thus,
parental and family investments are sought with the
future generation in mind, and from the early years
inheritance patterns of lineages are established to
ensure continuity. The older generation makes a
conscious eort to transmit knowledge, skills and
abilities about traditions and values to children. The
understanding is that children are the next generation
and transition plans, strategies, and training must start
from childhood. A premium is placed on the survival
and development of children, starting from pregnancy.
As such, though formal policies, structures, and
institutions may not have been in place for Early
Childhood Care and Development in the past, ECD
36
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
principles were practiced to a large extent by families
and community members through informal traditional
care, nutrition, and socialization practices. In growth
monitoring for example, beads were used around the
waist, knees, wrists to measure growth. The number
of teeth a child has, or the eruption of teeth, was
an indicator for a child’s age. Interactions with the
older generation revealed that though they did not
attend formal ECD centres in their time, they still
had informal tutoring and socialization in their local
languages with their family and community members.
This gave children good stimulation, condence, and
early learning opportunities in preparation for formal
schooling.
There exists a strong extended family system and a
commitment to communal living. Traditional child
upbringing and care-giving practices involved the
female family members such as the grandmothers,
aunts, and sisters as critical actors. Some of these
caregivers stayed at home with the children,
while others were farmers and traders who would
sometimes take the children along to work. The
grandmother’s role was crucial not only for caregiving
but in imparting knowledge in many households. The
grandfathers, uncles and brothers were engaged in
diverse income-generating activities in the informal
and formal sectors. They played leadership and
protective roles in their families and the communities.
For example, as family or kinships heads they
determine the name of the child based on the
genealogy and culture and would lead the rituals
and ceremonies. As such the elderly men were often
consulted for their wise counsel. They also supervised
formal and informal apprenticeship placements, thus
ensuring the transmission of diverse labour skills
and techniques to the younger generation. Learning
was informal, practical, and yet facilitated retention.
Tutelage through play and simulation/role playing was
usually accompanied with local songs, rhymes, vivid
imagery, stories, dance, and folklore.
The extended family system encouraged mentoring
and sometimes the fostering of distant relatives. The
traditional home structures of compound houses
nurtured a group or communal living lifestyle. Here
the elderly played supervisory care-taking roles, with
support from other members of the households. Thus,
the old adage of “it takes a village to raise a child” is
manifested, emphasizing community responsibility
and involvement in the development and well-being
of the child.
The Ghanaian culture places a premium on the
developmental milestones of an individual from
childhood to adulthood. This is usually accompanied
by symbolic rituals, ceremonies or “rites of passage”
for landmarks such as: birth, naming, puberty, and
marriage ceremonies. During these ceremonies, the
family and community leaders re-echo the privileges
and responsibilities of the dierent members of
the family and community towards the child and
vice versa. As a country with many tribes and sub-
cultures, festivals play a signicant role in unifying the
dierent generations and become key learning and
socialization points for children and youth.
With a predominantly Christian population, the Church
has had a signicant inuence on the development
of children from a young age. Children’s services and
“Sunday schools” became useful literacy and moral
training points. Child participation was enhanced
with children’s involvement in acting for Christmas,
Easter, and other performances, learning bible verses,
and understanding the morals of biblical stories.
Missionaries, and especially their spouses, played a key
role in educational initiatives.
Post-independence era
The period after independence saw major
transformations in policies to ensure rapid
industrialization in the country and to break the cycle
of dependency on foreign inuences. The building
of the Akosombo hydroelectric dam, creating the
largest articial lake in the world, put the country in
the international limelight as Ghana sought to support
its industrialization agenda. The period of military
rule (1966-1983) brought about political instability
due to the rapid turnover of governments which in
turn aected the economy. Thus 1983-1991 became
known for economic recovery measures designed to
revive the economy, in coordination with the World
Bank and the IMF. With constitutional rule from 1992
to the present moment, there has been a marked
improvement in the management of the economy.
The COVID-19 pandemic set the nation back, but there
is a gradual recovery.
Evolution of ECD in Ghana
A formal awareness of ECD began in Ghana in 1843
when the Basel Missionaries from Switzerland rst
introduced nurseries alongside their primary one
37
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
classes. Subsequently, in the 1920s, other missions
and groupings introduced other nursery education
programmes. Government directives regarding ECD
came after 1960. Before the famous 1993 National
Seminar (Adu-Gyam et al., 2016), that sped the ECD
policy development process, the following laws and
regulations were in existence:
● The Education Act of 1961, which placed all pre-
schools (dened as where children below school-
going age are assembled regularly for instruction with
or without fees), both public and private, under the
Ministry of Education.
● The Dzobo Report of 1974 on the “New Structure
and Content of Education” which emphasized
kindergarten education for 4- to 6-year-old
children prior to primary schooling.
● The Evans-Anfom Report of 1975 encouraged
nursery and kindergarten education.
● The SMCD (Supreme Military Council Decree) 1978
and its Legislative Instrument 12230 of 1979, which
empowered the Department of Social Welfare (of
the Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare) to
register and regulate the establishment of day care
centres in the country.
● The PNDC (Provisional National Defence Council)
Law 42 of 1983, which empowered the Secretary
of State for Education to formulate policy from
pre-school to university. (Etse et al., 2003).
Incidentally, Ghana became the rst sub-Saharan
African country to ratify the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), doing
so on 5 February 1990. This paved the way for other
child-related legislations, policies, and strategies to
guarantee the wellbeing and development of the
child. Examples include:7
● The 1992 Constitution; specically, Article 28,
which mandates parliament to institute laws to
protect the rights and welfare of children.
● Criminal Code Amendment Act, 1998 (Act 554).
● The Children’s Act, 1998 (Act 560).
● The Juvenile Justice Act, 2003 (Act 653).
● Human Tracking Act, 2005 (Act 694).
● Persons with Disability Act, 2006 (Act 715).
7 The following list is derived from a single source (Ministry of Women and Children’s Aairs, 2009).
Additionally, from the late 1970s onwards, women and
children’s rights promotion and protection institutions
came into existence, such as the Ghana National
Commission on Children (GNCC) and the National
Council for Women and Development (NCWD). These
were later merged to form the Ministry of Women
and Children’s Aairs (MOWAC), which is now the
Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection
(MoGCSP). At a similar point in time the Commission
on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ)
was established; likewise, the Women and Juvenile
Unit (WAJU) of the Ghana Police Service, which is now
called the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit
(DOVVSU).
Where we are with ECD
The post-independence era saw an upsurge in formal
day nurseries, joining a few programmes that had
been established earlier, such as the Queen Elizabeth
Nursery School in Accra, which had been established
in the early 1950s before independence. In addition,
working women facilitated the opening of creches,
for example the Young Women’s Christian Association
(YWCA) day care centres. For these programmes, the
attendants were trained, and parents were oriented
regarding operations and regulations.
The ECD policy development process commenced
after the famous 1993 ECD seminar and (being
coordinated by the GNCC and later MOWAC), spanned
approximately 11 years, as a result of frequent reviews,
changes in government, and delays in its approval.
Despite the delay, the process generated strong
partnerships both locally and internationally among
varied stakeholders in the health, education, social
welfare, community development, local government
sectors, non-governmental organizations, private
practitioners, academia, and development partners
among others. This promoted passionate and active
networking behind the scenes, joint planning,
implementation, monitoring, and evaluation, leading
to an “all hands on deck” approach for the ECD agenda
in Ghana. This also provided a network of resource
persons who served on dierent technical working
groups including the National ECD Coordinating
Committee, and assisted with advocacy, orientation
and training workshops throughout the policy
development and implementation processes.
38
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
The launch of Ghana’s ECD Policy in 2004 was
timely, in light of Ghana’s hosting of the 2005 African
International ECD Conference. The policy coincided
with the introduction of reforms that promoted
the development of the young child, such as the
incorporation of kindergarten in the basic school
system. To foster enhanced interagency collaboration
and coordination, National, Regional and District
ECD Coordinating Committees were established.
In addition, non-governmental organizations such
as the Assemblies of God Relief and Development
Services (AGREDS) supported the ECD implementation
process with innovative interventions. AGREDS is
noted for their ECD centre located in the heart of the
“Agbogbloshie” market in Accra. That Centre provided
care and support for the young children of the market
women which freed them to focus and engage in their
income-generating activities. Others, including the
“Street Girls Aid” whose target was “street girls” or head
porters known as “Kayayee”, made similar provision as
part of a broader strategy for women’s empowerment
(Addison, 2021). In addition, and more recently, in 2018
Ghana adopted the Nurturing Care framework for
Early Childhood Development to promote integrated
programming and interventions.
A key educational reform in support of ECD was the
introduction of a government White Paper in 2004, an
outcome of the Anamuah-Mensah report that assessed
the Ghanaian educational system (Adu-Gyam etal.,
2016). The White Paper added kindergarten as part of
the basic school system, accompanied by a curriculum
for kindergarten and assessment tools. Subsequently,
early learning standards and indicators for 4- to
5-year-olds were developed, and standards for 0- to
3-year-olds were also put in place. The introduction of
the school feeding programme in 2005 has improved
the nutritional status of children with an assurance
of a meal a day in public schools, and school health
programmes monitor their wellness. As a result of such
initiatives, more children are in school, particularly
girl children. In addition, in 2020 the Early Childhood
Education Policy (Ministry of Education, 2020) was
developed, and launched in 2021 by the education
sector.
There has also been progress in reducing childhood
poverty. Ghana is noted as one of the rst nations in
sub-Saharan Africa to have achieved Target One of the
Millennium Development Goal: halving the population
living in extreme poverty.
Birth registration has increased from 17% in 2002, to
66% in 2013 and it is currently at 80%. Vaccination
coverage is at 98.3%.
Training of teachers at the onset of the formalization of
nursery schools and kindergarten after independence,
was not widespread. Usually, responsible adults in the
community were selected and provided with some
in-service training. They were then known as “pupil
teachers”; some commenced as “pupil teachers” and
later went to the formal teacher training colleges, now
called Colleges of Education.
Training has improved and expanded for ECD
practitioners. It now includes: The National Nursery
Teacher’s Training Centre (NNTTC), with its Model
Nursery; the Department of Social Welfare’s Day
care training institutions and some private sector
practitioners such as Mays Educational Centre
that provide basic level and in-service training
opportunities. The Colleges of Education and
Higher-level tertiary training are also available
through public universities such as: the University of
Education, Winneba, with its bachelor’s degree in Early
Childhood Education (ECE), and MPhil and MEd in ECE
(introduced in 2015 and 2018 respectively) and the
University of Cape Coast. In addition, some public and
private universities oer tertiary-level courses such as
psychology, home-science that may give insights into
ECD.
The ECD Secretariat located at the Children’s
department of the MoGCSP plays a key role in
collaborative and coordinating activities at district,
regional and national levels to ensure the eective
implementation of the ECD policy. Some recent
activities include the development of ECD standards
for 0- to 3-year-olds and an ECD interventions
directory to enhance documentation and monitoring
of ECD programmes across sectors in 2018; an
ongoing mapping of ECD programmes, interventions,
and services commenced in 2020 to monitor ECD
implementation among stakeholders for eective
monitoring and to generate a database of services.
It is also worth noting that some lessons have been
learnt in the ECD policy implementation that are being
considered for the ongoing policy review. For example,
though the national coordinating committee is
functional, the high turnover of sta and the multiple
yet identical membership of child related committees
at the district level aect the ecacy of the district
39
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
coordinating committees. One recommendation of
the review process is to merge all district child-related
committees into one with agenda items that will
tackle issues of the subdivisions to make them more
viable and ecient.
Assessment of ECD programmes,
consideration for post-COVID-19,
and Sankofa thoughts
As early childhood care and development practices
and programmes have evolved over the years many
strides have been made. Key among which is the
realization of the holistic nature of ECD and the need
for concerted eorts from all partners and stakeholders
to provide the needed services for children. A number
of child-related policies, strategies and programmes
are now in place to protect the child. The general
wellbeing of the child has improved such that the
provision and access to healthcare is much better.
Early childhood education (kindergarten) has been
incorporated into the basic school system and
enrolment rates are increasing.
Family and community support
The rise in double-income families and its dynamics
contributed to the expansion in the provision of ECD
programmes. Empowerment of women in the formal
workforce has also stimulated the need to provide ECD
services to free mothers to earn an income. However,
a parent’s primary role of care for their children should
not be lost. The pandemic with subsequent lockdowns
has been a wake-up call that this role of parents needs
to be emphasized and they should be supported to be
eective.
Centre and school health dynamics
The Ghana Education and Health Services have
intensied eorts to screen children before entry
into kindergarten, in a collaborative programme
dubbed “My First Day at School”. This facilitates the
identication of children with special health needs and
promotes prompt referral.
Hygiene inspection of children and continuing
promotion of handwashing will remain important
post-COVID-19. Likewise, Physical Education should
be resumed to promote overall physical and motor
development.
Learning strategies
There is the realization that in the past, children were
communicators in their local languages and that
must be revived. Children talked, engaged in chat,
storytelling, and imaginary play, in contrast to children
growing up with a dependence on television, IT, and
exposure to sometimes problematic social media
inuences. Hence the need to engage children in
local language storytelling and dialogue to promote
self-expression alongside their IT, television, and other
contemporary innovative inuences.
Religious groups such as Christians and Muslims also
created opportunities for child participation and
learning. They became useful avenues for religious
and moral grooming and mentoring. Christians for
example have the “Children’s Services” and “Sunday
Schools” while the Muslims have the “Makaranta”
(Muslim schools).
Learning through play must be reinforced, especially
outdoor play for exposure to natural elements such
as fresh air and the sun (a good source of vitamin
D), rain, sand, space, and trees. Utilizing simple and
practical toys, artifacts as teaching and learning
materials from the environment must be embraced
to create a synergy of resources. These, as well as
emphasizing traditional and culturally relevant games,
simulation, songs, dance, rhymes, stories, and folklore
are important going forward.
Children can be assessed in diverse ways for school
readiness, as such centres and schools ought to
avoid undue testing such as pre-admission exams
for kindergarten and primary one pupils. IT relevance
and sustainability has become evident during this
pandemic and should be incorporated in ECD
curriculum and learning.
COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has set us thinking regarding
our lifestyles as we have felt trapped under various
lock-down restrictions that limited social interactions.
This was a time, for example, when parents and
families who had been used to enjoying the services of
other caregivers were challenged for care support.
40
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Families became vulnerable in many ways: members”
incomes were compromised, the health status of
family members was an ongoing concern, and there
was an apprehension about relatives” well-being as
they were limited in their interactions and drawn apart.
Likewise, the disruption in the education of children
gave cause to worry about the continuity of education
while children remain at home. A recent interaction of
stakeholders advocated for the threeCs; Consultation
(involvement of parents in decision-making),
Communication (regular dissemination of simple
yet clear information), and Coordination (to ensure
collaboration, eciency and uniformity).
Sankofa lessons – What can we learn from
these periods
Sustaining some of the gains made from interventions
is a crucial challenge. As we formalize and
institutionalize ECD, we need to realise that there are
critical components from the past as well that we must
not lose, as they play a vital role in having enriched
culturally relevant and enduring ECD programmes
that will stand the test of time. Indeed, the traditional
versus modern childrearing practices creates a debate
on whether or not development is taking place.
Nevertheless, one believes that consideration of
the strengths of both can provide a balance of “best
practices”. Such balances could include the following.
Developing ingenious means for care
arrangements. These have become evident during
the COVID-19 period. COVID-19 compelled caregivers
to elicit their creative instincts of stimulating and
engaging their children and families while they stayed
home with them.
Revamping extended family ties. In dealing with
the challenges of the pandemic, especially the
realization of the unexpected loss of lives and broken
relationships, many family bonds have thereby
been strengthened and society must work towards
sustaining those. With the prevailing socio-economic
dynamics which includes migration and relocation,
extended family support seems to be fading out, as
we witness a growth in the number of nuclear families.
This is robbing families of a traditional backbone of
support from the extended family and community.
Dynamic systemic changes. The operations of the
workplace, both formal and informal as well as schools
and educational institutions, were in suspense during
the pandemic. Nonetheless it paved the way for
impressive practical innovations in the workplace and
educational establishments such as shifts, job sharing,
rotations, and virtual interactions that have become
useful additions to operations. The resilience shown is
worth noting and as a country, Ghana needs to strive
towards encouraging innovation.
Community involvement in ECD support services.
Community members, parents and caregivers
must not get carried away and lose out on active
participation in their children’s development and
welfare, such as: growth monitoring, help with
homework, involvement in school Parent Teacher
Associations (PTA), and transmitting of traditional
values. With the COVID-19 challenge, a number of
parents felt overwhelmed and seemed to have lost
the knack for participation in such activities. Indeed,
COVID-19 has drawn our attention to the fact that, the
valuable part of our culture that emphasizes the role
of the entire community in raising a child, must be
revived.
References
Adu-Gyam S., Donkoh W. J., and Addo A. A. (2016).
Educational Reforms in Ghana: Past and Present.
Journal of Education and Human Development,
Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 158-172. Available at: https://
www.researchgate.net/publication/316035018_
Educational_Reforms_in_Ghana_Past_and_Present
Etse, S., Adamu-Issah M., and Amadu M. 2003. Process
of ECD Policy Development – Ghana’s Experience.
Unpublished report.
Ministry of Education. 2020. Early Childhood Education
Policy Competencies and the Quality of Care Services
Provided to Children Aged 0-3 in Ghana. Unpublished
report.
Ministry of Women and Children’s Aairs. 2009. Children
in Ghana. Accra, United Nations Children’s Fund
(UNICEF).
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
ECD country experience:
ZANZIBAR
Bishara Theneyan Mohamed
Political background at time
of independence
Zanzibar lies o the coast of East Africa and is made
up of two islands – Unguja to the north (which also
has the capital, Zanzibar City); and Pemba to the south.
The Portuguese initially ruled Zanzibar before Omani
Sultans, who were invited by Zanzibaris to remove
the Portuguese from power, became the new rulers
(Ghassani and Al Busaid, 2021a). The Arab sultans then
ruled Zanzibar from the mid-1800s to early 1920s
when the British took it over, and made Zanzibar a
British Protectorate (Ghassani and Al Busaid, 2021b).
In the mid-1950s political parties started a struggle for
independence from the British and this continued into
the early 1960s. Animosity among dierent political
parties led to riots and deaths of some civilians.
Zanzibar attained its independence from Britain in
mid-December 1963, with the Sultan remaining as a
ceremonial head of state. That political independence
was short-lived, however, as the newly elected
government was overthrown in a bloody coup in
mid-January 1964, and the Sultan was forced to leave
the country. Many Zanzibaris also ed the country
between 1964 and mid-1970s, and there are large
Zanzibari diaspora communities in dierent countries.
Zanzibar banned all opposition political parties for 30
years, and multiparty politics did not begin again until
the mid-1990s.
The Republic of Zanzibar united with Tanganyika in
April 1964 to form the Republic of Tanzania. Since then,
Zanzibar is part of United Republic of Tanzania and is
semi-autonomous. Each country has its own president;
and its own ministers of education, health, social
welfare, gender, and youth, agriculture and sheries,
commerce and industries, nance and planning,
justice and good governance, local government,
and so on. Both countries share the same ministry of
defence and security, internal aairs, and foreign aairs,
as well as the same central bank.
Social and family demographics at time
of independence
At the time of independence in 1963, Zanzibar had a
population of about 300,000 people, the majority of
whom lived in rural areas. Some rural people worked
in clove and coconut plantations, the two main export
crops. However, for the most part, the rural population
was engaged in subsistence farming and small-scale
shing in the many scattered villages. Any extra staple
crops and sh in villages were sold in urban centres,
and in return the money obtained would buy clothes
and food that was not available in villages. Thus, there
were steady to and fro movements of rural people
to urban areas. The urban population mostly worked
in the civil service, commercial centres, small-scale
industries and other service-related activities.
The economy of Zanzibar highly depended on
the export of cloves. There was also a robust trade
between Zanzibar to Persian Gulf countries, Yemen,
India, and East Asia, which was mostly carried out by
dhows that took advantage of the seasonal monsoon
winds.
Early childhood care and development
Introduction
Zanzibar, having a 99% Muslim population, has many
Qur’an reading Madrasa in both rural and urban
areas. These Islamic schools, known as “Vyuo”, were
established in Zanzibar centuries ago. Those who
attend are children as young as 4 years old, and
adults as old as 30 years or more. Whereas children
mostly learn the reading of the Qur’an and the
introduction to Islam, adults receive instruction in
more advanced Islamic studies and the writing of
Arabic script. Zanzibar lingua franca has been, and is
still, Kiswahili, and the people are called “Waswahili”,
and their culture is called Swahili. Before the coming
of British rule in Zanzibar, it was common for these
adult Madrasa attendees to write all kinds of Kiswahili
correspondence, poems, and diaries in Arabic script.
With the coming of British rule in the early 1920s,
primary-level government schools were established
both in rural and urban areas. A government teacher
training college was also opened. In later years,
government secondary schools were established in
urban areas. Zanzibaris, especially in rural areas, were
suspicious of these primary schools as they thought it
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
was a way of getting their children away from Madrasa
and from learning Qur’an and their religion. To counter
this, vigorous campaigns for children to be enrolled
in primary schools were carried out. Among the
strategies used in such campaigns were the provision
of free midday meals, enrolment of children of
prominent villagers, having dierent schools for boys
and girls, and having no school fee. Resistance against
the enrolment of children in urban primary schools
was less than that experienced in rural Zanzibar.
To reduce suspicion towards these formal schools,
and to be sensitive to local culture and the needs
of Zanzibar society, in later years of the British Rule,
one year of preschool was introduced into primary
schools for 5- to 6-year-old children. This transition
class to Standard One was called an infant class in
girls” primary schools and a Qur’an class in boys”
primary schools. Special primary school teachers were
allocated to these classes. The subjects that were
taught in the transition classes included the reading
of the Qur’an, art and craft, Kiswahili reading, Kiswahili
writing, and math skills.
In the years before independence, dierent urban
communities, mostly of Indian origin, opened private
primary and secondary schools, kindergartens,
and nursery schools to serve their children. Each
community, about six of them – the Hindus, Sunni
Jamaat, Shia Ithneshary, Shia Ismaili, and Shia Bohra
– had a nursery school, a primary school and a
secondary school. Christians – UMCA and the Catholics
– also had their own nursery schools, primary schools,
and secondary schools. The Arabs had a nursery school
and a primary school that taught Arabic as one of
the school subjects. Parents who were well-o paid
school fees, and an exemption was given to those
parents who could not aord to pay for their children’s
schooling. The age to begin preschool was around 3 to
6 years.
The private schools functioned under the leadership
of their communities until just one month after
independence. Immediately after independence, the
revolutionary government nationalized all privately
owned schools, including nursery schools, to address
what it said were equality and equity issues among
citizens. In addition, the government built more
primary and secondary schools in both urban and rural
areas to cater for the growing population. The teacher
training college that was built during the colonial
time continued to teach primary school teachers. The
trained primary school teachers were then allocated to
both primary schools and nursery schools. Secondary
school teachers were sent to Mainland Tanzania for
training in diploma and degree courses.
In addition to the nationalized preschools, the
government built ten more preschools in both rural
and urban areas under the sponsorship of the African
Muslim Agency. These later-built preschools had
a more religious orientation than the nationalized
preschools. Trained primary school teachers taught
in all government nursery schools, and there was
no specic training of nursery schoolteachers in the
teacher training college. Realizing this gap, some
nursery schoolteachers were sent to Mainland Tanzania
to receive short-term training on nursery school
teaching in Christian-run nursery schools. In addition,
some seminars were arranged in Zanzibar to improve
the skills of the nursery schoolteachers. Unlike primary
and secondary schools where there were no school
fees, parents paid a fee to send their children to these
government nursery schools. This was because nursery
school education was not compulsory, and only few
children were aorded the opportunity to attend, and
they paid for the service (Mohamed, 2009).
The government ownership of all nursery schools,
which began after the revolution in 1964, ended in
1980s, when the government approved a liberalization
policy that allowed communities and private
institutions and organizations to establish preschools
(Mohamed, 2011). It was at this time that the Aga Khan
Foundation negotiated with the Ministry of Education
to be allowed to support the establishment of
preschools in Qur’anic Madrasas. The idea of Madrasa
preschools originated in Mombasa, Kenya, under
the sponsorship of The Aga Khan Foundation. It was
meant to enrich the Madrasa education by setting
up a three-year preschool programme that used an
Islamic integrated Madrasa preschool curriculum.
Madrasa preschool programme
The Madrasa preschool programme was a very
well-thought-out programme that included the
establishment of a Madrasa Resource Centre (MRC) to
manage the programmes. After ve years of planning,
the rst Madrasa preschool opened its doors in
Mombasa, Kenya in 1986 and after its evident success
it was introduced in Zanzibar where it also started
small. There are four basic features of the Madrasa
preschools. They are low-cost, community-based,
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
use an Islamic integrated curriculum that is culturally
appropriate for East African Muslim communities, and
are taught by well-trained teachers from the preschool
communities who have minimal formal education
qualications. Since its inception, the programme has
had a strong and trusted working partnership among
the communities, MRC sta, programme sponsors,
and the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF). Funding for the
programme during its 20 years was requested and
received by AKF from dierent international donors.
The Zanzibar Madrasa Resource Centre (ZMRC) started
with very few Qur’anic Madrasas (Vyuo) in Zanzibar
Town, and then the programme was extended to a
very few rural Qur’anic Madrasas on Unguja Island and
a very few Madrasas on Pemba Island. Owners of the
Madrasa who were willing to join the programme were
the main stakeholders. They allocated special rooms
for the programme in their Qur’anic Madrasas. They
also identied young women for training at the ZMRC,
which they did not have to pay for, and they made a
decision on the school fee, and the amount of stipend
they would pay to teachers. Parents paid monthly fees
that supported the running of the Madrasa. School
fees varied between Madrasas depending on parents”
income.
The Madrasas had classes for 4-year-olds, 5-year-
olds, and 6-year-olds, as entry to Standard One was 7
years. These preschool Qur’anic Madrasas were well
run and managed and compared very well with the
government-managed preschools, which have been
running for about 30 years. Enrolment rates were
very high as parents were quite impressed with what
their children learned, and they ocked into “Annual
Madrasa Preschool Days” performances where children
showed o the curriculum.
Seeing the success of this initial Qur’anic Madrasa-
based programme, the Aga Khan Foundation came
with a new concept of extending the Madrasa
preschools into wider communities, that is, beyond
the Qur’anic Madrasas (Aga Khan Foundation, 1993).
The idea was for the communities in both rural
and urban areas to own and manage their own
low-cost preschools outside the existing Qur’anic
Madrasa buildings. And therefore, in addition to the
teacher training component was added community
mobilization and training. This more comprehensive
community-based Madrasa preschool programme
was introduced in Mombasa in Kenya, and Unguja and
Pemba Islands in Zanzibar, and extended to Kampala
in Uganda.
Over the 20-year span of the programme, the MRC
Trainers with the support of hired consultants
developed:
● A children’s curriculum that integrated content
from Islamic Madrasa education and early
childhood education. The rst curriculum was
developed in 1990 and there were revisions in
1994, 1997 and 2010.
● Monitoring and evaluation programme and tool
for children.
● Training programmes for teacher trainers, and
Trainer’s Manual (Madrasa Resource Centre, 2004a).
● Training programmes for teachers.
● Teachers Idea Book, and Teachers Resource Book.
● Teaching and learning materials, and a Book
for Development of no-/low-cost teaching and
learning materials.
● Assessment strategies of the programme and
content of the programme.
The Islamic integrated Madrasa preschool
curriculum
The curriculum was developed to include best
practices of child development and at the same
time preserve and strengthen children’s culture, their
Islamic faith, values, and identity. The integration of
Islam into secular education allows children to learn
about their faith, appreciate their cultural heritage,
while developing cognitive, language and social skills
needed to succeed in later schooling.
The developmental approach to early childhood
education was central to the improvement of the later
versions of Madrasa preschool curriculum, (Madrasa
Resource Centre, 2009) which adapted the active
and participatory early learning approaches found in
the High/Scope curriculum. However, some learning
experiences for the Madrasa curriculum were drawn
from the cultural and Islamic values of Zanzibar,
Kenya, and Uganda, in addition to those secular ones
(math, language and so on) found in the High/Scope
curriculum.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Since Islam is a complete way of life, it is integrated in
all aspects of the daily routine of the class timetable to
meet children’s social, moral and spiritual needs. The
school environment displays Islamic thoughts in wall
displays, storybooks, and other teaching and learning
materials. Islam is also integrated in the daily routine
(“duas” for going to the toilet, for eating, and so on) and
in all classroom activities, including in class subjects,
songs and poems, role plays, Islamic phrases of
appreciation and admonition, and when re-directing
children’s behaviour. In addition, during the rst
30minutes of small group time each day, children
are exposed to ve main areas of Islamic study at
their level of understanding. These ve areas include:
“Tawhid” (the Oneness of Allah); “Ibada” (the acts of
worship); “Akhlaq” (virtue, morality and manners);
“Seera” (Prophet Muhammad’s – Peace Be Upon Him
– journey through life); and “Qiraa” (in this context, the
reading and the writing of the Qur’anic script).
Teachers training
Teachers of Madrasa preschools, with at least ten years
of schooling, were given an intensive four to six weeks
initial training at the Madrasa Resource Centre, before
they started their classroom practice. Once teachers
have set up their classroom, trainers then became
mentors who visited teachers weekly for the rst six
months, and then monthly for the next 18 months
to support them to translate theory into practice. In
addition, teachers came to the Resource Centre every
Saturday for reection on their classroom practice
and for more training. Teachers were certied after
two years of training and classroom practice and were
awarded their teaching certicates. Thus, the teachers
training curriculum was delivered in such a way so as
to have teachers who were continuously trained and
supported to translate theory into classroom practice
and to reect on their practice. Good classroom
practice is seen as key to the Madrasa programme.
The teacher training curriculum (Madrasa Resource
Centre, 2004a) included the basics of child
development, how young children learn, children’s
learning experiences, the daily routine, setting up
learning centres, running of small and large groups
times, developing children’s activities, writing of lesson
plans, child assessment, development of teaching and
learning materials for group time learning and for the
learning centres, and so on. Teachers are instructed to
use low-/no-cost materials that are available in their
environment for the development of teaching and
learning materials. This approach makes it possible to
have adequate and a variety of learning materials in
classes that make it possible for children to learn by
doing and through play. For language and math, they
included the collection of dierent kinds of boxes that
were made into wall charts, story books/cards, letter/
word/number cards, rhymes, songs, and so on. And
for art and craft and math activities they included
the collection of items like, seashells, sticks, seeds,
boxes, cobs of corn, leaves, bottle tops, plastic bottles,
coconut shells, owers, pawpaw stalks, sacks, wooden
pieces, banana bres, and so on.
Teachers are also made aware of the importance of
involving relevant stakeholders in children’s preschool
experience. These include parents, community elders,
older siblings, local and religious leaders, and other
members of the community, who could share with
children dierence experiences including telling
of stories, singing, playing local games, explaining
community activities, and so on.
Community mobilization and training
Since Madrasa preschools are community owned and
managed, the Madrasa Resource Centres employed
Community Development Ocers (CDOs). These CDOs
mobilized and worked very closely with communities
to:
● set up their Madrasa preschools, either in existing
community buildings or put up new structures;
● identify School Management Committees whose
main functions were to manage the preschools,
liaise with teachers, the community and the local
community mobilizers, other NGOs, MRC, and
government institutions;
● and train the School Management Committees,
Community Resource Teams, and Madrasa
Preschool Association Committee. Most of the
training is carried out in the community.
● In addition, the CDOs with the help of consultants
prepared:
● training programmes for communities, School
Committees, Community Resource Teams, Madrasa
Association;
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
● training manuals, and other Community Resource
Manuals for the dierent community groups
(Madrasa Resource Centre, 2004b; 2004c);
● working strategies with owners or managers of
Qur’anic Madrasas and communities;
● and assessment strategies of the programme and
content of the programme.
Lessons from the Madrasa programme
The Madrasa preschool programme provides six
lessons.
First, preschools can successfully be run and managed
by communities with the funding and support of non-
governmental organizations (NGOs).
Second, with adequate support, communities can
take the responsibility and successfully establish,
manage, and run their preschools. There are some
Madrasa preschools that continue to run today, about
11 years after the programme concluded. This shows
that well thought of community-based preschools are
sustainable.
Third, a relevant good quality curriculum can be
developed to meet the cultural values and spiritual
needs of local communities.
Fourth, alternative teacher training programmes for
women (with nine to ten years of schooling), who do
not qualify for entry into government teacher training
colleges can be developed and can produce good
quality practicing preschool teachers.
Fifth, teaching and learning materials can be
developed from low-/no-cost locally available
materials and are as ecient as factory-produced ones
in producing quality learning.
Sixth, an evaluation of the Madrasa preschools
showed that they compared very well with other
good quality preschools in classroom practice, in the
learning environment and in the outcome of children’s
performance.
Preschool enrolment in Zanzibar has increased
manyfold compared to the time of independence.
Today government primary schools oer two years of
preschool. In addition, an “Interactive Radio Instruction
programme,” which was developed for community-
based preschools by the Education Development
Centre and funded by USAID in the mid-2000s, has
many “Play to Learn Clubs” that reach many children
who do not have access to formal preschools.
(Education Development Centre, 2007).
References
Aga Khan Foundation. 1993. The Concept Paper for the
Madrasa Preschool in East Africa. Geneva, AKF Geneva.
Education Development Centre. 2007. Radio Instruction
to Strengthen Education (RISE): Preschool Design
Document for Zanzibar. Waltham, MA., EDC.
Ghassani, M. and Al Busaid, R. 2021a. TAREIKH YETU (SILSILA
7): Mwanzo wa Kushindwa kwa Wareno kwenye Bahari
ya Hindi. Online video, 23 August 2021. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3Bv8kW8L_
gandab_channel=GumzolaGhassani
—. 2021b. Tareikh Yetu (Silsila 8): Kuporomoka kwa Himaya
ya Wareno kwenye Bahari ya Hindi. Online video,
1 September 2021. Available at: https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=b0zEuGYNW9wandab_
channel=GumzolaGhassani
Mohamed, B. T. 2009. Historia ya Malezi, makuzi
na Maendeleo ya Watoto Wadogo, Zanzibar.
Unpublished presentation to the Zanzibar Ministry of
Education and Vocational Training, Zanzibar, United
Republic of Tanzania.
Mohamed, B. T. 2011. Early Childhood Care and
Development in Zanzibar. Unpublished presentation
to the Zanzibar Ministry of Education and Vocational
Training, Zanzibar, United Republic of Tanzania.
Madrasa Resource Centre. 2004a. Teachers” Trainers
Manual for the Madrasa Preschool Program. Mombasa,
Kenya, Madrasa Resource Centre East Africa Regional
Oce.
—. 2004b. School Management Committee Training
Manual. Mombasa, Kenya, Madrasa Resource Centre
East Africa Regional Oce.
—. 2004c. Community Resource Team Training Manual.
Mombasa, Kenya, Madrasa Resource Centre East
Africa Regional Oce.
Madrasa Resource Centre. 2009. The Madrasa Preschool
Curriculum, Second edn. Mombasa, Kenya: Madrasa
Resource Centre East Africa Regional Oce.
47
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
ECD country experience:
SOUTH AFRICA
Eric Atmore
“The history of care and education in South
Africa tells many stories. It is the story about the
construction of young children’s lives along racial
lines, the role of women and power in society.” Hasina
Ebrahim (2010, p. 119)
Country background
This chapter sets out the early childhood development
(ECD) trajectory in South Africa during the transition
from apartheid (racial segregation) to democracy.
While South Africa gained nominal independence
from the British in 1910, there was still a strong colonial
inuence leading up to the rst democratic, non-racial
elections of April 1994, when South Africa transitioned
to a non-racial democracy. This transition essentially
can be described as moving from colonization and
racial apartheid to democracy.
Through the periods of colonization and apartheid
in South Africa, education was a contested terrain.
The political ideology which embraced apartheid
inuenced education policy and ECD policy to the
disadvantage of millions of children who were not
classied as white under the Population Registration
Act, No. 30 of 1950. Education and ECD policy
development must be understood in relation to the
social and historical context referred to above. A major
characteristic of colonial and apartheid education
policies and programmes was the unequal education
opportunities provided for groups of people based
solely on race.
In South Africa, there has been a long history of
resistance to segregation, and this resulted in a
lengthy liberation struggle towards non-racialism and
democracy. The Black African majority, which had
been oppressed for more than three centuries by
various colonial and apartheid powers, fought for a
8 Preschool education appeared in South Africa as early as the rst half of the nineteenth century. Author J. Olivier sets out the early history
of the preschool and nursery school movement in South Africa in Chapter 9 (pages 274-305) of Theunis Vester’s edited book (1989) titled “A
Historical Pedagogical Investigation of Infant Education”, published by the University of South Africa, Pretoria.
political system that sought one person, one vote in a
democratic state. Over this time, there was signicant
unrest, protest, and loss of life in the struggle towards
democracy.
On the 11 February 1990, Nelson Mandela, who
had been imprisoned for 27 years, was released.
Negotiations then began between the apartheid
National Party government and the liberation
movements, predominantly the African National
Congress, which lasted for four years. A settlement
was reached and the rst non-racial democratic
election was held in South Africa from 27 to 29 April
1994. The African National Congress, representing the
Black African majority, was victorious and on 10May
1994, Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the rst
President of democratic South Africa. After becoming
President, Nelson Mandela set about stabilizing South
Africa and creating a social, political, and economic
order that would benet all citizens. One of the major
concerns was to remove racial legislation, poverty,
and inequality. Included in the actions of the new
government was creating a new education and social
development system that included quality ECD for all
young children.
Development of ECD in South Africa
Early days
The rst forms of ECD centres appeared in South Africa
in the 1830s (Webber, 1978).8 These replicated the
British nursery school system as a system for white
children whose parents needed these programmes so
that they could be released for work. At these nursery
schools as they were called, white children aged 4
years to 6 years were enrolled and the curriculum
closely followed that of the British system. There were
no other programme options, and the overwhelming
number of children not yet in formal school remained
at home with their parents.
In May 1948, the National Party came to power
and strictly implemented their policy of racial
segregation and the separate development of races.
Education became an important means by which
racial segregation was to be enforced. Political
ideology, enforced through legislation at the time,
48
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
prescribed the separation of children of dierent race
groups. In line with this the apartheid government
implemented an economic policy of advancing white
Afrikaans-speaking empowerment. Industries were
established which were controlled by the white elite
who employed Black African and nominally coloured
and Indian individuals at starvation wages with no
political rights. The economy was characterized by
racial capitalism. Two worlds existed side-by-side, the
world of white families who had all the opportunities
for employment, education, family life and prosperity,
and the much larger Black African, coloured and
Indian community that lived in a world of no rights,
oppression, poverty, inequality, and exploitation.
The Manifesto on Education in 1948 (Marcum, 1982,
p. 224) made it clear that the government would not
support programmes for young children before school
entry taking the view that “parents must not shue
o on to others the duty of bringing up their own
children” (Webber, 1978, p. 94).
The pre-democracy years
By the 1970s about 6% of children were in centre-
based ECD programmes. The majority of these
children came from White middle-class families. A
small number of nursery schools emerged for children
who were classied as “other than White”. These
were community initiated or initiated by religious
institutions and received no nancial or educational
support from the apartheid government.
In the 1970s and into the 1980s, non-prot
organizations emerged across South Africa, with a
signicant number being supported by the Bernard
Van Leer Foundation in the Netherlands. These
non-prot organizations provided teacher training,
educational equipment, governance training and
worked with families and were not supported by
government. Privately-owned ECD centres emerged
at this time. Government also established teacher
training colleges for dierent racial groups, with
colleges catering to White teachers always getting
the best facilities, more funding, and more sta. These
training institutions and formal government colleges
derived their curriculum and training materials largely
from the British nursery school system.
Biersteker (1980) reported that at this time only 13.5%
of White children, 0.5% of Black African children, 4.1%
of “Coloured” children, and 2.1% of Indian children
attended an ECD centre. This provision applied to
urban and township communities, with virtually no
provision in rural areas.
By the mid-1980s, the non-prot ECD sector had
grown signicantly with about 60 non-prot
organizations providing ECD teacher training and
resources around the country. During this time there
was greater resistance to apartheid and many non-
prot organizations, including those in the ECD sector,
adopted an anti-apartheid, adversarial position as
part of their activities. Some openly joined the Mass
Democratic Movement under the leadership of the
African National Congress in resistance to apartheid,
making ECD politicised (Atmore, 2018).
By 1987, ECD policy was still formulated on the basis
of the ruling government ideological preference for
apartheid, although several progressive ECD centres
in Cape Town, against government policy and at
signicant risk, began to enrol children of all race
groups as early as 1983.
The post-democracy years
With democracy in 1994 came the opportunity
to develop ECD policy and a system for the new
democratic government. Nine individuals, including
myself, were appointed by the education desk of the
African National Congress to develop policy options
for ECD in a post-apartheid, democratic dispensation.
The policy options suggested by this team included
a single year of education before formal school
began, called Grade R, prior to entry into Grade 1. The
team however was insistent that there needed to be
signicant learning programmes and opportunities for
younger children before entering into Grade R. A range
of programme options was suggested, including ECD
centres, parenting programmes, parent education, and
family outreach work with children who could not nd
a place in an ECD centre.
This culminated in the rst ever non-racial, interim ECD
policy in 1997. The policy made provision for centre-
based opportunities for early learning, for children
entering Grade R. By May 2001, the interim policy had
been evaluated and an education White Paper on Early
Childhood Education was published which set out
government policy on early childhood development
and which focused mostly on Grade R, with aspects of
programmes for children aged birth to 4 years.
49
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
A comprehensive nation-wide audit of all ECD centres
was undertaken in the year 2000. This produced the
rst quality data on ECD in South Africa. The audit
identied and visited 23,482 ECD centres (Department
of Education, 2001, p. 28) across South Africa and
found that 1,030,473 children were enrolled in an ECD
centre (Department of Education, 2001, p. 35). This was
16% of the preschool-age population.
New ECD organizations emerged post-1994. One of
signicance was the founding of the rst non-racial,
democratic ECD national organization that concerned
itself with advocacy and ECD worker rights. This
organization, the South African Congress for Early
Childhood Development, became the organization
that the national Education Department consulted
widely with on ECD policy, system development,
programming, teacher training, curriculum
development, and on nancing of ECD.
At the national level, the government established
a unit for ECD within the national Department of
Education in 1995. This unit was responsible for
building the ECD ecosystem in South Africa with
an overwhelming focus on Grade R. The national
Department of Social Welfare (now called the
Department of Social Development) was handed
responsibility for ECD programmes for children aged
birth to 5 years.
Government at this time established what is today
known as Technical and Vocational Training (TVET)
colleges to train ECD teachers. This was not at degree
level and those graduates from these programmes
are not eligible to register with the national teacher
registration authority.
Since the democratic era there has been a number
of noticeable shifts in government thinking on ECD.
These have been lobbied for by a small group of ECD
activists around the country. The primary shift has
been the change in understanding and denition
of ECD, as encapsulated in the National Integrated
Early Childhood Development Policy approved by the
South African Cabinet on the 9 December 2015. What
this shift embraced is a much broader understanding
of ECD to include care for pregnant women, birth
registration, healthcare, nutrition, the rst thousand
days, social assistance, and parent involvement in
children’s learning and development. These changes
were slow in coming, as can be seen by the fact that it
took 21 years before a comprehensive and integrated
ECD policy was approved at the highest level. The
biggest gain from the 2015 National Integrated Early
Childhood Development Policy is that there is now a
more comprehensive understanding of what ECD is.
A reection on the current state of ECD
in South Africa – September 2021
Over the period of 1990 to 2015, there has been
signicant ECD policy-making in South Africa. The
democratic era since 1994 has seen all children eligible
to benet from education and social development
legislation, and from ECD policies adopted. As in many
other countries, the initial focus of ECD policy in South
Africa was the introduction of a single, preschool year
called Grade R. An ECD policy change in December
2015 resulted in a comprehensive range of integrated
ECD programmes being put in place, which covered
education, health, nutrition, social protection, and
child well-being. While this has benetted young
children, the majority of children, especially those who
are poor, vulnerable, and who live in rural communities
and in urban, informal housing settlements, still do
not have opportunities in line with their needs and
their constitutional rights. Over three decades ago,
ECD in South Africa was described by Van Den Berg
and Vergnani (1986) as fragmented, segregated, totally
inadequate and unequal, and is still so. While racial
discrimination has disappeared from South African
legislation, inequality in ECD provision still substantially
exists. Children who live in poverty and who are
vulnerable are still the least provided for and where
there is provision, the ECD programmes are of poor
quality. Limited racial integration has occurred at ECD
centres and programmes across South Africa.
The ECD workforce has improved with regard to
teacher qualications. However, the ECD workforce
remains divided between a well-trained minority of
teachers working in private ECD centres in middle-
class and auent communities, and masses of under-
qualied and unqualied teachers who are poorly paid
and who are not protected beyond what is provided
for through the Basic Conditions of Employment Act.
Notwithstanding eorts at intersectoral collaboration
and integration, the division of government ECD
responsibility between the Department of Social
Development and the Department of Basic Education
remains. In September 2021, South Africa still has two
main government departments responsible for ECD
provisioning, although the national Department of
50
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Basic Education is scheduled to take responsibility
for ECD on 1 April 2022. While comprehensive and
integrated ECD has been advocated and extensively
lobbied for by ECD activists over many years, and is
now evident in the National Integrated ECD Policy,
this has not yet been implemented to any signicant
degree. Education, health, and social development
programmes for children are still oered in silos,
and the systemic and institutional coordination
mechanisms put in place by government have not
worked.
ECD terminology is still confusing because the
denition of ECD in South Africa varies in the dierent
ECD policy texts. The denition of ECD in South
Africa has broadened as the global approach to ECD
changed from being primarily ECD-centre focused,
to being more comprehensive and integrated,
incorporating early learning, healthcare, nutrition,
safety, and child well-being.
Grade R is part of the formal education system but not
yet compulsory. A bill is before Parliament that would
make Grade R compulsory.
National government has tightened its control over
ECD regulations, norms and standards, monitoring,
and funding. Provincial government delivery of ECD
has been varied with the wealthier provinces, the
Western Cape and Gauteng in particular, oering a
better range and quality of ECD programmes than the
poorer, more rural provinces.
While there has been legislation and many ECD
policy texts and national plans, and two large-scale
monitoring and evaluation studies, little has changed
in communities where young children are still largely
ignored and where they are not able to access quality
ECD programmes.
Despite some advances and much rhetoric, ECD policy
implementation since 1994 has been disappointing.
For most of the period 1990 to 2015, policy did
not “shift beyond the symbolic and imaging level”
(Sayed, 2001, p. 196). The opportunity to transform
ECD substantially was not taken and the ECD sector
is viewed by government as not important with
little political support. In looking back on the ECD
policy trajectory, it is clear that there has been a
slow and cumbersome transformation in ECD policy.
Furthermore, the current excellent policy (on paper) is
not being implemented. Having Grade R for ve-year-
olds since 2001, the new democratic government, after
coming to power in 1994, left it to 2015 to make ECD
policy which was comprehensive and integrated, and
which could meet the needs of vulnerable children
and their families if implemented. Peter Moss calls
this “the story of evolution rather than transformative
change” (Moss, 2014, p. 357) and describes this very
well, saying that new policy decisions are shaped and
limited by the eects of previous decisions, leading
to more of the same. He writes, “new governments,
anxious to implement change, understandably are
drawn to working with what already exists, rather than
disrupting the status quo by taking a radically new
course” (Moss, 2014, p. 356).
The huge weakness of the current ECD policy is
that, like previous ECD policies, implementation is
not happening when measured against the clearly
articulated policy goals and time frames (Atmore,
2018). Four main challenges to the National Integrated
ECD Policy of 2015 are evident:
● The major challenge is the lack of political will by
the South African Government to meet the needs
of young children. If ECD is not a political priority,
it will not be adequately funded and implemented
in South Africa.
● A second challenge is to remedy the lack of
leadership and management expertise and skills
within implementing government departments,
the Department of Social Development, and the
Department of Basic Education.
● A third challenge is to ensure the necessary
government funding for ECD centre-based and
out-of-centre ECD programmes.
● The fourth challenge is the lack of ECD sector
capacity and resources to provide large-scale
ECD programmes and to signicantly increase
the number of children who benet from
comprehensive and integrated ECD programmes.
Conclusions
If one looks at the “Sanko
fa elements” in ECD in
South Africa, the most prominent of these is the
rapid increase in the number of community-driven,
non-prot organization supported, ECD centres and
programmes across South Africa. Although ocial data
is inadequate at best, our estimate is that about 32,000
early childhood development centres now exist in
South Africa. More than half of these are not registered
51
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
in terms of the Children’s Amendment Act, No. 41 of
2007 (Republic of South Africa, 2008), meaning that
they do not meet the minimum requirements that
govern ECD provision in South Africa. This is not as a
result of lack of desire on the part of communities to
comply and oer quality but is rather the result of the
enormous poverty and inequality that has been carried
over from the pre-democratic, apartheid era.
An element of the pre-democratic era which was a
strength from the early 1980s until about 2002, and
which has been missing for the past two decades,
is ECD activism and advocacy. ECD activism and
advocacy lost its energy and voice for two decades
until June 2020, when in the middle of South Africa’s
COVID-19 hard lockdown following inaction and lack
of concern from the Minister of Social Development
and Department of Social Development ocials, the
ECD workforce came together in tens of thousands,
supported and encouraged by long-time ECD
activists at ECD centres and in a few ECD non-
prot organizations. This is growing and the rst
national ECD Advocacy and Social Justice Unit has
been established in Cape Town at the Centre for
Early Childhood Development. With an attorney at
the helm and supported by ECD programme and
communication talent, advocacy and lobbying for
ECD has increased exponentially over the past year
and a half. It is our hope that strengthened advocacy
and activist initiatives will bring about greater
government, business, and community support of ECD
in South Africa. Working with South Africa’s 180,000
ECD workforce, it is intended that early childhood
development take its rightful place at the forefront of
government programmes, and that the political will
to meet the needs of young children is paramount
and that competent individuals are employed as
government ECD ocials.
South Africa’s late political icon, Mr O R Tambo, an
esteemed leader of the African National Congress for
decades, said: “a country, a movement, a people that
does not value its youth and children, does not deserve
its future.” It is our responsibility as a nation to ensure
that we meet the needs of our youngest children and
that we deserve the future.
References
Atmore, E. 2018. An Interpretive Analysis of the Early
Childhood Development Policy Trajectory in Post-
apartheid South Africa. Ph.D. dissertation, University
of Stellenbosch, South Africa.
Biersteker, L. 1980. Pre-school facilities for coloured and
black children in South Africa and Indian children in
Durban. Cape Town, Early Learning Centre.
Department of Education. 2001. The Nationwide Audit
of ECD Provisioning in South Africa. South Africa
Department of Education.
Ebrahim, H. 2010. Tracing historical shifts in early care and
education in South Africa. Journal of Education, Vol.
48, pp. 119-135.
Marcum, J. A. 1982. Education, Race and Social Change in
South Africa. For the Study Team of the United States-
South Africa Leader Exchange Programme. Oakland,
University of California Press.
Moss, P. 2014. Early childhood policy in England 1997 –
2013: Anatomy of a missed opportunity. International
Journal of Early Years Education, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 346
-357.
Republic of South Africa. 2008. Children’s Amendment Act
No. 41 of 2007. Cape Town, Republic of South Africa.
Available at: https://www.gov.za/sites/default/les/
gcis_document/201409/a41-070.pdf
Sayed, Y. 2001. Changing Patterns of Educational
Management Development in South Africa. J. Jansen
and Y. Sayed (Eds.), Implementing Education Policies:
The South African Experience. Cape Town, UCT Press,
pp. 188-199.
Van Den Berg, O. and Vergnani, T. 1986. Providing services
for pre-school children in South Africa. Report of an
investigation conducted on behalf of the South African
Association for Early Childhood Education. Bellville,
South Africa, University of the Western Cape.
Webber, V. K. 1978. An outline of the development of
preschool children in South Africa. Pretoria, South
African Association for Early Childhood Education.
53
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
ECD country experience:
NIGERIA
Margaret Akinware and
Kayode Oguntuashe
Country background
Nigeria became independent of British colonial rule
in 1960, after nearly 100 years. Its current population
of almost 200 million is extremely diverse, comprising
over 350 language and ethnic groups, cultures, and
dierent religious persuasions. From 1900, when
the British amalgamated the North and South
Protectorates, through to the present, Nigeria’s
economy remains largely agrarian, although the
discovery of oil and gas in the 1950s shifted the focus
away from agriculture and created an illusion of a
prosperous country.
During the period of negotiating independence,
political leadership and the Nigerian people were
relatively united in agreeing to a federal structure
that would guarantee political, economic, and scal
autonomy to each of the three federated units,
namely: East, North and West. However, shortly after
independence issues of diversity: ethnicity, religion
and gender began to compromise its political stability
to the extent that six years after political independence
a military coup d’état took place on 15 January 1966.
It was to have a lingering, and in the view of many
analysts, a negative impact on the political, social, and
economic life of the country.
Before and at independence, the Nigerian economy
was largely agrarian in a traditional setting. It relied on
children and farm hands for labour on the farm thus
promoting, entrenching, and rewarding polygamy.
You were prosperous if you had large farms and could
put many hands at work. The males prepared the land
and ploughed manually, while the females sowed,
harvested, and cooked. This promoted cohesion and
stability in the family with closely dened social roles
and responsibilities.
Concurrently, a small but powerful middle class was
emerging as a consequence of attendance in western-
type schools. Members of the middle class comprised
professionals such as doctors, engineers, lawyers,
civil servants and teachers, most of whom lived in
urban centres and regional capitals which housed
seats of government. They occupied prestigious
positions vacated by the colonialists. The sociological
signicance of this is that it made urban centres
attractive to young people who then migrated to
the cities where there was no family or community
support for many. These unguarded youths were
susceptible to negative peer pressure and became
prone to deviant behaviour or they succumbed to
sexually transmitted diseases, depression, delinquency,
and other mental health illnesses.
The drift of young people from rural to urban centres
demands our attention for a number of reasons. It
denied the rural farming communities of farm hands
and so led to a drop in agricultural production of
cocoa in the Western region, groundnuts and cotton
in the North, and palm produce and rubber in the East.
In addition, it placed tremendous pressure on urban
infrastructures such as housing, roads, water, schools
and so on, which in any case were fragile and only
in the process of being developed at the time. The
internal migration witnessed around this period was
massive because Nigeria’s population was and still is a
young one, with close to 70% of the population falling
between 0 and 30 years. To compound the issues
further, the intensity of the migration came to a head
in the early 1970s after the three-year (1966-1970)
civil war which itself is evidence of the tragic division
and instability alluded to above. Soldiers who were
inexperienced at governance and prone to corruption
were running the government and so could not
eectively and successfully manage programmes like
Mass Mobilization for Self-Reliance, Social Justice, and
Economic Recovery (MAMSER), which were designed
to stem the tide of the drift.
Lastly, because the military was in power for one
generation, 30 years, the political leadership that
emerged after independence and who had been
learning the ropes of governance suddenly had their
tutelage truncated. They were exposed to high levels
of corruption and the jack-boot mentality of the
military, both of which are anathema to democratic
governance. The Nigerian nation is still paying the
price today.
54
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Childcare
Pre-independence
Dominant child-care arrangements in pre-
independent Nigeria are perhaps best understood
from two perspectives, namely: paediatric and
educational. We take paediatric rst. The health of
the child was a primary concern of parents, the
extended family network, community, and traditional
governments. The colonial administration initially paid
scant attention to traditional practices. Traditional
Paediatric Services (TPS) involved the “elewe omo”
(literally, custodians of leaves for children) who are
professionals skilled in the nature, causes and herbal
remedies for childhood diseases. Their importance
could be gauged by the fact that they had sections
demarcated and dedicated to them in marketplaces.
They also took referrals from “babalawos” (diviners
and seers) on issues of child health, nutrition,
and well-being. It is important to note that TPS
contained elements of ECD such as recommending
infant feeding on demand, multiple mothering,
stimulation through singing, recitation of the child’s
Oriki (cognomen), rocking the child to sleep, and
prescription of carved wooden toys for children to
play with albeit to ward o illnesses and bad omens.
Regardless of all of these, mortality rates were high
(although compensated for by high fecundity)
standing at 450 per 1,000 live births in Lagos around
1900, falling to 86 per 1,000 in 1950 and 70 in 1973.
Western Paediatric Services (WPS) arrived in Nigeria in
1952, although Dr I.L. Oluwole started the rst School
Health Service in Lagos as early as in 1925 (Ransome-
Kuti, 1986). The impact of WPS on childcare was
initially poor because of intervening variables such
as poverty and ignorance on the part of parents and
extended family members. Examples of these included
preference for baby formulas over breast milk even at
one month especially among the illiterate mothers.
This happened despite government campaigns
through the Ministry of Health encouraging exclusive
breast feeding as evidenced by the Lagos Town
Council handbill stating that “this diet also improves
the quality of the breast milk so be sure to continue
it while feeding baby. Give your baby the best which
is breast milk. No other milk is just as good” (Lagos
Town Council, 1947). Another example was weaning
babies on high-carbohydrate foods like maize meals
despite availability of protein-rich foods like beans
and sh. In addition, immunization recording was
poor. Nonetheless, over time, the infant mortality
rate dropped to 60.7 in Ibadan and 52.3 in Ife in the
early 1960s, due to the combined impact of WPS and
Missionary Mother and Child Welfare Services which
penetrated the rural areas.
Traditional ECD Services (TES) were provided
by parents, surrogate parents, members of the
extended family, members of the community and
professional classes. The last group comprised those
who performed midwifery roles, those who carved
children’s toys, those who prepared their herbal
prophylactics and remedies and included priests/
priestesses of deities like Oshun – from whom the
children came!
Traditional Nigerian society was child-loving and child-
centred, perhaps in part because many thought that
children served as links between the past (progenitors
and ancestors), the present and the future. The number
of children indexed a man’s success. Children were
carried on their mother’s backs and enjoyed warmth,
tactile and linguistic stimulation by multiple mothers
and multiple carers very early in life. The communal
way of life meant that the child was exposed to stories,
rhymes, songs, music, jokes and so on (Taiwo, 1982).
Right from the daily morning bath the children are
stimulated by mothers singing to them, saying their
cognomens, commenting on babies” intentions and
actions, and gazing on them and tickling them. It was
an indulgent life that laid a strong foundation for the
child’s development through multiple attachments.
It also cemented a life-long connectedness to several
signicant persons at the same time, meaning that
the child received nurturing of the type that served as
an “umbilical cord” to his community, as depicted by
multiple mothers. However, it is a cord that admitted a
two-way ow of communication and not the one-way,
non-reciprocal attachment proposed by British
psychologist John Bowlby (Oguntuashe, 2019).
As the child grew from infancy through toddlerhood
to middle childhood, so did their attachment and
involvement with members of the nuclear, extended
families and indeed the community. In some
communities in Nigeria, children were organized into
age groups which provided an opportunity for lateral
relationships, sharing of values and norms and further
solidifying the structure of the community. This is to
be observed among the Igbo people and the Ijebu-
Yoruba to mention two.
55
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Although there were no physical structures
demarcated for the care, education, and well-being
of children in traditional Nigerian settings, the entire
space owned by the community played that role.
Spaces segmented into homes, farms, grinding mills,
marketplaces, under trees where moonlight stories
were told – all functioned as ECD centres. These spaces
were the crucible that bred a collectivist orientation
in the Nigerian child, an orientation which spawned
respect for persons and community, compliance for
rules and norms and obedience to authority and
responsibility for both personal and communal tasks.
The rst formal ECD facility on record in Nigeria was a
nursery school established in 1945 by United African
Company (UAC) for children of its sta in Ogba Local
Government Area of Rivers State. The UAC was a British
company that traded in timber, palm produce, and
other commodities, and it enjoyed the patronage,
support, and defence of the colonial Administration.
Five and ten years respectively after the UAC school,
Western and Eastern Regional Governments created
infant classes which admitted among their pupils 5-
and 6-year-old children. However, it should be stated
that these infant classes had precursors dating back
to 1842, when Christian Missions provided Sunday
Schools for adult converts and their children (Fafunwa,
1974).
Post-independence
At independence in 1960 and shortly thereafter, NGOs
and private individuals established Western-type ECD
facilities in the country. These included one on Bernard
Carr Street in Port Harcourt built by Young Women’s
Christian Association in 1961; one in Lagos by Chief
MsAduke Vaughan in 1962; and another one in 1966
in Ibadan by MsHelen Aina Esho (Gabriel, 2015).
The 1977 National Policy on Education restructured
the educational system and recognized ECD as an
important pre-primary education for children aged 3-5
years but left the proprietorship of ECD in the hands
of the private sector. About the same time, the Federal
Government enunciated Universal Primary Education
(UPE) which created a huge demand for classroom
space and teachers. In turn, young idle hands that
hitherto provided domestic help were recruited into
the UPE Scheme as trainee teachers. The combined
eect of these two factors led to the mushrooming of
ECD “facilities”, especially in urban areas.
Many of these “facilities” were variously labelled
crèches or nurseries or kindergartens. They occupied
one or two rooms in a at or in a block of ats with
no space for play and very few toys (those that they
did have were kept in unhygienic cupboards). Without
electricity, there were no devices for boiling water or
warming food. In many of them, the teachers gleefully
announced they were running Montessori curriculum
simply because that was what they thought hapless
parents wanted to hear. They even boasted that their
3-year-old pupils could read and write the rst ten
letters of the English alphabet! For many of these
teachers and the unwary parents who patronized
them, play was a waste of time as they were paying for
their children to have a head start in life so they could
graduate from college at the age of 20 years.
The arrival of UNICEF
This was the situation that existed when UNICEF, in
collaboration with the Bernard van Leer Foundation,
formally approached the Federal Government of
Nigeria in 1987 with a proposal to implement a pilot
ECD programme for children aged 0-6years in Nigeria.
The Federal Government then mandated the Nigerian
Educational Research and Development Council
(NERDC), which is a Parastatal of the Federal Ministry
of Education, to represent it in implementing the
proposal.
Several important things emerged from the
partnership. First, UNICEF had determined around this
time that only 8% of Nigerian children had access to
any organized childcare facility. However, a stringent
criterion (where survival was most threatened) was
used to select States in the Federation to participate
in the pilot project which was designed to test its
viability. The pilot project programmes provided an
alternative to the poorly organized, inadequately
equipped, poorly staed but expensive preschools
dotting the educational landscape. Second, was the
development of an Indigenous curriculum to guide
the pilot project. Based in part on the earlier ndings
of the pilot project, in 2007 the Federal Government
adopted a multisectoral national policy for Integrated
Early Childhood Development (IECD) in Nigeria.
With the adoption of the national policy and the
support of international development partners,
came a heightened impetus for ECD. Studies were
commissioned that found that as at 2007 only two
million children had access to any form of ECD out
56
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
of 22million in the early childhood age group. Even
the lucky two million attending ECD facilities did not
have qualied or highly motivated caregivers. Existing
primary schools were encouraged to have ECD
facilities in tow and Colleges of Education were funded
to prepare teachers. However, the challenge was to
nd qualied and experienced teachers to train pre-
service and in-service ECD teachers.
As the nation was grappling with this problem,
other agents of the State were developing support
documents such as National Minimum Standards,
ECD Curriculum for Colleges of Education, Pre-School
Reader Series, and so on to accompany the IECD
policy. States” Universal Basic Education Boards (SUBEB)
were strengthened, equipped, and funded to assume
the mandate of ECD in their domains. Some, like
Lagos State, were so enthusiastic they were funding
the training of ECD teachers the same year the IECD
policy was adopted in 2007. This impetus was so
strong it was sustained up until 2013 when a study
was commissioned to assess ECD centres in ve States
from 2008 to 2012. The objective was to evaluate what
was being done right, as well as to identify the gaps.
The results were unattering. Mere enthusiasm had
not taken us far, at least judging from the data from
the 175 centres sampled. Data on enrolment of
children, gender equity, access by special children,
and teacher/pupil ratios, which were obtained from
line Ministries like Education and Women Aairs, were
internally inconsistent and so were unreliable. Facilities
were grossly lacking as were instructional materials.
Caregivers were unskilful in child assessment and so
it seemed that the wind had been knocked out of the
sail of ECD (FGN et al., 2013).
However, a resurgence seemed to be in the air as
the Federal Government in 2014, in its review of the
National Policy of Education (2004), formally included
ECD as a sector under its jurisdiction (Federal Republic
of Nigeria, 2014). Hence, the duration of Primary or
Basic Education, as they called it, now included one
year of pre-primary, six of primary, and three of junior
secondary in the so-called 1-6-3 formula. The one
year of pre-primary was to be spent in an ECD facility
attached to a primary school.
Elaboration on Sankofa elements
We identify “collectivist/communal orientation” as a
Sankofa element in traditional ECD practice. We note
that it is the phenomenon that enabled multiple
mothering and other joint/cooperative tasks which
involve the child. So, a complete “stranger” is expected
to adjust the head of a baby aright on their mother’s
back. The same logic obliges an adult to discipline
an errant behaviour in a child or reward exemplary
behaviour. This tendency towards communal
orientation is made possible because members of a
community shared similar values, norms, and goals.
It implies collective ownership of the development
process in the child. In the extreme, nursing mothers
have been known to breastfeed babies other
than their own, but this imposes responsibility of
a reciprocal type on all agents in the community.
Within this framework is the well documented
communal eating practice among cohorts of
children which not only nourished emotional bonds
among them but also enabled parents/caregivers
to supervise “table manners” such as wolng which
was perceived as promoting greed or forbidding
eating meat/sh/eggs ahead of carbohydrates in
the bowl. This sequence is likely to teach children
to delay gratication, an important lesson for later
adult life. In recommending that these elements be
integrated into the modern ECD repertoire we do not
wish to supplant individualism in the child but seek
a balance between the two powerful poles on the
developmental continuum. This balance, if achieved,
would promote in the developing child traits such as
risk-taking behaviours, a high-achievement motivation,
resourcefulness, and other traits associated with
individualistic orientation. Simultaneously, respect
for authority, acceptance of communal values like
integrity, responsibility for others and a commitment
to the community would also be cultivated.
57
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
References
Fafunwa, A. B. 1974. History of Education in Nigeria. London,
George Allen and Unwin Ltd.
Federal Republic of Nigeria. 2004. National Policy on
Education. Abuja, NERDC.
Federal Republic of Nigeria. 2014. One Year Pre-Primary
School Education Curriculum. Abuja, NERDC.
FGN, UNICEF and ECDTI. 2013. The Development of Early
Childhood Care Development and Education (ECCDE) in
Edo, Ekiti, Osun and Lagos States: A comparative Study
of ECD Centres (2008-2012). Lagos, UNICEF.
Gabriel, A. 2015. One Hundred years of Education in
Nigeria: Early Childhood Care and Development
Education in the colonial and postcolonial periods.
Scholarly Journal of Education, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 6-12.
Lagos Town Council. 1947. Infant Welfare Clinics: How to
keep Baby Healthy. Lagos, Ife-olu Printing Works.
Oguntuashe, K. 2019. From Anecdotes to Science: The
Characterization of Mind in Africa, A Psychologist’s
reection. Unpublished public lecture delivered at
Lincoln University, PA., USA.
Ransome-Kuti, O. 1986. Child Health in Nigeria: past,
present and future. Archives of Diseases in Childhood,
Vol. 61, pp. 198-204.
Taiwo, C. G. 1982. The Nigerian Education System: Past,
Present and Future. Ikeja, Nigeria, Thomas Nelson Ltd.
59
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
ECD country experience:
MALAWI
Chalizamudzi Elizabeth
Matola and Mary Phiri
Background at time of independence
Malawi, situated in the south-eastern corner of Africa,
is popularly known as the warm heart of Africa. Malawi
was previously known as Nyasaland. Around 1859 Dr
David Livingstone “discovered” Lake Malawi and led
the way for future missionaries. In 1891 Britain ocially
established Nyasaland as a British territory and the
Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was created
in 1953, lasting through 1963. Under very dicult
political and social conditions, Malawians typically
worked on coee plantations owned by British
expatriates. Apart from opening trade and agriculture,
British missionaries also established some schools.
In 1944, Malawians established the Nyasaland African
Congress, a political party that Dr Hastings Kamuzu
Banda became the head of in 1958, after returning
from studying and working in the United Kingdom
and the U.S.A. The Malawi Congress Party was founded
as a successor to the Nyasaland African Congress,
however Banda and other leaders were subsequently
imprisoned. Banda was released in 1960 and attended
talks in London with the British Government on
constitutional reforms. This led to elections in 1961 for
a new Legislative Assembly where Kamuzu Banda’s
Malawi Congress Party won. In 1963 Nyasaland gained
self-government and Banda was appointed prime
minister.
Struggles and negotiations for independence
continued with the British Government and on 6July
1964, Nyasaland was declared an independent nation
and was renamed Malawi. Two years later, on 6 July
1966, Kamuzu Banda became the president of the
Republic of Malawi and he ruled the country as a
one-party State until a referendum was called in 1994,
and voters opted for a multiparty government which
is operational to date. Since independence in 1964 six
dierent presidents have governed Malawi – ve since
1994.
The colonial government had set up a strong civil
service to run the aairs of the State. The Malawi
Government inherited this system, which from time to
time is reformed in order to respond to the country’s
emerging issues. However, there are disparities across
regions where some are more developed than others.
Social and family demographics
and dynamics at the independence
Malawi’s demographic history goes back to 1891 when
Sir Harry Johnston, the rst Consul General, attempted
to enumerate the people of the then “Nyasaland
District Protectorate”, which excluded the whole of the
present-day Northern Region and a large part of the
Central Region. Indigenous people were not included
in this count as the British sought to collect population
statistics designed to assist in drawing up a register
of certicates of claims to land by the non-African
population (Palamuleni, 1991).
Rural versus urban
Although Malawi is one of the most densely populated
countries in Southern Africa, it is also one of the least
urbanized, with more than four-fths of its people
living in rural locations. However, Malawi is urbanizing
at a very rapid rate with movements toward urban
areas taking place faster than Africa as a whole. Urban
development began in the colonial era with the arrival
of missionaries, traders, and administrators, along with
a railway. Important urban centres include Blantyre
and Zomba in the South, Mzuzu in the North and
Lilongwe in the Central region. The capital moved from
Zomba to Lilongwe in 1975.
Nature of the economy
and employment options
Malawi’s economy is predominantly agricultural with
about 80% of the population living in rural areas.
Malawi ranks among the world’s least developed
countries. In 2017, agriculture accounted for about
one-third of Malawi’s GDP, about 80% of its export
revenue, and it employed more than four-fths of the
working population.
Employment options in Malawi at independence were
very limited. The majority of those employed had
migrated to Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Southern
Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), and South Africa to work in
60
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
the mines. Within Malawi the major employer for
those who had attained a good level of education
and could be employed as clerical and support sta
was government, specically the Civil Service. Others
were employed as teachers in mission schools and as
domestic servants in the homes of expatriates, while
the majority worked in their gardens as subsistence
farmers. This situation of limited employment could
be blamed on the British, who did not adequately
invest in Nyasaland as much as they did in what is
now Zimbabwe and Zambia (formerly Southern and
Northern Rhodesia), where mining and other major
economic ventures were introduced when these three
nations were under the British protectorate.
Family structures
Family is the most important unit in a Malawian
setting, and it counts above money or material things.
Nuclear family. Biological parents take the
responsibility of childcare from birth to the stage the
extended family is engaged.
Extended family. The system is practiced throughout
the country and to date has eectively worked since
before colonial times. The extended family structure
has stood strong despite the economic challenges
that come with it. The whole village raises the child
regardless of status. Childcare becomes everybody’s
responsibility (grandparents, uncles, aunties, nephews,
nieces, sisters, and brothers) to ensure protection from
all forms of abuse, the transfer of cultural norms and
values, and ensuring children are properly fed. This
is done without expecting any compensation. The
structure provides protection for families in economic
hardships, enhances attachment for orphaned children
as they have a mother or father gure to look up to for
material and psychosocial support, enhances mutual
empathy, and it is an established way of passing on
cultural values to the next generation.
Recently, there has been an increase in single-parent
families, due to either divorce or death. In such cases
it is important that the extended family provides
either the mother or father gure for the children in
the single-parent family structure. In addition, from
the 1990s child-headed families have emerged due
to the death of parents from HIV and AIDS. Here, the
extended family structure emerges as supremely
important, as it is embedded in cultural norms and
values of the country and cannot be superseded by
any structure that leans towards individualism.
Social and family stability,
given political dynamics
Malawi has generally been a peaceful country and has
no record of civil war since its independence from the
British. To a large extent this can be attributed to the
rst President, Hastings Kamuzu Banda, who preached
unity and no divisions based along tribal lines. This
political stability was, on the other hand, supercial, as
it was achieved through oppression and making sure
that there was no opposition party to compete with
the governing elite. This stability therefore also denied
people freedoms of press, religion, and access to social
media or the Internet, and bred abuses of power and
corruption. Malawi could therefore be described as a
politically stable autocracy.
Broader societal structures, dynamics,
and types of childcare
At the point of independence there were virtually
no arranged childcare services, and children were
primarily cared for by community members.
Care for infants 0-1
In Malawi children from birth until the age of 6 are
predominantly taken care of by their mothers and
other family members. At this age grandparents play
a critical role in supporting young children particularly
when parents go to the gardens and other family
chores. Infants usually are carried on the mother’s
back, facing inward. Mothers conduct many activities
with their babies in attendance: shopping, carrying
water, hoeing a garden, and dancing in a ceremony.
Separate rooms or cribs for infants are almost non-
existent because most houses are small and include
many family and extended family members.
Another common childcare practice in Malawi was
known as chikuta, where the new mother would stay
indoors for a period of not less than three months.
During this period, she received mentorship in
childcare, and she was not allowed to perform any
household chores as she was looked on as being
unclean. Despite the designation, the practice had
certain benets for the mother and new-born. The
61
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
benets included providing postpartum rest for the
mother and enhanced bonding, stimulation, and
opportunity to exclusively breastfeed the new-born
baby. This practice disadvantaged fathers from coming
into the picture of childcare in the early stages and
also exposed them to extramarital aairs as they had
no conjugal access to their wives.
Care for 3-6-year-olds
Grannies, siblings, family and community members
were the main caregivers for this age group.
Grandparents played a critical role in childcare,
including storytelling, which usually happened at night
where children were gathered around the re or in
the moonlight. The practice transferred cultural values
including respect for the elderly and other people.
During the day grandparents played various games
including clay modelling, singing, and dancing and
providing support with feeding the child.
Early Childhood Education and Care in Malawi was
introduced by Christian churches in the mid-1960s
in response to the needs of a growing number of
full-time employed women in urban areas, who
needed designated places for the care and recreation
of their children while they were at work (Padambo,
1996). The rst formal pre-school was opened in 1966
at Blantyre Mission of the Church of Central African
Presbyterian (CCAP). The number of pre-schools
increased in Blantyre and could also be found in other
towns by 1969, but most lacked proper coordination
and direction. Consequently, collaborative eorts
among various interested groups and organizations
led to the creation of a coordinating body known as
the Association of Pre-school Playgroups in Blantyre
(APPB) in 1970, which was renamed the Association
of Pre-school Playgroups in Malawi (APPM) in 1974
(Padambo, 1996). External pressures and employment
developments inuenced the Malawi Government
to recognize the need for ECD services, and in 1971
the government began to support ECD activities
through the Ministry of Community Development
and Social Welfare (MCDSW). The government played
a very limited role as evidenced by the relatively low
budgetary support provided for the programme
(Chalamanda and Kholowa, 2001).
Two forms of outside care services were facilitated
through the Ministry, namely Community-Based
Childcare Centres (CBCC) in rural areas and Early
Childhood Development Centres, which included
pre-schools, nursery schools, creches, day care centres,
and playgroups. Other forms of ECD in Malawi include
orphan and vulnerable Centres, childminders, day-care
centres and kindergartens. The CBCCs are supported
by the government and managed by communities.
Current coverage for centre-based ECDs is at 40%
(1,400,965). In addition, parenting programmes have
just been introduced.
Governmental regulations
In the early years of ECE/ECD in Malawi, there were
no set standards, policies, or strategies for managing
centres. The expansion of centres to all districts in 1971
resulted in the establishment of district social welfare
oces to manage the programme. As the programmes
continued to grow the government recruited, trained,
and assigned child protection workers to each of
the district constituencies. The rst ECD policy was
developed in 2003 and launched in 2006 (SABER,
2015). A communication and advocacy strategy, an
ECD training manual and syllabus, and Early Learning
and Development Standards (ELDS) and guidelines
are currently available (Ministry of Gender, Children,
Disability and Social Welfare, 2013a; 2013b; 2017).
Training programmes
By the 1980s, ECE/ECD training was being provided
by APPM and sponsored by UNICEF, the Malawi
Government, UNESCO, and the Israeli government
through the Mount Carmel International Training
School. Later, Training of Trainers programmes were
provided for each of the 28 districts. Participants in
those programmes were from government, NGOs,
churches, and private institutions. From 2001 to 2004
the inaugural Early Childhood Development Virtual
University (ECDVU) programme provided training for
country identied ECD leaders (see Chapter 3.3). With
support provided in part through UNICEF Malawi and
the Malawi Government, the initial cadre of ECDVU
participants, followed by other leaders in later cohorts,
moved the ECD agenda in Malawi to ever greater
heights. The government’s commitment to ECD led to
the establishment of the ECD Directorate to oversee
and regulate the implementation of the programmes.
62
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Factors leading to ECD expansion
Several factors highlighted below contributed to the
expansion of ECD in Malawi.
Introduction of free primary education (FPE)
in 1994
This was a direct government commitment in
response to the 1990 Jomtien Declaration on
Education for All. FPE expanded access to primary
school education opportunities for children and
created great demand for comprehensive Early
Childhood Education and Care services which were a
better way of ensuring that children are well prepared
for formal schooling (Kholowa and Maluwa-Banda,
2008).
ECD as part of key policies and strategies
ECD is a priority in the Malawi Poverty Reduction
Strategic Paper and Vision 2020, now Vision 2063,
for fullment of international commitments such as
the Education for All initiative (EFA), the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs), and most recently
the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). ECD is
recognized as an integral part of basic education and
represents the rst essential step in achieving the goals
of education for all. The programme has its own policy
and is highlighted in other complementary polices.
The HIV/AIDS pandemic
Due to the increased numbers of orphans, CBCCs
were established to take care of vulnerable children.
This was in response to the Dakar Framework for
Action (World Education Forum, 2000) adopted by
the international education community, which drew
attention to the urgent need to combat HIV and AIDS
if EFA goals were to be achieved.
Interest by donors and international
community
Malawi has continued to attract funding from various
donors, United Nations agencies, international and
individual donors such as the World Bank, UNICEF,
Roger Federer Foundation, among others.
Support from Early Childhood Development
Virtual University (ECDVU), Bernard van Leer
Foundation, Save the Children, and UNICEF
Initiatives by these institutions signicantly contributed
to the expansion of ECD through policy inuencing,
research for evidence-based programming and
development of strategies through the Malawi
teams that were trained to facilitate quality ECD
implementation
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Governments have committed to achieve SDGs by
2030 and ECD is recognized as key to the broader
achievement of SDGs. SDGs present an opportunity to
connect ECD with eorts to create equity, productivity,
prosperity, and sustainable growth for a more peaceful
future. SDG goal and target 4.2 notes: “by 2030
ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality
early childhood development, care and pre-primary
education” (United Nations Secretary-General, 2015).
Sankofa elements, practices,
programems: dynamics that should
be carried forward
There are certain key cultural practices which need
to be preserved because they dene and support a
Malawian world view.
The Chikuta rituals
The Chikuta rituals observed after the birth of a child
should be kept, with some adjustments to allow
fathers to bond with their children from birth. This is
good for the mother’s good health, familial bonding,
stimulation, and exclusive breastfeeding for the baby.
The extended family system
The extended family system is an element that
is important to keep with very few modications
because of the many benets that it has including
providing protections for families in times of
economic hardships, providing support for childcare,
and providing orphaned children with material and
psychosocial support. The extended family system is
an open-door aair where mothers in the village cook
enough food to feed every child in the village so that
all can eat communally. This system also enhances
empathy: where all are expected to keep watch, no
63
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
one is permitted to idly witness suering. This is a
cultural value, passed on to the next generation as it
helps to lift family members out of an emergency or
destitution.
Respect for grandparents
and positive childcare
Grandparents are seasoned childcarers, great
storytellers, and the custodians of history and
Indigenous knowledge. Having elderly individuals
in the village is considered good fortune as parents
have someone loving and well versed in childcare to
mind the children while parents go out to work. They
also have the best cook of traditional foods and a
teacher of how to preserve some food in season to use
when out of season. These traditional foods are very
nutritious and help to reduce cases of malnutrition in
young children.
Respect for the elderly and one another
Children from the youngest age are taught respect
for elderly people and others as a way of preserving
culture. Children are required to ask for permission
when passing by elderly people that are sitting down;
they are required to give a hand to adults, and they
are not allowed to interrupt adult discussion because
that is being disrespectful. Receiving things with both
hands is another sign of respect and gratitude.
Such beliefs and practices have long been a part of
traditional childrearing practices in Malawi and, in
concert with other practices developed more recently,
can be contributors to child well-being for children in
Malawi in the future.
References
Chalamanda, F. and Kholowa F. 2001. Country Case Report -
Malawi. Unpublished paper.
Kholowa, F. and Maluwa-Banda, D. 2008. Early Childhood
Development in Malawi, Major Challenges.
Zimbabwe Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 20, No.
1, pp. 11-21.
Ministry of Gender, Children, Disability and Social Welfare.
2013a. Annual Report for Integrated Early Childhood
Development in Malawi. Lilongwe, Government of
Malawi.
—. 2013b. National ECD Operational and Accreditation
Guidelines. Lilongwe, Government of Malawi.
Ministry of Gender, Children, Disability, and Social Welfare.
2017. Malawi Early Learning and Development
Standards. Lilongwe/New York, Government of
Malawi/UNICEF.
Padambo, M. C. 1996. Major challenges of Early Childhood
Education and Care in Malawi. Limbe, Malawi,
Association of Preschool Playgroups in Malawi.
Palamuleni, M. E. 1991. Population Dynamics of Malawi:
A Re-examination of the Existing Demographic Data.
Ph.D. thesis, London School of Economics and
Political Science.
SABER. 2015. Malawi Early Childhood Development: SABER
Country Report. Washington D.C., The World Bank.
Available at: https://documents1.worldbank.org/
curated/en/746651467998202529/pdf/100034-
WP-ADD-SERIES-PUBLIC-Box393216B-SABER-ECD-
Malawi.pdfsoc
United Nations General Secretary. 2015. Sustainable
development Goals. (Department of Economic and
Social Aairs: Sustainable Development.) Available at:
sustainabledevelopment.un.org
World Education Forum. 2000. The Dakar Framework for
Action. Paris, UNESCO.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
ECD country experience:
SENEGAL
Ndahirou Mbaye
and Diaga Diop
Introduction
Much of West Africa, including Senegal, was colonized
by the French in the period starting in the eighteenth
century running into the mid-twentieth century.
Senegal’s status as a French colony continued
through to 1958 when, after hard struggles of people
and leaders, it was established as a republic. It
subsequently achieved independence from France in
1960 along with a number of other French colonies at
about the same time. The sections that follow provide
an overview of ECD in Senegal from its long-standing,
pre-colonization period through to the present.
A brief history of Early Childhood Care and
Development (ECD) in Senegal
The traditional care system
In traditional society, the education of children was
only considered from the age of 3-4 years, after
the weaning period. On the other hand, several
stimulation practices were developed for the baby
and the infant. Massage, suckling, and weaning
were rites well mastered by the family, particularly
the grandmothers, who were the guardians of the
tradition. Lullabies, rhymes, and riddles accompanied
the child in its development.
The traditional childcare system operated through
collective, family-based arrangements. Family
members, grandparents, aunts, and older siblings
took turns caring for the child while the mother was
engaged in various activities. This care essentially
consisted of mothering practices, which consisted of
providing the child with food, hygiene, and play. The
child, in the process of socialization, was integrated
doubly: within their lineage and within their age
group.
From a historical perspective, Senegalese families have
undergone profound changes that have undermined
their mode of organization and functioning. From the
extended family, it has evolved towards the nuclear
family model in its syncretic form. Single-parent
families are increasing in urban areas. These changes
have gradually led to the establishment of childcare
facilities.
Structures initiated by the missionaries
(Saint Louis, Rusque, Dakar)
Senegal’s experience of early childhood education
dates back to the nineteeth century with the arrival
of Western missionaries who, as part of their pastoral
activities, set up early childhood structures (nurseries,
day nurseries, kindergartens, etc.). The rst pre-school
establishments, all born of private initiative, were
opened in the large urban centres. Thus, the rst
children’s class was created in Saint-Louis in 1822.
Most of the content was related to Western culture,
including language, rhymes, songs, and games.
Seasonal day care centres in Casamance
(Tandième and Djignaky)
In rural areas, seasonal day-care centres were
introduced in 1962 in Casamance (Tandiem) at the
instigation of the Rural Animation Department. They
took the form of collective care for children, but in a
more structured way. The objective of these day-care
centres was to lighten the workload of young peasant
mothers who were engaged in intensive work in the
rice elds.
Inspired by the traditional childcare system, the
approach is community-based. The centre is run by a
person from the community. The children are cared for
and both the age group (0-6 years) and the diversity of
ethnic groups are taken into account. The involvement
of the entire community supports working mothers
who can count on everyone to participate in this
highly important mission (Bassama, 2010). One of
the positive aspects of these day-care centres is that
they root the child in his or her environment through
songs, games, and local toys. Although this model has
educational and health shortcomings, it has allowed
mothers to work in the rice elds and has improved
the situation of their children.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
The rst public nursery schools
In traditional society, the child is a social and economic
asset, a precious possession. They belong to an
extended family in which everyone has the right to
intervene in their education. But with the breakdown
of lineage systems and the dissolution of social and
family ties, collective care is no longer possible. The
logic of family survival places young children in a
state of great vulnerability, relegating their eective
and continuous care to the background. It was in
this context that, in urban areas, public pre-school
education was introduced in 1965 with the opening of
the rst public nursery school in Dakar (the capital of
Senegal).
1960-1970: The period of public
kindergartens in urban areas
During this period, children were generally cared for
in public nursery schools, which are most common in
urban areas, with 78.1% of facilities, as against 68.5%
for day-care centres. The nursery school facilities are
the oldest and best structured segment of pre-school
education. They cater for children aged 3 to 6, and are
divided into three sections (infant, middle and senior).
They have an approach that is strongly inuenced
by the French nursery school, focusing on preparing
children for entry into elementary school. Public
nursery schools have a generally well-trained teaching
sta with the required academic qualications.
However, because of the curriculum and the language
used, many parents turned away from these facilities
because they feared that their child would be
acculturated.
1970-1980: Legislative and regulatory
framework for pre-school facilities and
training of pre-school sta
There was a period of expansion between 1970-
1980. A legal framework entered into force through
the drafting of fundamental policies such as the
Orientation Act 71-36 (Republic of Senegal, 1971).
This made pre-school education the rst link in the
education system and stressed the importance of
nursery school in preparing children for primary
school. Thereafter, the sector began to be extended
and developed further. In turn, a national coordination
structure and a training structure for pre-school
educators, the ENEP (National School for Pre-school
Educators), were created. The network of early
childhood services diversied and encouraged
numerous initiatives to meet the population’s demand
for education.
1980-2000: Stagnation of indicators
This period of growth and development was followed
by a period of stagnation, and even retreat, in the late
1980s to mid-1990s, when the Senegalese economy
slowed down in a context of strong demographic
growth. The education system was aected by
structural adjustments and faced a serious crisis;
human, material, nancial and structural resources
were all lacking. The end of the 1990s marked a
breaking point. The crisis situation revealed the limits
of the formal education sector and prompted the
public authorities, supported by NGOs, to turn to the
non-formal education sector, which was developing
non-conventional, low-cost models.
Starting in 2000 a new vision of the child and his
or her education changed the way young children
were represented and the way they were cared
for. A new paradigm for pre-school education
began to develop, moving towards a model of
comprehensive programmes combining education
with healthcare related to nutrition and hygiene. New
conceptualizations began to enter the eld: there was
talk of integrated early childhood development (IECD)
and early childhood care and education (ECCE) (Rayna,
2002, p. 19).
2000-2018: New directions for ECD and
diversication of service oerings
In response to these challenges, a new National Policy
for the Integrated Development of Early Childhood
(PNDIPE) was developed and adopted in 2007 (Agence
Nationale de la Case des Tout-Petits, 2007). This policy
aimed rst of all to recognize and promote the rights
of the child; this principle explicitly armed the totality
of the child’s needs to be addressed. Instead of a
fragmented approach to early childhood, it provided
for a comprehensive, coordinated approach along
a continuum from the prenatal period to access to
elementary school. The principle of a community-
based approach to ECD was also adopted, in
which the active involvement of parents and local
communities can ensure that disadvantaged children
are successfully cared for through low-cost services.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Another very important principle was anchoring
this policy to local cultural values while integrating
scientic knowledge.
In 2002 a new model, or structure, was created: “la Case
des Tout Petits – CTP”, a community support structure
for children aged 0 to 6 years old. Its objective was
to ensure that children, from conception to 6 years
old, from underprivileged backgrounds, have access
to adequate and integrated services according to
a participatory approach so that each child’s needs
are taken care of in a healthy environment. This new
model was managed by the National Agency for Early
Childhood and the Case des Tout-Petits (ANPECTP),
which was created to take charge of infants and young
children in public kindergartens, Case des Tout Petits
and, early childhood centres or community day-care
centres.
This is the context of the innovative experience in rural
areas of a community-based approach to children
under 3 years of age launched in 2006.
Development of an innovation for children
aged 0 to 3
An evaluation conducted in 2005 by Plan International
Senegal (2005, p. 11) showed that the activities of early
childhood were only focusing on services for children
between 3-6 years, disregarding those between 0-3
years. Accordingly, it was felt that the 0-3 age bracket
should be the focus of more attention. The rst eight
years of childhood, and especially the rst three years,
are crucial, helping determine the health, growth, and
development of the child. It is during this period that
they need attention, stimulation, nutritive meals, and
good healthcare.
Based on the evaluation, Plan Senegal decided
to implement a four-year project (between 2006
and 2009) in the Programme Unit of Louga region
(northern Senegal). The project was titled: “Building
Local Capacity to Promote Integrated Early Childhood
Care and Development” (PROCAPE) (Plan International
Senegal, 2009). It was a model that considered four
levels of decision-making related to the young child:
family, community (village), local communities, and
the national level. The programme was developed and
tested to reinforce local capacities for the promotion of
an integrated approach to early childhood support.
PROCAPE: A Major Initiative
The major innovation in PROCAPE is the playgroup –
both in terms of the age range of the young children
and the approach used. The PROCAPE is the rst
project in Senegal that focused on the children from
birth to 3 using a community-based approach.
What is the playgroup?
The playgroup is a community-based, early childhood
care facility targeting mainly young children aged 0-3
years; it oers integrated health, nutrition, stimulation
and protection services. It is a space that welcomes
on average about 50 children aged 0 to 3 years per
village. The space is set up by the communities. Each
playgroup is provided with a minimum of equipment
(mats, chairs, water storage containers, toys for the
children, etc.) and is run by Volunteer Mothers from
the community who are under the responsibility of the
Management Committee.
Finally, at the village or neighbourhood level, it
constitutes the framework for interventions in the
eld of ECD for the target group concerned (Plan
International Senegal, 2009).
The operation of the playgroup is based on the
principle that young children under the age of
3 should be closely involved with their parents.
Therefore, the time spent outside (except in cases
of force majeure) should not be signicant. The
playgroup is structured in two subgroups:
● 0-23 months who come once a week with their
mother;
● the 24-36 months who come three times a week
between 9 and 11 am.
Playgroup management is ensured by a Management
Committee composed of female members of the
women’s promotion group. It ensures that the
playgroup functions properly, that the premises are
clean, that the Volunteer Mothers attend regularly, and
that the stocks are in order.
Supervision of playgroups is the responsibility of the
deconcentrated technical structures (IDEN, Health
District, Community Development).
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Monitoring and coordination are both carried out by
Community Support Facilitators for the Promotion of
Early Childhood (FACAPEF) at the rural community
level, while coordination is provided by the RCP.
Justication of the innovation
In PROCAPE, the question was how to provide
integrated services to young children on a community
basis in a context of scarce resources and in an
environment almost devoid of early childhood care
structures.
In other words, how can we draw inspiration from
the crèches but adapt them to the Senegalese rural
context, by synthesizing formal childcare structures
and non-formal community initiatives? This is what
justies the implementation of PROCAPE.
PROCAPE:
Results achieved by level
Family level
The LQAS surveys (Plan International Senegal,
2009) indicated that parents were now starting to
communicate with children at a very early age. Indeed,
the overall coverage rates were 50% for mothers, 81.1%
for grandmothers and 45.3% for fathers. The onset of
talking with children is earliest for grandmothers.
Parents are now starting to play with their children
at an early age, including 84.2% of women of
reproductive age (mothers). The same is true for
fathers and grandmothers (81%).
Village level
The management committee has made available a
package of activities for the playgroup. The playgroup
integrates all aspects related to the care of young
children, including stimulation, health, nutrition,
hygiene, and protection.
Play materials are available in sucient quantities and
are an important means of stimulating and awakening
young children. Grandmothers were well involved in
making toys from recycled materials, and in education
through storytelling.
Local tales, rhymes, riddles, songs, dances, games,
and more were used as teaching aids in the learning
process.
Birth registration has become systematic with the
innovation of empowering management committees
to manage village registration.
In terms of health, the children are doing better. For
the Head Nurses, the children lost in the follow-up to
growth promotion have been found, thanks to the
playgroups.
At the village level, diverse positive eects on the
children have been noted: greetings, washing hands
with soap, wearing shoes, cleanliness, and children
who no longer use bad words and always knock on
the door before entering a room.
Local products (cowpeas, millet, groundnuts, etc.) were
used in the preparation of snacks, which is one of the
main activities that mobilizes family members around
the playgroup (Plan International Senegal, 2009, p. 57).
The playgroups are now well integrated into the
community. Each village is trying to set up a system of
appropriation because they believe that the positive
eects on health, awakening, socialization and other
aspects have been demonstrated.
Rural community level
The Coordination Committee chaired by the president
of the Rural Council has achieved the following results.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Table 1.1 Rural community level results
Actions taken Project start End of project % Change
Use of impregnated mosquito nets in children 49% 95% 46
Women's possession of a health record 56% 92% 36
Early breastfeeding 92% 100% 8
Vaccination coverage -89.7% -
Iron use in pregnancy 84% 85.3% 1.3
Intermittent preventive treatment 83.2% 85% 1.8
Evolution of moderate malnutrition 14% 9.5% -4.5
Exclusive breastfeeding 26% 74.7% 48.7
Weighing frequency 75% 78.9% 3.9
Consume cowpeas from the sixth month 25% 53.8% 28.8
Hand washing -95.8% -
Document specifying date of birth -90% -
Source: (Plan International Senegal, 2009, p. 57)
National level
The concept of the “playgroup” has been validated and
integrated into the structures of the state programmes.
PROCAPE:
Key lessons learned
Implementation process and
organizational system
The process of setting up the playgroups was
participatory in that it was the communities
themselves who identied the villages, designated
the Volunteer Mothers, set up the management and
monitoring structures and provided the spaces for the
playgroups. The management bodies are generally
functional, with regular meetings and a distribution of
roles and responsibilities among the various actors.
Partnership
It was noted that there is a partnership between the
NGO Plan and the technical services involved in the
project by virtue of their eld of competence. These
are mainly education, health, community development
and local development in the form of a technical team.
The partnership with local authorities has been made
dynamic through conventions.
Supervision of the playgroups
The existence of a monitoring and supervision plan
at the level of the project management unit with
appropriate tools, eective monitoring of the volunteer
mothers by FACAPEF (Community Facilitators) and the
project sta, and supervision by the technical team
proved eective (Plan International Senegal, 2009).
The results of operations research
in PROCAPE Project
For the rst time in French-speaking Africa, within
the framework of the project operational research
was carried out in which the Bayley III tests (culturally
adapted “cognitive and language” scales) were
administered. It was conducted by two researchers,
one of whom was from the University of Dakar (Zeitlin
and Barry, 2008).
The study’s objective was twofold. One, to assess
the performance of young children living in rural
areas on standardized cognitive tests, most often
used in industrialized countries. And two, to show
that by combining the best of “traditional” practices
with knowledge from scientic discoveries, it would
be possible to raise the scores of village children to
international standards on standardized tests.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Some additional lessons learned
● Community participation and empowerment are
crucial in ECD. They make it possible, among other
things, to take better account of cultural aspects in
order to secure the support of the population.
● The maturation of an ECD programme takes time.
Given its novelty and complexity, the PROCAPE
experience proves that particular emphasis must
be placed on awareness-raising, facilitation and
organization.
● The establishment of management structures
at the various levels of care for young children
allows for greater visibility of actions and better
monitoring.
● In the socio-cultural eld, the enhancement of
endogenous knowledge and practices concerning
the child and the integration of positive elements
of the local cultural heritage into activities are a
guarantee of the appropriation and sustainability
of interventions in the ECD.
● The level of development of DPE ECD activities
cannot be uniform; it varies from one rural
community to another and from one village to
another according to the intrinsic realities of each
environment.
● Strategies for identifying and/or selecting villages
can be critical in engaging people.
● Voluntary work has its limits, making it is
necessary to nd a exible, ecient, sustainable,
and consistent formula of remuneration for the
Voluntary Mothers.
PROCAPE was a successful experimental pilot
programme that made a fundamental contribution to
the improvement of the early childhood environment
in the Louga area of Senegal. Following Louga, the
playgroups have been extended to the Saint-Louis
region of Northern Senegal and three other regions in
Senegal. Playgroups are now an ocial programme of
ECD in Senegal.
The challenges of ECD in Senegal
While PROCAPE has proven to be a success, many
challenges remain for ECD’s further development in
Senegal.
The under-threes and the legal framework
Despite some experience with children under 3, the
challenges of developing integrated services for
0-3-year-olds are signicant. The ECD policy tends to
focus on children aged 3 to 6, and the importance
of early care and inclusion of younger children in the
education system is certainly a stated political goal,
but its implementation is hampered by the absence of
a regulatory framework.
Decentralization and the role
of local authorities
Since 1972, Senegal has embarked on a policy of
decentralization aimed at empowering the population
in the management of local aairs through elected
assemblies based on local authorities.
This decentralization has undergone a signicant
qualitative leap since 1996, with the transfer to local
authorities of a rst batch of nine areas of competence,
including education. In the area of education and
training, eorts have certainly been made by some
local authorities (construction of schools and/or
classrooms, provision of school supplies, etc.), but this
empowerment must be inclusive by promoting more
actions for the development of early childhood.
Curricula and capacity-building of
stakeholders (Validation of prior learning)
Quality is a major objective of Senegal’s Programme for
the Improvement of Quality, Equity and Transparency-
Education Training (PAQUET-EF). The improvement of
the quality of education relies, in particular, on a better
management of the training needs of the personnel of
the education system.
At ECD level, the situation of sta in terms of
qualications and working conditions is mixed. Some
structures, such as public nursery schools and some
private Catholic structures, have a generally well-
trained teaching sta with the required academic
diplomas. In the private secular and community
structures, the sta is often poorly qualied.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
It should be noted that quality training for teachers
before they take children into pre-school is therefore a
priority for improving the quality of education.
It is then a question of moving towards centres
specially dedicated to early childhood personnel.
Multi-sectorality and coordination
The steering and coordination of early childhood is
carried out by two structures under two dierent
ministries. The National Agency for the Case des Tout-
Petits is designated as the coordinating structure for
early childhood programmes, while the mission of the
Preschool Education Department, in collaboration with
the specialized services, is to implement the preschool
education policy
Funding and the role of the private sector
The question of nancing for ECD Centres deserves
to be explicitly addressed because it conditions all
possibilities for developing dierent types of childcare
programmes. It is necessary to reect on the minimum
investment for each ECD Centre in terms of nancial,
material, and human resources. It is also necessary
to determine the share of each source of investment
(state, local authorities, NGOs, communities, donors,
private sector, families).
References
Agence Nationale de la Case des Tout-Petits. 2007. La
Case des Tout-petits, un programme novateur pour le
développement de la petite enfance au Sénégal, No. 1.
Dakar, UNESCO. (In French.)
Bassama, S. 2010. Dés politiques et pratiques inclusives
pour améliorer l’EPPE (Education et Protection de la
Petite Enfance) chez les 0-3ans au Sénégal. Qualité,
équité et diversité dans le préscolaire, Revue Petite
Enfance, No. 00, p. 27. (In French.)
Plan International Senegal. 2005. ECCD Final evaluation
report. Dakar, Plan International Senegal.
Plan International Senegal. 2009. PROCAPE Final Evaluation
Report. Dakar, Plan International Senegal.
Rayna, S. 2002. La mise en œuvre de la politique intégrée
de la petite enfance au Sénégal, UNESCO. Série sur la
politique de la Petite Enfance, No. 2, p. 19. (In French.)
Republic of Senegal. 1971. Loi d’orientation de l’éducation
nationale. Dakar, Republic of Senegal. (N°71-36, P4.)
Zeitlin, M. and Barry, O. 2008. Results of operational
research by CRESP for Plan International, Dakar, on the
adaptation and administration of the Bayley III infant
development test in Louga. Dakar, Plan International
Senegal.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
ECD country experience:
ETHIOPIA
Fantahun Admas
and Belay Tefera
Introduction
Ethiopia is an ancient Eastern Africa country with an
amazing geographic landscape and history. The height
of Ras Dashen (4,550m above sea level) in the north
and the Danakil Depression (120m below sea level, the
hottest place on earth) in the east, are examples of the
extreme landscapes found in the country. The long-
standing obelisks of Aksum, the rock-hewn churches
of Lalibela, and the castles of Fasil are recorded by
UNESCO as world heritage sites.
With a history of over 3,000 years, Ethiopia has its
own Ethiopic alphabets, Indigenous formal education
systems, ancient Geez literature, philosophy, and
civilization. The Aksumte kingdom was one of the
world’s four ancient civilizations (the others being
Chinese, Indian, and Persian). The sixteenth century
Gada system of the Oromos was the most spectacular
democratic system ever seen on African soil. And
Ethiopia is one of only two African nations that was
never colonized by European aggressors.
Ethiopia is now home to over 80 ethnic groups and
languages that constitute 110 million people. Nearly
80% of Ethiopia’s largely rural population live in a
subsistence economy where agriculture is the major
source of livelihood. Construction of one of the world’s
greatest hydroelectric dams (the Great Ethiopian
Renaissance Dam, GERD) is being built without any
aid or donation from others. It is considered by many
citizens to herald the advent of a new era transitioning
Ethiopia into a journey of prosperity. Ethiopia as a
nation envisions becoming a low-middle income
country by 2025.
Ethiopia is also a country that has its own Indigenous
early years education systems rooted in two major
religions in the country: Orthodox Christianity,
introduced into the country in the fourth century C.E.,
and Islam, introduced in the seventh century C.E. This
short chapter places a special focus on early years
education that was based in the Orthodox Christian
Church over a millennium. It also discusses how this
system was side-lined as a result of the advent of an
education system that calls itself “modern education”,
and what can be done, and why, to revitalize the
age-old Ethiopian Indigenous education system.
Church education (priest school) in
Ethiopia: the period before the 1960s
Scriptural arguments hold that Christianity was
introduced to Ethiopia in the rst century C.E.
through the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:26-40) in
high authority who had pilgrimage to Jerusalem for
worship, met the rst disciple of Jesus Christ who
helped him to be baptized and converted, and then
went back home with Christianity, which became the
religion of the nobility. Other arguments hold that
Christianity was introduced to Ethiopia much later,
in the fourth century (330 C.E.), allegedly through
the Mediterranean trade route during the Aksumite
kingdom (Sergew, 1972; Tadesse, 1972). It was said
that Frumentius, a Greek-speaking young man who
came from Syria with a trader, introduced Christianity.
Frumentius educated young Ezana (who later became
a King) and inuenced him to accept Christianity. He
was later ordained by St. Athanasius as the rst bishop
and was instrumental in popularizing Christianity in
Ethiopia. Following his ordination, new churches were
built, and Christianity became the state religion. The
fourth century is taken as the foundation for a church
education system (Hailegebriel, 2019). The rise of St.
Yared in the sixth century further strengthened the
church through the introduction of poetry and church
music.
Church education served as the only formal education
system until the beginning of the twentieth century
(Hailegebriel, 2019). The establishment of monasteries
in the sixth century fuelled the expansion of church
buildings, literature, and schools. Jaenen (1957) noted
that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church maintained
schools and upheld the dignity of scholarship at a
time that Europeans had no interest in schooling.
It was during the Aksumite kingdom (100 to 940
C.E.) when education emerged in an organized and
institutionalized form. Church education emerged as
an independent activity and institutions in a form of
school with complex activities of its own involving
teachers, learners, and religious texts as subject
matters with specic objectives of preparing children
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
to serve the church community (Hailegebriel, 2019).
This church education system has four levels: Nibab
Bet (school of reading); Zema Bet (school of music);
Qine Bet (school of poetry); and Metshaft Bet (school
of commentaries and books interpretation). This long
journey of church education starts in childhood and
extends for up to 30 and 40 years.
Nibab Bet (School of Reading or House of Reading) is
the beginning of schooling where children at the age
of four years, four months and four days are introduced
to the church school to the Nibab Bet level. Nibab
Bet is housed in every church compound and nearly
all churches had Nibab Bet until the rst half of the
twentieth century (Hailegebriel, 2019). The Nibab Bet
is the rst stage of the church schools where primary
instruction is given. In the near past, Nibab Bet was
found in almost all churches and monasteries in a
number of villages and in the compounds of well-
to-do landlords. According to data from the Church
Oce, there are over 35,000 orthodox churches and
500,000 clergy and 43 million followers in Ethiopia.
If each church has one Nibab Bet with one priest
schoolteacher, then there are over 35,000 one-
teacher priest schools which could reach hundreds of
thousands or even millions of children.
In this level, children learn a set of letters or syllables
on a slate called del. The del contains 33letters
and each has seven variants (a total of 233letters).
These letters are used in Amharic and Geez languages.
Ethiopia is the only African country with its own Geez
alphabet, written language, and literature.
To learn the letters and master reading, a child passes
through four stages: Qutir, Magaz (Geez), Wurd Nibab,
and Qum Nibab. Qutir is learning the letters, Magaz
is reading words, Wurd Nibab is reading phrases and
sentences, and Qum Nibab is reading straight or the
art of reading.
A child graduates from Nibab Bet when they master
the reading of the Psalms of David. Once graduated
from Nibab Bet, one has to decide either to go for
asquala (“modern” school) to pursue the higher-level
education of the church or stay with their parents.
Those who decide to pursue higher education leave
their parents and travel far in search of an institution
that caters for Zema (church music), Qine (poetry and
philosophy), and Metsihaft Bet (interpretation and
commentaries of books). The higher schools of church
education are Zema Bet (School of Church Music),
Qine Bet (School of Poetry), and Metsihaft Bet (School
of Commentaries and interpretation). These levels
are not for children younger than 8 and they are not
subjects of this piece.
This practice of church education had been an
avenue to hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
Until recently, attending church education was highly
valued. Ethiopian church fathers, deacons, priests,
poets, musicians, debtara, popes, monks and others
are highly respected, and some students aspire to be
one of the respected church fathers when they grow
up. Almost all notable personalities in leadership,
art, music, literature, etc. in Ethiopia were, in one
way or other, shaped by and beneted from church
education. This important institution was side-lined
due to the introduction of the Western education
system and is now limited only to producing church
servants and scholars. Since the 1974 regime change
that brought the socialist government into power,
graduates of the church education system were not
employed in government anymore.
Preschools and priest schools:
the period after the 1960s
In a bid to modernize Ethiopia and ll the alleged
limitations that the country was too “traditional”
for international politics, the rst modern primary
education was opened in Addis Ababa in 1908
(Teshome, 1979; Pankhurst, 1974). The major aim
of education at that time was to master dierent
languages (Adane, 1993; Pankhurst, 1974) and to
achieve the competencies needed for the country’s
independence (Tekeste, 1996). The introduction of
modern education in Ethiopia is only just over a
century old, as compared to the centuries-old priest
schools.
A little earlier than the rst modern primary school,
the rst modern preschool in Ethiopia was established
in Dire Dawa to serve the French consultants who
worked in building the railroad system (Demeke, 2007).
Following the opening of government primary schools
and community schools, preschools were opened
in attachment with schools such as the German
school, the English school, and Lycee Gebre
Mariam
to serve children of well-to-do and government
ocials in Addis Ababa. But preschool as a general
community service only began in the 1960s with
a few pilot projects in Addis Ababa, Debre Berhan,
Debre Zeit, Awassa, and Asmara under the Ministry
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
of National Community Development and Social
Aairs (MNCDSA). The schools were run by foreign
nationals, mainly Swedes and American Peace Corps
volunteers (Tirussew et al., 2009). Though the rst
preschool establishment dates back to the beginning
of the twentieth century, from 1908 to 1974 only
77kindergartens were opened.
The socialist revolution in 1974 brought a new era
to early childhood education. As socialism believed
in the equality of men and women, the participation
of women in the revolution was felt to be critical.
Liberating mothers from routine childcare was one of
the measures taken and this resulted in the opening of
day-care centres and kindergartens in the country in
both rural and urban settings. Following the socialist
revolution, early childhood education was greatly
expanded (Demeke, 2007; Tirussew et al., 2009; Hoot
etal., 2004) and 912 preschools were established by
1990. In 1980 an independent commission called
“Ethiopian Children’s Commission” was established
with a task of caring for and educating Ethiopian
children and it accomplished many tasks during its
tenure. However, due to the change in government in
1991, most of the preschool programmes were halted
(Demeke, 2007).
The strong and inuential church education system
started declining after the introduction of “modern”
education in the second half of the twentieth century.
This “modern” education system was introduced
neither by customizing itself to t Ethiopian reality nor
in consideration of the need to integrate it with the
existing practices of church education – this despite
the fact that the church education system had made
very signicant contributions in educating church
(leaders, priests, and scholars), government (kings,
princes and princesses, and bureaucratic personnel),
and other elites for over several millennia. The “modern”
education system expanded in the country quickly and
became popular among the public, mainly because
successive governments gave special favour to it in
anticipation of it being a panacea to Ethiopia’s ills and
an assured avenue to Ethiopia’s development. The
graduates of the modern education system also started
criticizing the church education system, and graduates
of church education started nding no places in
government oces and were limited to church
services.
This attitude also crossed over into broader public
opinion with parents disfavouring priest schools over
“asquala” (“modern” school). The academia also played
a role in downgrading the contributions and quality of
priest schools.
In a review of literature in the eld, Belay and Belay
(2017) indicated that traditional schools were
considered recall-based (Demeke, 2007), unsystematic
(Woodhead et al., 2009), religious-focused (SCN and
Save the Children Norway Ethiopia, 2011; Woodhead
et al., 2009), linguistically irrelevant, limited only
to literacy, gender-biased, age-inappropriate, and
overall, less benecial (SCN and Save the Children
Norway Ethiopia, 2011). In response to these critiques,
Belay and Belay (2017) argued, however, that these
critiques were inaccurate, inappropriate, and based
on misconceptions of the purposes, approaches, and
outcomes of priest schools. Indeed, certain modern
education scholars (Tirussew et al., 2009, Belay and
Belay, 2017) have joined in a critique of the uprooting
of traditional Indigenous education approaches from
contemporary education. It was said that it would have
been better to gradually tame modern education’s
opposition to the cultural practices and Indigenous
knowledge of Ethiopians that were accumulated for
a thousand years, rather than beginning everything
afresh as if the ground was barren.
Revitalizing priest schools: access,
quality, and equity matters
The access case
The modern preschool education that was introduced
to Ethiopia in 1900 by French consultants to educate
their children became a public service nearly 60 years
later, in the 1960s. Subsequently, it went through
gradual expansion until the Socialist regime where it
witnessed remarkable growth, but once again declined
during the EPRDF government. During this last regime,
a greater focus was placed on higher education
expansion, until such a time that internal and external
pressures mounted that urged the government to turn
its eyes to early years education. Ethiopia developed
its rst policy for early childhood education in 2010,
a
ccompanied with expansion of preschools. Despite
all these developments, children’s access to early years
education does not even reach at least 50%.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
This being the case, there is an opportunity to
meaningfully improve access by using traditional
institutions that have been marginalized in Ethiopia
such as priest school. There are over 35,000 local
Orthodox churches in Ethiopia having space and
scholars to teach children before they enter into
primary school. Over 500,000 children can be safely
addressed through this modality.
The quality case
Priest schools are locally grounded and naturally retain
contextual relevance. It is also argued that they are in
a position to integrate academic learning with culture,
religion, and character building. In response to the
critiques directed against priest schools, Belay and
Belay (2017) argued that the critiques were based on
misconceptions about the nature of priest schools.
According to them, the purposes of priest schools are
not religious based in the early grades but focused on
literacy to a great extent. Furthermore, the approaches
are rather highly organized, systematic, integrational,
inclusive, cost-eective and, more importantly,
reective of many of the principles of modern
pedagogy – despite the fact that priest schools are
customarily considered “traditional” or “non-modern”.
Learning to read in priest school is systematically
organized into a series of steps that make the learner
identify the alphabets by shape and sound and lead
to reading letters, phrases, and sentences. One of the
steps is studying alphabets in dierent arrangements
so that they may not be supercially kept in tongue
through memorizing sequences. Learning to read
also involves dierent styles and melodies of reading,
whose sounds are rewarding. Assessment is individual
based, and one has to practically demonstrate mastery
of all the tasks of the step one nds oneself in before
an audience of learner mates and the priest proceed to
the next step (Belay and Belay, 2017).
The teaching process is conducted by a single
priest, and this helps him to closely keep track of the
development of each child. The teaching process
is the best example of peer learning, individualized
instruction, and hierarchical organization that
modern pedagogy promotes. The priest observes the
mentoring process and provides extra support when
needed. Each child is then to study independently
with the help of a child mentor and the priest. In
doing so, each child is to learn literacy with one’s own
pace of learning and all the children of the centre can
possibly belong to dierent levels of reading being
in one class (Belay and Belay, 2017). Some evidence
also suggests that priest school children are better at
reading in primary schools compared to those without
this background (SCN and Save the Children Norway
Ethiopia, 2011).
The equity case
In contrast to the critiques that priest schools are
exclusionary, evidence indicates that boys and girls,
Christians, and Muslims, and those physically healthy
as well as with disabilities are in attendance; Muslims,
girls, and those with disabilities were disproportionately
represented because of social and cultural factors,
rather than priest schools requirements (Belay and
Belay, 2017). In fact, children with special needs are
even more visible because it was preferred to keep
them in priest schools as they contribute little on the
farm. That is why we observe priests with dierent
kinds of impairments including visual problems
(Demeke, 2007). The fact that it is cost-eective
makes it accessible to rural children who have been
most marginalized from preschool education. Priest
schools are community-based preschools that utilize
community personnel (priest teacher), community
resources (wooden seats grooved from local trees,
classes under shed of trees, written scripts called del
for learning letters).
Reections and recommendations
Access, relevance, and quality are key problems for
early childhood education in Ethiopia. Currently, over
six million children do not receive preschool education
services. Furthermore, those who do go to preschool
are too often detached from their culture and tradition.
The quality of preschool education has been reported
to have a low quality (Fantahun, 2019; Tirussew et al.,
2009). With these concerns in mind, church education/
priest schools could play their part in partly addressing
concerns mentioned above, as per the following
points:
● There is a tradition to send a child to priest school
at the age of four years, four months and four days.
● School entry is at any time in the year. One does
not wait until schools open in September.
77
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
● In priest scho
ols, children are not only learning
literacy and numeracy, but they also learn moral,
ethics, religion, culture, art, vocational skills,
respecting elders.
● Children are not bullied, humiliated, or punished
for academic failure. Bullying, violence, and
misbehaviour seldom occur because children
submit to the authority (Belay and Belay, 2017).
● There is a possibility that priest schools can be
customized and aligned with the formal education
system.
● It is recommended that church schools should be
reactivated through upgrading and improvement
of their conditions through training and provision
of necessary materials (Tirussew et al., 2009).
● In order to meet the demands of the present day,
the church education can be customized and
improved in a way to address the religious, cultural
and developmental needs of children.
● The priest school is more eective and
individualized than the modern one. In the priest
school, no child is promoted to the next level
unless they proves that they have accomplished
what is set to the level.
● With some training of priests who teach children,
priest schools can be standard ECCE centres that
could address the developmental and educational
needs of children.
● In priest school, each child learns at their own pace.
Revitalizing priest schools, as one of the Indigenous
approaches to early learning, would help provide
relevant, cost-eective, and quality early years”
education for children; its objectives, approaches, and
methods, and learning outcomes would ensure basic
literacy and school readiness to commence on primary
school education (Belay and Belay, 2017).
References
Adane, T. 1993. A Historical
Survey of State Education in
Ethiopia. Addis Ababa, Asmara.
Belay, H. and Belay, T. 2017. Know Thyself: Viability of Early
Childhood Education Delivery through Traditional
Priest Schools. Ethiopian Journal of Education, Vol. 37,
No. 2, pp. 67-102.
Demeke, G. 2007. Historical and philosophical foundations
of early childhood education in Ethiopia. Unpublished
Ethiopian Psychologists” Association XI Annual
Conference proceeding. Available at: https://
www.academia.edu/11868232/Historical_and_
Philosophical_Foundations_of_Early_Childhood_
Education_in_Ethiopia
Fantahun, A. 2019. Quality of Early Childhood Education in
Private and Governmental Preschools of Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia. International Journal of Early Childhood, Vol.
51, No. 2, pp. 163-176.
Hailegebriel, D. 2019. Social and Historical Foundations of
Ethiopian Education, Vol. I. Addis Ababa, Addis Ababa
University Press.
Hoot, J., Szente, J., and Mebratu, B. 2004. Early education
in Ethiopia: Progress and prospects. Early Childhood
Education Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 3-8.
Jaenen, C. J. 1957. Education in Ethiopia. The Social Studies,
Vol. 48, No. 7, pp. 246-249.
Pankhurst, R. 1974. Education language and history: A
historical background to post–war Ethiopia. Ethiopian
Journal of Education, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 75-97.
SCN and Save the Children Norway Ethiopia. 2011. Early
Child Hood Development Pilot Project in Chilga and Lai
Armachiho: Status assessment. Unpublished research
report.
Sergew, H. 1972. Ancient and medieval Ethiopian history to
1270. Northolt, UK, United Printers.
Tadesse, T. 1972. Church and State in Ethiopia 1270 – 1527.
Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Tekeste, N. 1996. Rethinking education in Ethiopia. Uppsala,
Sweden, Afrikaiinstitutet.
Teshome, G.W. 1979. Education in Ethiopia: Prospects and
retrospect. Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan
Press.
Tirussew, T., Teka, Z., Belay, T., Belay, H., and Demeke, G.
2009. Status of childhood care and education in
Ethiopia. T. Tefera, A. Dalelo, and M. Kassaye (Eds.),
First International Conference on Educational Research
for Development, Vol. I. Addis Ababa, Addis Ababa
University Press. pp. 188-223.
Woodhead, M., Ames, P., Vennam, U., Abebe, W., and
Streuli, N. 2009. Equity and quality? Challenges for early
childhood and primary education in Ethiopia, India
and Peru. The Hague, Bernard van Leer Foundation.
(Working papers in Early Childhood Development,
No. 55.)
SECTION 2
Transformative events
1990-2000
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Introduction
Patrick Makokoro
The decade of the 1990s was an important period for
the development of ECD in Africa, and indeed for the
broader Majority World. Ng’asike and Swadener (2019)
noted that ECD in Africa was grounded in several
international agreements and conventions. Several of
these are considered below. In addition, the decade
saw the formation of two African ECD networks. The
decade also saw policy development and leadership
initiatives take place and the decade concluded with
the rst Africa-wide ECD Conference in 1999. In many
respects the 1990s was a period of “Africa rising” in
response to ECD.
The period from 1989 through 1992 was an
extraordinarily active time for child-focused issues
globally, during which: the Convention on the Rights
of the Child (CRC) was approved (United Nations,
1989); the World Summit for Children was accepted
(1990); and the World Conference on Education for
All prepared a key Declaration (UNESCO, 1990). The
publishing of the book The Twelve Who Survive by
Robert Myers in 1992, along with other key events
taking place in that decade, represent transformational
points for ECD globally and in Africa.
In the late 1980s, the member states of the United
Nations came together to approve the Convention
on the Rights of the Child (United Nations, 1989).
The CRC supported a shift in the way children were
viewed, from being passive recipients of care and
support to being recognized as individuals with rights.
In March 1990, at an Education for All Conference
(EFA) in Jomtien, Thailand, the now popular statement
“learning begins at birth” (UNESCO, 1990) was made
prominent. However, while the recognition that
learning begins at birth was a win for the early
childhood development sector, arguably the EFA
Declaration helped shift ECD towards an education
sector narrative.
The initiatives noted above, working in concert with a
key publication of that period, The Twelve Who Survive
(Myers, 1992), contributed to shifting ECD international
discussions beyond “children surviving”, to “children
thriving”. Through this publication (see Chapter 1)
Myers gave compelling arguments about the need to
have ECD programmes that go beyond child survival
and focus on enhancing growth and development for
children to realize their full potential. Myers provided
relevant context by discussing locally based examples
of programmes being implemented to support young
children. This was dierent in nature from the CRC
and EFA, both of which tend to reinforce “top-down”
approaches that may overshadow the importance of
the local voices and approaches that were evident in
Myers’s work.
Indeed, while the conventions held in the 1990s
represented progressive change in how early
childhood development was viewed and the
importance of child rights, their global “coverage”
raised some concerns. Africa was one of the few
regions of the world that sought to “regionalize” the
CRC through adopting the African Charter on the
Rights and Welfare of Children (ACRWC). The ACRWC
(OAU, 1990) domesticated the CRC to ensure that
children and their agency are respected within the
African context. Kjørholt (2019) noted that the ACRWC
“was adopted to reect the socio-cultural values
related to children’s place in the families and to the
values embedded in enculturation and parenting
practices in the African continent” (p. 30). In Article31,
the ACRWC was explicit in mentioning that “every
child shall have the responsibilities towards his family
and society, the State and other legally recognized
communities and the international community” (OAU,
1990, p. 23). This position draws from the fundamental
Afrocentric perspectives that recognize the child
as an active contributor to their wellbeing through
household chores done in part as reciprocity for the
care given to them by parents, caregivers, and the
community.
The recognition of children’s rights within their own
African context was a signicant departure by the
then Organization for African Unity (now African
Union) leaders from simply assenting to a convention
that did not consider Afrocentric perspectives. The
African Charter can be understood as representing
the aspirations of an Africa that was emerging out of
the throes of colonialism and imperialism, developing
documents that recognized its sovereignty and
ability to chart its own path. While the development
of the ACRWC can be understood as a welcome
development during that decade, it nevertheless faced
challenges and delays in its ratication, which did not
take place until 1999.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Unpacking key international events that
impacted ECD in Africa in the 1990s
The journey of recognizing the agency of children
required stakeholders in the child development
and ECD sectors to agree on the basic fundamental
needs of young children and how these could
be implemented in the context of a child rights
framework. Articles 3, 18 and 29 of the Convention on
the Rights of the Child (CRC) provided guidance for
the stakeholders to not only design and implement
programmes that would work towards universal
primary education but also provided a basis for
alignment with the agreements adopted at the
Jomtien Education for All conference. However, even
though these articles provide guidance towards
universal primary education, it was also important
to avoid the “schoolication” of young children.
Both within and outside Africa, the majority of ECD
leaders support the construction of active learning
opportunities through play methodologies, rather than
rote learning.
Early childhood development policy and practice
in Africa during the period between 1990 and 2000
cannot be seen in isolation from the Convention on
the Rights of the Child (CRC) that was ratied by nearly
all the African member states in 1990. Sifuna and
Sawamura (2010) opined that following the ratication
of this convention and subsequent education
conferences, African countries began to integrate
children’s rights issues more clearly in sectoral policies.
It remained to be seen how these rights-based
approaches would be contextually relevant and how
the attendant global policies would address the
dierences in culture and traditions around the world?
In Africa, countries such as Namibia, Ghana, Mauritius,
Mauritania, Malawi, and Uganda began policy
formulation initiatives by setting up commissions and
ministries that would handle aairs related to children
(Garcia et al., 2008; Vargas-Barón, 2005; Torkington,
2001). Viewed through the Sankofa lens, the adoption
of the CRC was a pivotal and transformational
event in Africa, as this began a movement towards
mainstreaming early childhood development into
national level policies. Important as these activities
were, one is also left to wonder why the African
Declaration did not play a more signicant role and
receive greater attention. This will be explored further
in this introductory chapter.
Global adoption of the Convention
on the Rights of the Child
ECD in Africa can be seen through the lens of these
various conventions and agreements that were ratied
or signed on the African continent or in other global
forums. These conventions were very important
because, as Smith (2018) suggested, conventions
were more binding as they had to be ratied formally
and required reporting to the United Nations.
Therefore, once signed, a country would have to put
in place measures and frameworks to support the
implementation of the conventions or agreements.
Recognized as one of the most widely and quickly
ratied global documents, the Convention on the
Rights of a Child (CRC) was adopted and opened for
signature, ratication, and assent by General Assembly
resolution 44/25 of 20 November 1989. The CRC then
came into full eect on the 2 September 1990 (United
Nations General Assembly, 1989). In this document, the
General Comment No. 7 highlighted that:
young children are best understood as social actors
whose survival, well-being and development are
dependent on and built around close relationships
normally with a small number of key people, most
often parents, members of the extended family
and peers, as well as caregivers and other early
childhood professionals (United Nations Committee
on the Rights of the Child, 2005, General Comment
No. 7, para. 8).
This was an important recognition of the agency of
young children and the General Comment Number7
also noted that proper prevention and intervention
strategies during early childhood had the potential to
impact positively on young children’s current well-
being and future projects. The CRC recognized that
every child had the right to go to school and learn.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and later
the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) also called
on governments to “ensure that all girls and boys
have access to quality early childhood development,
care and pre-primary education” (UNICEF, 2016, p. 42).
The notion of quality, however, becomes subject to
further scrutiny because how quality is measured and
who denes it is an area that must be continuously
interrogated, appreciating and recognizing the
importance of contextual denitions of quality.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
From global to local – African Charter on
the Rights and Welfare of Young Children
While the CRC provided a global framework from
which to address the rights of the child, African
leaders also felt the need to develop, ratify, and assent
to a continent-wide charter that would provide
guidance and direction to countries on the continent.
Associated with the key events in the early 1990s,
the Organization for African Unity (OAU—now the
African Union, or AU) Heads of States adopted the
African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child
(African Children’s Charter) on 11 July 19909 after
ratication by 15 additional Member States. This was
a signicant step by African leadership in recognizing
children and their personhood and welfare (Hart, 1991)
by member states at a country level. Mezmur (2020)
argues that the idea of the ACRWC was a consequence
of the negotiation processes carried out in adopting
the CRC and that it provides to date, the single most
comprehensive instrument that guarantees children’s
rights on the African continent.
The recognition of children’s rights as enshrined in the
African Charter put children’s issues into the formal
development agenda of African governments from
1990 going forward. The child, however, also had a role
to play within the family and community. In Article 31,
the African Charter states that “every child shall have
the responsibilities towards his family and society,
the State and other legally recognized communities
and the international community” (OAU, 1990, p. 23).
Article 31 therefore draws a direct connection with the
Afrocentric philosophies on child development that
are discussed in Chapter 4 of this section, especially
the notion that children were viewed as part of the
household economic activity and thus had a reciprocal
responsibility within the context of family, community,
and State.
Kjøholt (2019) observed that even after the adoption
of the ACRWC, it was still not being used as a frame of
reference for the implementation of children’s rights in
Africa. In trying to promote the CRC, western countries
and funders would leverage funding and support for
child development related projects opting to support
those countries that were implementing provisions
of the CRC. Kjørholt postulated that the “hegemonic
position of the CRC was impacted by the fact that a
child rights approach related to the implementation of
9 The Charter entered into force on 29 November, 1999.
the CRC is often a condition for funding and economic
investments from global actors and NGOs” (2019, p.
31).
Mezmur (2017) notes that during the drafting of
the CRC a limited number of African countries were
substantively involved in its development. This could
point to a reason why the ACRWC felt the need to
address the rights and responsibilities of children
within the African context. For example, there are
elements in the CRC that were not suciently
captured such as the rights and protection of children
living as refugees, vulnerability of the girl child when
accessing education, harmful practices such as child
marriage, female genital mutilation, children in armed
conict and those living under apartheid (Ekundayo,
2015; Chirwa, 2002; Olowu, 2002). To a degree it can be
argued that the ACRWC was adopted to compensate
for these shortcomings in the CRC.
World Education for All Conference (EFA),
Jomtien, Thailand, 1990
The importance of ECD as shown by its pre-eminent
placement as a target highlighted the growing
awareness of the importance of laying a strong
foundation for young children. This target, as noted in
the World Declaration on Education for All, focused on
“expansion of early childhood care and development
activities, including family and community
interventions, especially for the poor, disadvantaged
and disabled children” (UNESCO, 1990, p. 3). ECD
programmes should be comprehensive, focusing on all
the child’s needs and encompassing health, nutrition,
and hygiene as well as cognitive and psychosocial
development (UNESCO, 2000; Olusanya, 2011).
Scholars (Pence and Nsamenang, 2008; Penn, 2006;
Young, 2005) would later argue for integrated early
childhood development programmes that would
address various developmental domains of young
children. To support this integrated approach, African
governments, along with development partner
organizations, would then include or frame the
holistic provision of early childhood development in
policy documents and frameworks that reected the
community, district, and national aspirations for the
child in line with the ACRWC (Young, 2005).
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Introducing the chapters
The Coordinating Group for ECCD (known as the
CG), was actively involved in getting ECCD included
on the EFA Conference agenda as well as in the
Declaration and Plan of Action. It is probably fair to
say that without the participation of the CG, early
childhood would not have become part of EFA. The CG
featured prominently in the work of the two main ECD
networks that were operating in Africa between 1990
and 2000. The CG had a signicant impact on the early
childhood development sector in sub-Saharan Africa,
as they were involved in a range of activities within
the education sector broadly and in early childhood
development specically. The history and involvement
of the CG in ECD globally as well as in Africa is
discussed in Chapter 1.
In 1992 a group of donors known as the Donors for
African Education (DAE) group, which later changed
its name to the Association for the Development of
African Education (ADEA), met in Angers, France. The
group had mooted the idea of having a “working
group” focused on early childhood development and
in 1993, the Secretariat of the DAE then extended an
invitation to set up the “working group” within what
was then the DAE’s Working Group for Women/Girls.
The story of ECD network formation continued, with
individuals such as Margaret Kabiru, Barnabas Otaala,
and Cyril Dalais playing a key role in establishing the
Early Childhood Development Network for Africa
in 1994. These key individuals provided leadership
at various points through the journey of the ECD
networks.
The goals of the ECD networks that were established
in the mid-1990s included expanding early childhood
care and education and advocating for the provision
of free and compulsory education for all young
children among others. These networks advocated an
ECD agenda that was in line with the “rights-based”
approach to education as enshrined in the Convention
on the Rights of the Child and in the African Charter
on the Rights and Welfare of the Child as discussed
earlier. Chapter 2 takes a deep dive into the history of
these ECD networks and how their establishment can
be seen through the lens of “transformational” events
happening on the African continent during this period.
Inuencing some of the transformative events are
individuals who played an instrumental role in shaping
ECD in Africa as well as globally during the 1990s.
Robbins et al. (1998) dened leadership as “the ability
to inuence others towards the achievement of goals
that contribute to a worthwhile purpose” (p. 336).
The ECD leaders proled in Chapter 3 come from
a broad range of social, cultural, and also linguistic
backgrounds. Each of the leaders focused on their
own area of specialization while collaborating with
others to move the ECD agenda ahead. The authors
of Chapter 3 recognize some signicant contributions
made by those proled and how in “playing together
in the sandbox” with others, they made an indelible
mark on the sector.
The country stories included in Section 1 provided
testimony on the persistent importance of traditional
childrearing practices across Africa. Overall, the
communal approaches and multiple child-caring
agents and contexts or situations explain the extent
to which resilience is entrenched in the growing
child’s personality. The African child’s ability to survive
against challenges and continue to learn and develop
attest to these approaches and strategies. The
collective childrearing approaches mean the family
and community including the child are partners in the
process of development. Mainstream developmental
theories can hardly track the developmental processes
in the traditional African society as they lack the
explanatory mechanism to address the intricacies in
Indigenous knowledge and how it guides the paths to
nurturing a responsible, socially competent individual.
Chapter4 draws on Afrocentric philosophies and how
in the context of a post-COVID-19 world Africa can use
its Indigenous knowledge repositories to build back
better.
85
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
References
Chirwa, D. M. 2002. The merits and demerits of the African
Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. The
International Journal of Children’s Rights, Vol. 10, No. 2,
p. 157.
Ekundayo, O. 2015. Does the African Charter on the Rights
and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC) only underlines
and repeats the Convention on the Rights of the
Child (CRC)’s provisions? Examining the similarities
and the dierences between the ACRWC and the
CRC. International Journal of Humanities and Social
Science, Vol. 5, No. 7, pp. 143-158.
Garcia, M., Pence, A., and Evans, J. 2008. Africa’s
future, Africa’s challenge: Early childhood care and
development in sub-Saharan Africa. Washington,
TheWorld Bank.
Hart, S. N. 1991. From property to person status:
Historical perspective on children’s rights. American
Psychologist, Vol. 46, No. 1, p. 53.
Kjørholt, A. T. 2019. Early Childhood and Children’s
Rights: A Critical Perspective. In Early Childhood and
Development Work. London, Palgrave Macmillan.
Mezmur, B. D. 2017. Happy 18th Birthday to the African
Children’s Rights Charter: Not Counting Its Days
but Making Its Days Count. African Human Rights
Yearbook, Vol. 1, pp. 125-149.
Mezmur, B. D. 2020. The African Children’s Charter @ 30:
A distinction without a dierence?. The International
Journal of Children’s Rights, Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 693-714.
Myers, R. 1992.The twelve who survive: Strengthening
programmes of early childhood development in the
Third World. Paris, United Nations Educational,
Scientic and Cultural Organization.
Ng’asike J. T. and Swadener, B. B. 2019. Promoting
Indigenous Epistemologies in Early Childhood
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Communities in Kenya. A. Kjørholt and H. Penn (Eds.),
Early Childhood and Development Work: Theories,
Policies, and Practices. London, Palgrave Macmillan,
pp.113-132.
Olowu D. 2002. Protecting children’s rights in Africa: a
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Welfare of the Child. International Journal of Children’s
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OAU. 1990. African charter on the rights and welfare of
the child. (OAU Doc. CAB/LEG/24.9/49.) Available
at: http://www.achpr.org/les/instruments/child/
achpr_instr_charterchild_eng.pdf
Olusanya, B. O. 2011. Priorities for early childhood
development in low-income countries. Journal of
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Pence, A. and Nsamenang, B. 2008. A case for early
childhood development in sub-Saharan Africa:
Working Paper No. 51. The Hague, Bernard van Leer
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Robbins, S. P., Millett, B., Cacioppe, R., and Waters-Marsh,
T. 1998.Organizational behaviour: Leading and
managing in Australia and New Zealand. Melbourne,
Pearson Education Australia.
Sifuna, D. N. and Sawamura, N. 2010. Challenges of quality
education in Sub Saharan African countries. Albany,
State University of New York Press.
Smith, A. 2018. Children’s rights and early childhood
education. L. Miller, C. Cameron, and C. Dalli (Eds.),
The Sage Handbook of early childhood policy. London,
SAGE Publications Ltd, pp. 452-466.
Torkington, K. 2001. Working Group on Early Childhood
Development (WGECD) Policy Project: A synthesis
report. Unpublished ADEA report.
UNESCO. 1990. World declaration on education for all. New
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org/ark:/48223/pf0000127583
UNESCO. 2000. The Durban statement of commitment:
seventh conference of Ministers of Education of African
member states. Durban, South-Africa, UNESCO.
(MINEDAF VII).
United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.
2005. General comment No. 7 (2005): Implementing
child rights in early childhood. Geneva, UNCRC.
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United Nations. (Conferences.) Available at: https://
www.un.org/en/conferences/children/newyork1990
Vargas-Barón, E. 2005. Planning policies for early childhood
development: Guidelines for action. Paris, UNESCO.
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ECD, Dakar, Senegal.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Chapter 1
The consultative group
on ECD and the twelve
who survive
Robert G. Myers,
Judith L. Evans, and
Patrick Makokoro
Introduction
As the introduction to Section 2 noted, the decade
from 1989-1999 represented a key transition period
for ECD in Africa and throughout the Majority World.
In this section there is a discussion of the pioneering
work of Dr Robert Myers and his colleagues in their
international advocacy on behalf of young children
and an explanation of how their work supported
the development of ECD in Africa. There were
two signicant developments: the creation of the
Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and
Development (CG-ECCD, known as the CG); and the
publication of Myers’s landmark book, The Twelve
Who Survive (Myers, 1992), which represented the
culmination of data gathering and the synthesis of
information on the status of young children around
the world at that time.
The beginnings
In the mid-1970s, Robert Myers, who has a Ph.D. in
Economics, became a “convert” to the eld of early care
and development and made a career-dening decision
to try and get the survival and development of young
children onto the international agenda of those groups
that provided nancial support for the development
of policy and programmes for young children. At the
time, Myers was working at the Ford Foundation, with
responsibility for grants that supported research in
Chile, Guatemala, and Colombia. The research projects
were focused on looking at the relationship between
cognitive development and nutritional status in a
child’s early years. Even though the Ford Foundation
was providing support for these projects, Myers was
concerned that these were limited grants; most of the
international funding was available to increase survival
rates among infants and young children in the Majority
World. Little attention was being paid to supporting
the overall development of the 12 out of 13 children
who were surviving.
A focus on young children’s development was not
on the agenda of the Ford Foundation’s international
division. So, Myers began by creating lines of action
within the international division, from which some
funds could be accessed to conduct state-of-the-art
reviews of early childhood research and programmes.
Through this process, he gathered research and
programmatic data that would become the basis
of his landmark book, The Twelve Who Survive,
published in 1992. Meanwhile, back in 1981 Myers
presented the Ford Foundation a “grand” proposal
to increase the funding for early childhood to
another level; this was not successful. Myers then
realized that he needed to nd like-minded others
in dierent organizations, to get early childhood
development on the international agenda. This
led Myers to organize a meeting in February 1982
that brought together individuals from the Ford
Foundation, UNICEF, UNESCO, and the Bernard van
Leer Foundation. Myers recognized that of all these
organizations, only the Bernard van Leer Foundation
was systematically supporting interventions focused
on young children in the Majority World, specically
in South Africa. In the meeting it became clear that
participating organizations had little information on
what others were doing directly to foster the care and
development of the youngest children (from birth
to school age). Clearly there was a need to improve
information exchange and dissemination of both
international research and programme experiences
related to the care and development of the youngest
age group. To determine if this was a need shared
by other agencies, Myers consulted with similar
organizations located within the New York area
(UNICEF, Carnegie, Grant Foundation, etc.) and with the
United States Agency for International Development
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
(USAID) and the International Development Research
Centre (IDRC), all of whom indicated an interest in
learning more.
In May 1983, seven of these organizations had a
meeting: two from the foundation world (Ford and
van Leer); two from the United Nations community
(UNICEF and UNESCO); two bilateral agencies (USAID
and IDRC); and an international NGO (High/Scope
Foundation). These seven came together to discuss
what was being done to support young children’s
growth and development globally. An informal and
frank exchange took place. Participants found the
discussion informative and armed the need for a
regular exchange of information.
While the meeting did not result in a proposal to
create a more formal group to coordinate these
eorts, there was recognition that structure was
required to further develop the idea of an inter-agency
initiative. Several of those present oered immediate
support: Dave Weikart (President of the High/Scope
Foundation), oered to provide Myers’s salary for the
year, and UNICEF oered Myers oce space and the
support of UNICEF’s network. During the year Myers
focused on developing a proposal for collaborative
activities.
Serendipitously, several related activities were
underway that would support the initiative: the Latin
America oce of the Ford Foundation decided to
trial a network focusing on ECD in that region; USAID
contracted High/Scope to carry out an evaluation of
early childhood programmes in Peru; and the Bernard
van Leer Foundation continued to support a range of
ECD activities within its network. These activities, and
the tangible results they produced, strengthened the
idea of a network, and assisted in establishing rmer
ties among organizations that would become the
initial participants of the Consultative Group.
The formation of a mechanism for data
gathering and dissemination
The decision to create the Consultative Group on Early
Childhood Care10 and Development (CG-ECCD) was
made at an October 1984 meeting, attended by those
at the 1983 meeting, with four new participants: The
10 The inclusion of “C” in the title stood for Care to indicate that the CG intended to include nutrition and health programmes, along with
Development, that generally was meant to include education. ECCD was meant to be an inclusive acronym across multiple sectors. The “C”
remained in the publication of CG documents, but over time the broader eld increasingly used the acronym ECD.
Carnegie Corporation, the World Bank, the Aga Khan
Foundation (AKF), and the World Health Organization
(WHO). In a document prepared for the meeting,
it was proposed that the CG-ECCD (which became
known as the CG) would:
● strengthen the knowledge base available for
policy formulation, planning, and implementation
of early childhood activities;
● and facilitate communication and dissemination
of information about research, programmes and
activities related to early childhood care and
development.
The specic activities undertaken evolved over time as
there were changes in who was participating in the CG
and other activities taking place internationally.
A critical decision in the formation of the CG was
that it be dened as a “mechanism”, rather than an
“organization”. The argument was that the CG was
not meant to be supported in perpetuity, but that it
should exist only for as long as it was needed. There
was a recognition that it would be much easier for
the mechanism to disappear than for an organization
to be disbanded (Myers and Evans, 2009). This stance
had pros and cons over the years; it enabled some
foundations and organizations to fund the CG;
but others were unable to provide funding for the
mechanism when they could have provided funding
for an organization. Many of those who could not fund
the CG directly oered in-kind services.
In addition to the CG being presented as a mechanism,
the other key features of the proposed CG were
spelled out at this meeting: it should be informal;
inclusive (i.e., not restricted to those present at the
beginning); focus on information exchange; and
be guided by an Advisory Committee (conceived
as a committee made up of representatives from
participating funding institutions, and later included
regional representation).
An important aspect of participation in the CG was
that the individuals who attended the meetings were
there because of their personal interest in the ideas
being shared. They did not ocially represent their
organization, although they had the backing of their
organization to participate. This meant people could
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
freely share ideas and enter into discussions that did
not necessarily represent the policies and practices
of their organization; this avoided an overly-formal
insistence on protocols.
Myers was aware that an inter-agency service could
not be housed in any one of the international donor
organizations, as this would easily become recognized
as a project of that organization, thus making it
dicult to establish joint ownership, attract joint
funding, and develop common eorts. Accordingly,
Myers approached David Weikart, as he felt High/
Scope would provide independence and enable the
CG to oer critical assessments of programmes. Myers
had both professional and personal experience with
Weikart. While Myers was administering an ECD grant
fund at Ford Foundation, he had been approached by
Weikart for funding to expand the international work
carried out by High/Scope. It was through this that
Myers became aware of High/Scope’s pioneering work
with the Perry preschool longitudinal studies, which
clearly made a case for investment in the early years.
Interestingly, there was also a personal link: Myers and
Weikart had worked together in the kitchen of their
college dormitory to earn funds to defray college
expenses. In essence, Myers was condent that High/
Scope would be an appropriate administrative base for
the CG.
The initial years
With agreement on the name of the group, and with
funding commitments to support the operating
costs of the Coordinating Unit (that became known
as the Secretariat) for a three-year period, the
work of CG evolved. Initially, participants in the CG
included those that attended the 1984 meeting,
with other organizations coming and going over
time. Participants continued to include foundations,
United Nations organizations, bilateral agencies,
and international NGOs. The relationship with High/
Scope continued with technical and administrative
backstopping being provided to the CG. In addition,
UNICEF continued to provide an oce for the CG
Secretariat. UNICEF did not have an early childhood
development programme ocer at that time, so
UNICEF would request technical assistance from the
Secretariat. And the CG had access to information
owing from UNICEF eld oces. However, even
with this support on technical issues, UNICEF was not
programmatically receptive to the broad concept of
ECCD, but, rather, maintained an emphasis on child
survival. Attention to child survival was ascendant
in the international community at large during that
period, with less attention being given to children’s
wholistic development.
The creation of the Coordinators”
Notebook and a Knowledge Network
Over time, there was an evolving specicity in relation
to the CG’s role and activities. Specically, the CG was
to:
1. Publish and disseminate relevant materials to a
wide range of stakeholders.
2. Build and maintain a worldwide network through
correspondence, site visits, and provision of
materials.
3. Organize periodic meetings of the CG to discuss
relevant issues.
4. Produce review papers, often in conjunction with
meetings.
5. Marry knowledge derived from scientic research
with knowledge from experience and evaluated
practice.
6. Foster a vision of ECCD as an integrated
and intersectoral eld, with an emphasis on
community-based programmes.
Critical to the development of the CG was the concept
of a “Knowledge Network”. From the beginning it
was determined that knowledge was not to be held
exclusively with the Secretariat. There was to be a
multi-level sharing process among all those involved
in ECCD, regardless of who they were and where they
were located. This meant reaching out to a diversity of
organizations, across sectors, in all parts of the world,
all of whom became part of the Knowledge Network.
Initially it was Myers who was the primary gatherer
and disseminator of information. He participated in
numerous international meetings, visited eld oces
of partner organizations, and collected information
about programmes, research and policies related to
support for young children’s care and development.
His summary reports of the eld visits widened
the information base available to institutions and
organizations; these reports were shared with CG
participants through a variety of mechanisms.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
In October 1985, the rst issue of what would become
known as the Coordinators” Notebook, simply known
as the Notebook, was issued. It was intentionally
called the Coordinators” Notebook (with s’); emphasis
was put on the fact that all those who received the
Notebook had coordination responsibility within their
own organizations and that they were to pass the
information to others.
The rst issue of the Coordinators” Notebook introduced
the CG, provided a rationale for why the publication
existed, suggested a range of information sources, and
provided guidance on how partners could access said
sources. The editors of this rst issue also requested
contributions from the eld. The Notebook was sent to
200 individuals and organizations. From 1986 onwards,
two issues of the Notebook were published each year
and sent out with accompanying attachments There
was also a personal note from Myers to everyone
receiving the Notebook. This personal connection
or touch by the CG Coordinator faded away as the
Notebook went beyond an initially small circulation to
over 600 in more than 100 countries by 1988 (Myers
and Evans, 2009). By the early 1990s the publication
was sent to over 1,500 people. It was intended that
those who received the Notebook would make copies
of the publication and share it with others.
The Notebook included focused, issue-based articles
that were identied through feedback from partners
and highlighted emerging gaps and priorities in
the eld. Each Notebook had a main article with
related case studies, which drew upon experiences
from around the world, as well as news from the
CG networks, new resources, and information on
upcoming international conferences where there were
opportunities to advocate increased investment in
ECD. As the CG was evolving, people in the Knowledge
Network were active in promoting the interests of
young children in various forums. A key international
initiative that was seen and having the potential to
impact investment in young children was the creation
of the Education for All initiative. The CG got involved.
The Consultative Group and advocacy
Following the recommendations of the Advisory
Report at the fourth CG meeting in 1988, more
attention was paid to advocacy. This was an
extraordinarily active time during which the Summit
for Children occurred, the Convention on the Rights
of the Child (CRC) was approved and the World
Conference on Education for All (WCEFA) was held. As
an aid to discussions at the Summit, the Secretariat
of the CG was asked by UNESCO to produce a short
book presenting the case for early childhood. This
book, A Fair Start for Children, was eventually translated
into 13 languages and distributed widely. The CG
was not involved in the process of creating and
approving the CRC, a document which helped draw
attention to children internationally but was vague
with respect to the development of young children.
By way of contrast, during 1989 and 1990 the CG
was actively involved in getting ECCD included on
the EFA Conference agenda as well as included in
the Declaration and Plan of Action (Myers and Evans,
2009).
The Consultative Group and Education
for All (EFA) 1989
The rst involvement and inuence of the CG on
EFA was possible because the Coordinating Unit for
the conference and for the CG were located within
UNICEF Headquarters. Moreover, the CG coordinator
was closely acquainted with several of the EFA
organizers. The woman who was charged with writing
the background paper for wide circulation and
discussion prior to the Conference, graciously shared
an early draft with Myers who immediately noted
that young children (birth to school age) had been
left out; the paper was written to say that learning
begins in primary school. This background paper was
then adjusted to include early childhood education.
This inclusion was present in the version that served
as a basis for discussion in nine regional meetings
held prior to Jomtien. The rst of the nine regional
meetings to discuss EFA was held in Boston in 1989. By
coincidence, Robert Myers and James Grant, UNICEF’s
President and the keynote speaker at the meeting,
happened to take the same air shuttle from New
York to Boston; at Myers’s suggestion they shared a
cab from the airport to the meeting. During the ride,
Myers observed that the speech Grant was about
to make suggested that learning begins in primary
school. Acknowledging that this was not right, Grant
asked Myers to write a sentence or two that would
incorporate young children into the published and
distributed version of the speech. The phrase that was
added was “learning begins at birth” (Myers and Evans,
2009).
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
A second regional meeting was held shortly thereafter
in Quito, Ecuador. For that meeting, the CG planned an
“all-out assault” that began with a two-day discussion
and a planning session that included early childhood
experts from many Latin American countries who
were part of the Knowledge Network As a result, it was
possible not only to agree upon a number of particular
messages that the group wanted to see reected in
the outcome of the meeting, but also, through the
personal contacts of various participants, to see that
a paragraph on ECD was inserted in each of the three
keynote speeches, and that rapporteurs for each
session included ECD points in their reports. A strong
regional recommendation to include young children
resulted.
Although it was not possible to follow the same
strategy in the seven other regional meetings,
participants in the CG’s Knowledge Network were
contacted in all the regions, provided with some basic
suggestions for helping to get ECD on the agenda,
and encouraged to advocate strongly for ECD at their
respective meetings. As a result, several other regions
made strong recommendations for including young
children in the initiative.
It was possible for the CG Coordinator and
representatives to the CG from various participating
organizations to be present at the World Conference
held in Jomtien, Thailand, in 1989. The Bernard van
Leer Foundation had an active role by hosting a
panel on ECCD, and other organizations advocating
inclusion of early childhood contributed to
other panels. Perhaps most importantly, three
representatives from CG organizations formed part
of the committee charged with drafting the nal
report and recommendations. Against considerable
opposition, CG participants argued strongly for
inclusion of ECD and were nally asked to come up
with a recommendation. Accordingly, the declaration
approved at the conference included the statement
“learning begins at birth”, calling for the inclusion
of early childhood care and initial education. It is
worth noting that the statement is phrased in ECD
terms (beginning from birth), envisages multiple
strategies (not just schools), and places emphasis on
the disadvantaged; all these are points the CG strove
hard to incorporate in its vision of programming. The
11 The Bernard van Leer Foundation, Save the Children/USA, Christian Children’s Fund, the Inter-American Foundation, the International Child
Development Centre (Innocenti), and the US Coalition on Education for All. The Organization for American States (OAS) would also join the
CG albeit for a very brief period.
EFA initiative created a very strong platform that early
childhood advocates all over the world can use to
make the case for the inclusion of young children in
policies and programming. It is safe to say that without
the participation of the CG, early childhood would not
have become part of EFA (Myers and Evans, 2009).
The Twelve Who Survive
In 1992, Robert Myers launched his book The Twelve
Who Survive: Strengthening Programmes of Early
Childhood Development in the Third World. The book is
a compilation of materials built on previous concept
papers and reviews that had been carried out by
Myers. Through this publication he gave compelling
arguments about the need to have ECD programmes
that go beyond child survival and focus on enhancing
growth and development for children to realize their
full potential. The Twelve Who Survive is recognized
as foundational for the development of ECD services
throughout the Majority World. Esteemed child
development authority Prof. Urie Bronfenbrenner
described it as “a remarkable book” (Myers, 1992). It
is remarkable on many levels, but its central point
is recognizing global successes in increasing the
percentages of children surviving, while at the same
time calling for an additional mission of ensuring
that children in the Majority World are thriving! This
publication inuenced the implementation and
provision of ECD services for children in Africa as
conversations on the creation of a regional body
emerged at the CG-ECCD.
The Consultative Group -
from growth to maturity
(1988-1999)
During this period the CG continued its growth
trajectory, adding several new participants.11 The
High/Scope Foundation continued to provide
administrative and technical backstopping throughout
the period while the oces for the Secretariat
continued to be located in UNICEF. The Knowledge
Network and circulation of the Notebook continued
to grow, reaching 1,500 individuals or institutions.
While maintaining the information synthesizing
and disseminating dimension of its work, much
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
more time and energy was spent by the Secretariat
providing technical assistance to participating
organizations. Policy papers were requested by and
written for UNICEF, the World Bank, UNESCO, and
USAID. For UNICEF, the Secretariat provided advice
on programming to several units, wrote an ECD
training manual, participated in training seminars (at
the Innocenti Centre and in Pakistan), and created a
set of messages about child development for wide
publication. Lesser technical assistance was also
provided to Save the Children and The Christian
Children’s Fund. Sta of the Secretariat participated
in eld work in various places in Asia, Africa and Latin
America for the World Bank, the Aga Khan Foundation
and the International Development and Research
Centre (IDRC). The technical assistance tasks included
helping sta make the basic case for ECD within
their own organization, helping them to work ECD
into their organizational fabric, and improve their
programming. These activities drew directly on the
accumulating knowledge base and constituted a
direct form of advocacy within organizations. This
collection of on-the-ground experience and related
research eventually led to the creation of the book,
Early Childhood Counts (Evans et al., 2000).
A review of the Consultative Group
In 1987 an external and independent review of the CG,
commissioned and funded by the Ford Foundation,
was carried out by Dr Sara Harkness. The report
rightly identied the main activities of the CG and
highlighted the advocacy and knowledge creation
and dissemination that was being conducted. While
the review commented positively on the CG activities,
Harkness noted the perception that the CG was overly
centred in the Secretariat. She recommended that
the CG expand by having additional sta within the
Secretariat and consider supporting the creation of
regional networks.
While this recommendation did not lead to an increase
in sta, it did impact sta composition. The initial
Secretariat consisted of Robert Myers, Cassie Landers,
and an administrative assistant. In 1992, Judith Evans
began work with the CG Secretariat on a contract
basis. Evans’s work with High/Scope Foundation, the
Aga Khan Foundation (where she was responsible
for the Foundation’s support for early childhood
programmes), and her subsequent consultancies
related to ECD policy, evaluations, and programme
development with CG participants, made her qualied
to take a leadership role within the CG.
Stang, administrative base, and location
In 1993 Judith Evans became the Director of
the CG and Ellen Ilfeld was hired to manage CG
communications and advocacy strategies. Myers was
now working part-time for the CG and continued
until 1997; Evans was working slightly more than
part-time and Ilfeld part-time. The remaining portion
of Myers’s and Evans’s time was devoted to technical
assistance directly related to the CG agenda but
oered independently from the CG. This helped
to round out salaries and lower the budget of the
Secretariat. Not insignicantly, it also provided needed
support to specic projects operated by participating
organizations and helped the information gathering
and advocacy tasks of the CG. Administratively,
the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation
continued serving as the administrative backstop for
the CG until 1997. At this point the administrative base
shifted to Education Development Centre (EDC), with
headquarters in Boston, providing a more visible link
for the CG to its international work. The Secretariat was
now located in Northampton, Massachusetts.
The Consultative Group’s communication
strategy: reaching more diverse audiences
During the change of administrative bases and
personnel in 1997, the CG’s Knowledge Network
continued to grow. Bringing Ilfeld into the Secretariat
helped develop and expand the communication
strategy. Recognizing that advocacy requires both
information and a set of strategies to provide the
information in dierent formats for dierent audiences
stimulated the creation of diverse materials. The CG
created a new logo and produced a brochure that
presented its work. It also prepared materials for
international conferences; for example, the 8 is too Late
set of materials for a subsequent EFA meeting. The
Coordinators” Notebook took on a new look in terms
of format and production. As before, each edition
was based on a theme, determined and developed
jointly by the partners and the Secretariat at an annual
meeting. In addition, a range of authors were invited
to provide the lead articles. Over the years the topics
of concern to most stakeholders were identied and
addressed, providing a basic understanding of the
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
issues relevant to all those investing in early childhood
policy development and programmes. For example,
the Coordinators” Notebooks produced during this
period were:
● Training Programmes: Enhancing the Skills of
Early Childhood Educators (#12, 1992) discussed
strategies and methodology for the training of
early childhood providers.
● Health and Learning (# 13, 1993) made the link
between children’s health and their overall
development. The argument was made that
children’s development is holistic in nature and
that it is critical to consider all aspects of children’s
experiences when creating early childhood
interventions.
● Education for All, (#14, 1993/94) provided an
introduction to Education for All, how it evolved,
what it was designed to accomplish, and how the
EFA framework could be used to promote ECD; for
example, the declaration begins with the phrase,
“Learning begins at birth”.
● Childrearing (#15, 1994) brought together
research undertaken in Latin America and Africa
on traditional childrearing practices and what
happens when traditional practices and the latest
science are brought together in early childhood
programmes.
● Men in the Lives of Children (#16, 1995) began with
a focus on fathers, but was expanded to consider
the importance of men at all levels in society in
terms of attitudes, practices and policies that
impact young children.
● Policy (#17, 1995) brought into focus the issue of
whether there should be national Early Childhood
policies and provided some guidance in terms
of how that policy could be developed through
working with a wide range of stakeholders.
● Quality (#18, 1996) discussed how quality
is dened, and by whom, and some of the
dimensions of a programme that need to be taken
into consideration when dening quality.
● Children as Zones of Peace (#19, 1996) examined
the situation for young children in emergencies
and argued that specic provision be made for
young children and their families in all phases of
emergencies.
● Gender Issues (#20, 1997) addressed the issue of
gender inequality and the importance of gender
socialization during the early years.
● Transitions and Linkages (#21, 1997) focused on
what happens for young children as they transition
from home or an early childhood programme into
the early primary grades.
● Inclusion (#22, 1998) addressed the issue of the
need for Early Childhood programmes to address
the rights and needs of ALL children, regardless of
their developmental status.
The changing landscape
International events helped focus new attention on
the rights of children. The Convention on the Rights
of the Child, the Summit for Children, and signicantly
Education for All (described above) included young
children. Thus, it could be said that ECD was now
ocially on the international agenda. However,
the Convention on the Rights of the Child was not
particularly strong with respect to early care and
development; it was not easy to move from rights
to actions. Furthermore, attention to ECD within EFA
remained very much at the level of discourse with
most attention given to primary school education. This
reected in part the experience of those in charge of
implementing EFA, but it also reected the fact that
the international community had not really accepted
the broad concept of ECD as important enough to
become a priority programme area and to merit a
signicant increase in available resources (Myers and
Evans, 2009). Nonetheless ECD had a formal place on
the international agenda. Interest and involvement in
ECD began to grow. There were increasing demands
for CG assistance from many countries. New sta were
added to participating organization who began to take
on activities that had been assigned previously to the
CG and its Secretariat. This resulted in a tendency for
participating members in the CG to use their funds
for specic in-house projects, resulting in competition
over the still limited budgets, making it more dicult
to justify the cost of supporting the CG Secretariat. The
changing conditions and scarce resources required
a rethinking of the CG functions and structure.
There were two developments: a synthesis and
dissemination of current knowledge and a focus on
supporting the development of regional networks.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Publication of Early Childhood Counts
and the accompanying CD-ROM
The CG was formed before the advent of the Internet;
international communication occurred by telephone,
fax, regular mail, and travel. In July 1994, at the annual
CG meeting, a decision was taken to put the CG
“online”, and the equivalent of what is now known as a
web page was established and became operational in
1995.12 The Internet opened access to information, for
some. Recognizing that many people in the Majority
World would not have access to this new resource, the
decision was taken to create a CD-ROM that contained
key ECD materials for advocacy and programme
development. This compendium of resources could
be distributed to stakeholders beyond the reach
of the Internet. Specically, the CD-ROM included:
a basic denition of ECD; arguments to support
investment that could be used in advocacy; videos of
ECD programmes in a variety of settings to illustrate
interventions that had been successfully implemented;
a library of over 300 ephemeral research and case
studies; and the full text of Early Childhood Counts
(Evans et al., 2000), with links to supporting materials.13
Why was Early Childhood Counts important? As
organizations began taking on the challenges of
creating an ECD programme, there was a tendency
to want to develop and promote a standardized
ECD model that could be implemented anywhere.
This went against the advocacy of the CG, which
was to create situation-specic ECD programmes,
those that were built on the interests and constraints
of individual communities, rather than to impose a
standardized model. Thus, the publication provided
a set of guidelines on how to plan, implement and
evaluate ECD interventions. The book focused on the
complexity of creating sustainable community-based
initiatives but provided clear guidance to assist people
in this endeavour.
In terms of the future of the CG itself, at the July 1992
meeting, a proposal was made to consider several
options, including closing shop at one extreme, and
creating a new and more formal structure at the
other. A strong argument was made for continuing
the work of the CG in terms of advocacy activities,
the organizing of periodic meetings to reach new
12 In 1997 the website (www.ecdgroup.com) received a quarter of a million hits (visits), from over 100 countries. In early 1998 the CG received
more than 1800 hits a day, a rate which grew steadily in the rst six months of the year. Using conservative estimates the CG had over
650,000 hits in 1998.
13 Additional funds were provided for this activity by the Bernard van Leer Foundation, UNICEF, and the World Bank.
stakeholders, and the production and dissemination
of the Notebook. While there were many important
developments as the CG moved forward, major
changes in the CG would not come until some years
later, and eventually the “mechanism” was no longer
seen as necessary. But support for promoting ECD
continues. The CG has been replaced by ECDAN (Early
Childhood Development Action Network), which
focuses on activities at the international level, and
regional networks have been strengthened. There is
the Asia-Pacic Regional Network for Early Childhood
(ARNEC); support for early child development in
the Middle East and North Africa through the Arab
Resource Collective (ARC); CINDE in Colombia (Centro
Internacional de Educación y Desarrollo Humano); and
more, including emerging networks in Africa.
The Consultative Group
and ECD in Africa
As noted by Myers and Evans (2009), the CG had
carried out research studies in Africa. The African Child
Rearing Practices Project, for example, involved case
studies that examined child rearing practices in Mali,
Namibia, Zambia, Nigeria, and Malawi, using funding
from UNICEF. Results from these studies were brought
together in a regional meeting organized by the
Consultative Group and held in Windhoek, Namibia,
in February 1993, with a nal report presented in April
1994 (Evans, 1994). These results also fed into issue #15
of the Coordinators” Notebook, where the focus was
on childrearing. Taken together, the African and Latin
American childrearing activities represented an eort
to help people take seriously the ideas of “beginning
where people are” and “building on strengths”, which
was the focus of Early Childhood Counts. This workshop
also provided an opportunity for governments, NGOs,
researchers, and donors to come together to examine
research on childrearing practices with the intention
of developing guidelines for ways in which traditional
practices and beliefs might be called upon to support
families and to design appropriate ECD programmes.
These activities, the Africa-focused work, and initiatives
of the CG were helpful for the authors of this chapter
to reect on when using a Sankofa lens to draw on
lessons that can be taken into the future.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Reections on Early Childhood Counts
Judith Evans
Over the past 50 years there has been an increased
understanding of young children’s growth and
development (prenatal to age 8) and what is required
for these children not only to survive, but also to thrive.
With this understanding, organizations (foundations,
United Nations agencies, NGOs among them, as
well as governments) are investing in the creation
and implementation of a range of early childhood
interventions. All too often these organizations seek
to create “the” model programme that can be applied
universally. It is then the intention of those providing
funds to implement the interventions in a prescribed
way, be it a nutrition programme, a child protection
eort, the development of an income producing
programme for women, etc. Early Childhood Counts
provides a dierent perspective. The book is built on
the premise that interventions must be developed
with the population to be served, not imposed by
outsiders who presume they know best what is
required. The book begins with a denition of care and
development and builds the case for viewing children
holistically, arguing that interventions built on one
aspect of a child’s overall growth and development
miss the mark. Instead, it is argued that to develop
holistic programmes that address the multiplicity
of children’s needs for care and supports their
development it is crucial to understand the context
within which the intervention will be implemented.
This involves working with local stakeholders to
understand their needs and goals, understanding the
sources available to the community, assessing what
can be provided to supplement those resources,
and, most importantly, seeking the answers to these
questions by working with the communities to be
served. The book is a comprehensive guide on how to
develop age appropriate, holistic, culturally relevant,
and sustainable interventions for the youngest
children and their families.
Reections on The Twelve Who Survive
Robert Myers
Looking back 30 years, I think part of the acceptance
of The Twelve Who Survive was not only what was
said but also how it was said. Although it was a book
with many references, I would like to think it was not
written in jargon or just for academics. I believe its
denition of “development” was useful and helped
distinguish between development and growth, a
dierence, at the time, that was not well appreciated. It
oered a rationale with multiple reasons for attending
to child development as well as survival. It presented
concrete examples of diverse programme options.
Also, the book drew on both scientic and
contextualized, experiential knowledge. It did not
espouse one way to do and see things (the “truth”) and
emphasized diversity. For instance, rather than looking
at “scale” as extending one programme to all, scale was
seen as putting together a jigsaw puzzle with many
programme pieces of dierent shapes and colours
brought together within a broad framework (still not
a mainstream view). Several kinds of “integration” were
presented with, however, emphasis on integration
of sector and components (health, nutrition, and
psychosocial development) coming together at a
community level (which meant all elements should
converge at the same places). Or integration could
occur within a sector rather than across sectors (still
a problem). Community participation was stressed.
One chapter brought together for discussion the
“intersecting needs” of children, women, and families
rather than treating these separately. (I was too early
to shift to include an intersecting rights perspective,
something that would be mandatory today.)
I believe another part of acceptance had to do
with timing; “survival” had improved markedly, and
it was the right time to work in “development”. Yet
another was because the book’s origin was within the
Consultative Group which provided a broad base for
gathering knowledge as well as easy dissemination
to engaged and dedicated people who often were
central points of their own networks. In closing,
however, I cite a mentor of mine, F. Champion Ward,
who once said presciently, one must avoid networks
from being “all net and no work.”
SANKOFA reections, learning from the
journey of the Consultative Group
Patrick Makokoro
Importance of vision and connections
The journey taken by Myers in establishing the
CG shows the numerous interweaving visions and
relationships that made it possible for the work to
be carried out. The connections with Weikart and
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
the High/Scope Foundation is one such example
that supported the further development of the
organization. The decision by Weikart (also a visionary)
to support the CG, even when going against the
decision of his own board, shows the importance
of relationships and connections. The funding to
support the salary showed some forward thinking and
buying into of a vision that others may not have seen
as yet. This would also prove to be a good decision
for High/Scope as it managed to gain some prestige
from administering the CG. A lesson learned that
must be taken forward is that institutional initiatives
and histories often rise or fall on connections and
relationships that are developed.
Importance of ECD networks (and playing
together in the sandbox)
COVID-19 brought with it a unique set of challenges.
Interactions changed overnight, with planned
conferences and face-to-face meetings being
cancelled. In their stead, Microsoft Teams, ZOOM, Blue
Jeans, Slack, Skype, and other platforms emerged
and became the only way to host conferences and
workshops. Nonetheless, it is important to recognize
that people have an inherent desire to meet physically
and talk about the work they are doing and share
innovations and developments in their sector.
Although it is possible to communicate knowledge
across long distances via Internet platforms, such
communications do not substitute easily for face-to-
face discussions. As conferences move from being
virtual to physical once again, it is important to create
an agenda that provides meaningful interaction
and exchange of knowledge. The CG created a
platform which went beyond just meeting, providing
a substantive base for conversations that blended
information from research and evaluations with
implications for policy and action.
Knowledge generation and dissemination
It must be noted that the CG worked hard to gather
information and to ensure that there was a process
of dissemination, largely through the Coordinators”
Notebook. This was at a time when the Internet
was not widely available or in use. The dedication
of the CG Secretariat in mailing out the Notebook
is laudable, as this ultimately gave a wide range of
stakeholders access to important research information.
The reviews, papers and reports that were produced
by the CG assisted the participating organizations
to make decisions about their ECD activities. The CG
became a bona de and credible source of useful
ECD information for use by ECD sector stakeholders
(Myers and Evans, 2009). Knowledge generation and
dissemination should therefore be at the forefront of
global and regional ECD networks, so that individuals
and organizations working in the eld are able to be
informed on research and practice in the eld.
The CG placed a great deal of emphasis on information
gathering and dissemination. This emphasis was
certainly useful in the earliest stage, to ll in gaps
in information, to bring together information
from research and eld evaluations and to help
conceptualize and “translate” research work into
implications for policy and programming. The reviews,
papers and reports produced helped participating
organizations as they began to think through their
involvement in ECD. The work gave considerable
credibility to the CG as a source of useful information.
Post-COVID-19, ECD networks at a country, regional or
global level should engage in research, evaluation, and
data analytics to inform policy and programming.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
References
Evans, J. 1994. Childrearing practices and Beliefs in Sub-
Saharan Africa. Report of a Workshop. Unpublished
paper by The Consultative Group on Early Childhood
Care and Development, Northampton, MA, USA.
Evans, J., Myers, R. G., and Ilfeld, E. M. 2000. Early Childhood
Counts: A Programming Guide on Early Childhood
Care and Development, and its companion CD-
ROM. Washington, The World Bank. (WBI Learning
Resources Series.)
Myers, R. 1992. The twelve who survive, Vol. 29. Milton Park,
UK, Routledge.
Myers, R. G. and Evans, J. L. 2009. The Consultative Group on
Early Childhood Care and Development (CGECCD). An
Abbreviated History: 1984-1999. Unpublished paper.
presented at the meeting of the CG-ECCD, Antigua,
Antigua and Barbuda.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Chapter 2
The Rise of ECD
networks in Africa
(1990-2000)
Patrick Makokoro
Introduction
This chapter is focused on the period between 1990-
2000, during which two major African ECD networks
were founded. The focus period for this chapter,
discussing Early Childhood Education, Care and
Development (ECD) in Africa through the lens of ECD
networks, was chosen for their formative inuences on
the evolution of ECD services in Africa.
As can be construed from the preceding two chapters
in this Section, ECD became of such importance
in Africa in the early 1990s that two networks with
similar goals were established within just one year of
each other: the Working Group on Early Childhood
Development (WGECD) in 1993 and the Early
Childhood Development Network for Africa (ECDNA)
in 1994 (UNESCO BREDA, 2008). These networks began
implementing and supporting various ECD initiatives
on the continent that included African international
ECD conferences, translation, and dissemination of
ECD literature, and supporting the hosting of ECD
seminars on the African continent. While the journey
and interest in ECD networking can be traced back
to a 1979 international conference held at the Kenya
Institute of Education, it would be only a little over a
decade later that Africa’s rst regional ECD network
would be realized.
My entry into researching the ECD networks was no
less fortuitous. Having worked with other colleagues
on the African continent to establish the Africa Early
Childhood Network (AfECN) in 2015, I thought I
had an idea of the kind of information that was out
there concerning ECD networks. I knew that there
had been an ECD network that had existed on the
African continent between 2009 and 2011 but did
not have much information on it. I would pester some
of my senior colleagues on the small team that was
working to establish the AfECN, asking them about
the previous network, what work it had done, who
had led it and what the outcomes of the work were.
Sadly, they could only recall scant information. One
colleague told me about a country network, the
Tanzania ECD Network, that he had worked for as an
Executive Director. This was at a country-level and not
a continent-wide network. While his information was
important for my learning, as I had also established a
country ECD network in Zimbabwe, I concluded that
there was not enough information on what other
Africa-wide ECD networks had done before. This,
coupled with the absence of websites or historical
repositories containing ECD network information, did
not give me much hope of securing more information
that would even help us as we navigated the path
towards launching AfECN in 2015.
Four years later, as I carried out research for my
doctoral studies, I was astounded by the information
I was collecting. I had not been aware of this
information in 2015; I had not seen some of the
treasure troves of documents that I now had access to
from individuals that had safeguarded and maintained
records of the previous ECD networks and conferences.
As I did my research, I was fortunate that my research
participants had granted me access to not only
Dropbox les with hundreds of documents but also
entire boxes, in one case, of hardcopy les relating
to the ECD networks and ECD conferences I was
investigating. This taught me an important lesson
regarding the need for documentation and archiving.
I learned that it was important to document and
maintain records of events or the work that one
is involved in so that others can learn from this
information. Akin to the Sankofa image, having a
comprehensive historical repository provides an
opportunity for a new generation of scholars to reect
on and identify lessons that can be carried forward.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
The data collection process of the research revealed
that there were organizations that were involved as
catalysts in the establishment of ECD networks in
Africa. My document analysis had shown that two
organizations had inuenced the formation of ECD
networks on the African continent: the Association for
the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) and
the Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and
Development (CG-ECCD). Both featured prominently
in the work of the two main ECD networks that were
identied in Africa. As I dug deeper through analytical
work on these two organizations as well as on the two
networks, I observed that there was no way I could
narrate the story of the African networks without rst
addressing how ADEA and the CG-ECCD inuenced
the establishment of ECD networks.
To understand the journey of the two ECD networks
established in 1993 and 1994 respectively, I rst
provide a narration of the inuence on ECD network
establishment by other groups that operated in
Africa. One of the groups, the Consultative Group or
CG was discussed in the previous chapter. I now turn
to the Donors for African Education group, as it was
then known, and explain how it was involved in the
establishment of one of the ECD networks.
Donors for African Education and
formative inuence on ECD networks
What is now known as the Association for the
Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) began in
1988 as the Donors for African Education group (DAE).
This group had been established following initiatives
by the World Bank that had wanted to establish a
coordinating mechanism for development agencies
that were supporting education in Africa (ADEA, 2009).
The initial mandate of the Donors for African Education
(DAE) had been drawn from the recommendations
of a World Bank study that had been carried out in
1988 titled Education in Sub-Saharan Africa – Policies
for Adjustment, Revitalization and Expansion. Within this
World Bank study report, the World Bank had opined
that without education, development would not
occur.
The key role of education in the development process
was the reason why the World Bank had put so much
emphasis on supporting educational expansion and
14 Reviewed on 13 September, 2021. https://www.adeanet.org/
improvement in sub-Saharan Africa (World Bank, 1988).
The World Bank was therefore motivated by the need
to advance education as a conduit for development in
Africa but also as a rationale for lending. In launching
the report of the study, the president of the World
Bank at that time, Barber Conable, noted that the study
would guide the lending and technical assistance to
the SSA region. In providing a clarion call for donors
to come together, the president of the World Bank
suggested that the study should provide a common
ground for donors to expand their assistance to
education in Africa and to increase the eectiveness
of international assistance. The DAE group was
established and managed by the Africa Region Human
Development Department of the World Bank. The DAE
group then added African Ministers of Education as
a way of expanding the inuence of the group, and
in 1992 an independent secretariat was established
in Paris, France. This Secretariat was housed at the
International Institute for Educational Planning
of UNESCO (ADEA, 2009). In 1995, the Donors for
African Education (DAE) group, with its base in Paris,
France, changed its name to the Association for the
Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) as a way of
reecting the partnership between African ministers of
education and the development agencies.
In 2008, the Secretariat of ADEA was then moved from
Paris to the African Development Bank in Tunisia as a
way of deepening the African roots of the organization
(ADEA, 2009). ADEA then transformed into a network
of organizations that brought together African
education ministries and their technical and external
partners who were engaged in education policy-
making, promoting dialogue, and being a catalyst for
education reform in Africa.
As of 2021,14 a review of the ADEA website indicated
that ADEA is recognized as a high-level partnership
between African Ministries of Education and their
external partners, which include countries such as
the Netherlands and Finland as well as international
or regional NGOs and networks. The focus of these
organizations collectively has been to support ADEA
and to contribute to the development of education in
Africa through knowledge building and sharing and
enhanced partnership and collaboration.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
As part of its journey, ADEA established and worked
through a structure of ten thematic working groups
that included inter alia:
● the Working Group on Female Participation
(WGFP)
● the Working Group on Books and Learning
Materials (WGBLM)
● the Working Group on Education Statistics (WGES)
● the Working Group on Higher Education (WGHE)
These working groups played a key role in the
implementation of the strategy of ADEA and
undertook exploratory work designed to examine
ways of improving their specic domains. The working
groups did this through carrying out research,
networking, advocacy, and capacity-building activities.
In addition to this structure, ADEA also hosted what
were initially called ADEA biennials before becoming
triennials. These were forums held every two and
then every three years, wherein African Ministers of
Education and their funding partners met to share
knowledge and information on education issues
in Africa (WGECD, 2003). The ADEA meetings were
utilized as opportunities for making contacts, building
networks, and sharing knowledge and experiences.
It is through this historical journey of the involvement
of the World Bank that we learn about the journey
of the ECD networks. The World Bank had been
keen on supporting countries in SSA to develop
strong education systems that would help to
grow economies and alleviate poverty. The World
Bank (1988) had argued that “greater investment
in education can, at this time in Africa’s history, be
expected to yield broad economic benets. These
benets include higher incomes and lower fertility”
(p.6). With this background, we look at how the rst
ECD network on the continent, the Working Group for
Early Childhood Development emerged in the early
1990s.
Establishment of the Working Group on
Early Childhood Development
In October 1993, the group known as the Donors
for African Education group (DAE) met to discuss
providing support for education in Africa. This meeting,
held in Angers, France, was then followed by an
invitation from the Secretariat of the DAE to set up
the Working Group for Early Childhood Development
(WGECD) within the DAE’s Women/Girls Group that
had been established in 1992. This Women/Girls
Group would later become known as the Forum for
African Women Educationalists (FAWE), which had
been founded by ve female ministers of education.
Their aim had been to promote girls” and women’s
education in SSA in line with the Education for All
goals (UNESCO, 2000). These women were Simone de
Comarmond of Seychelles, Fay Chung of Zimbabwe,
Paulette Missambo of Gabon, Alice Tiendrebéogo of
Burkina Faso, and Vida Yeboa of Ghana. This then led to
the Working Group on Early Childhood Development
(WGECD) being established as a special interest group
within the Female Participation of the DAE group.
The DAE group established the WGECD to promote
policy development and implementation of continent-
wide early childhood development specic activities
(UNESCO BREDA, 2008). In the formative years (1993-
1997), the working group had operational support
from eleven countries in SSA that had developed
an agenda for ECD as part of their Education for All
implementation strategy.
The WGECD network became fully active in 1996
following UNESCO’s Education for All (EFA) mid-term
evaluation meeting that had been held in Amman,
Jordan. At this meeting the CG-ECCD led by Judith
Evans had introduced a slogan and campaign titled
“eight is too late” that would later inuence the
implementation of ECD policies and programmes.
In the same year, another meeting was held at the
UNICEF “Innocenti Centre” in Florence, Italy. This
meeting was attended by the ADEA Secretariat,
representatives of African countries and ECD donors
funding work in Africa. The ADEA Secretariat, led by
Richard Sack who was then Executive Secretary of
ADEA, requested that UNICEF coordinate the group
and that the Working Group on ECD should be
formally established as a stand-alone working group
and not as part of the Working Group on Female
Participation. Up to this point in time, UNICEF, which
had been leading the administrative functions of the
Working Group, proposed that a WGECD Secretariat be
established and be tasked with developing a work-
plan. UNICEF prepared a budget and a work-plan for
this transition that was approved by most donors
present. This would lead to a meeting of the WGECD
stakeholders being held in Benin to discuss and
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
approve the transition of the network from being
housed in a United Nations agency to being a stand-
alone organization.
Rise of the Working Group on Early
Childhood Development (WGECD)
In late 1997, at an ADEA meeting held in Benin, a
formal request by UNICEF to hand over and trainsition
the administrative functions of the WGECD Network
to other members or partners interested in the early
childhood development sector within Africa was
adopted. Several countries expressed their interest in
hosting and promoting the WGECD. Namibia, Ghana,
Finland, and the Netherlands all expressed interest
in hosting and promoting the work of the Working
Group. The winning bid to host the Working Group for
Early Childhood Development (WGECD) was made by
the Netherlands, through its Ministry of Foreign Aairs,
and Jeanette Vogelaar became the Working Group
leader.
In July 1998, following this successful bid, the Basic
Education Section of the Education and Developing
Countries Division of the Netherlands Ministry of
Foreign Aairs then assumed leadership of the
WGECD from UNICEF. The Basic Education Section
then appointed a consultant, Kate Torkington, a
British-based ECD specialist, to identify and map the
principal players within the ECD sector in SSA and to
provide recommendations on how the WGECD could
implement its work over the course of the next three
years. the Netherlands, through the work carried out
by the consultant, proposed an updated WGECD
agenda that would be implemented through an ECD
policy review process taking place in Namibia, Ghana,
and Mauritius (Torkington, 1999).
By March 1999, the WGECD had been reconstituted
with a Secretariat working under the Netherlands
Ministry of Foreign Aairs. The new administrative
lead of the network held a meeting in The Hague in
March 1999. At this meeting it was recommended that
supporting the development of national ECD policies
should be the major focus of the network. A two-year
action plan was drawn up and the core of this
work-plan was premised on undertaking “country case
studies on policy development in Africa” (Torkington,
1999, p. 1). This ECD policy development thrust would
in turn make an indelible mark on the discourse on
policy formulation in Africa. For example, the WGECD
would, between the years 1999 and 2004, be actively
involved in ECD policy projects in six countries:
Namibia, Ghana, Mauritius, Mauritania, Burkina Faso,
and Senegal (Vargas-Barón, 2005).
The purposes and goals of the WGECD
The overall goal for the WGECD network was to ensure
that the African child would survive, thrive, and have
a good start to life (WGECD, 2007). According to
UNESCO BREDA (2008), the WGECD was formed to
pursue an agenda of promoting holistic development
of young children in the SSA region and to provide
a forum in which dierent actors within the region
and internationally would provide a coherent and
coordinated response to challenges facing early
childhood development in Africa. The WGECD had an
overall goal to “ensure that the African child survives
and thrives and has a good start in life” (UNESCO
BREDA, 2008, p. 7). The objectives of the WGECD were
to:
1. Mobilize continuous political and public support
at regional and national level.
2. Enhance partnerships and network building.
3. Facilitate research, capacity-building and
exchange.
4. Stimulate national ECD policy review,
development, implementation, and monitoring.
As the WGECD grew into a more formal network,
a Secretariat structure was established in order to
ensure the smooth running of the organization. The
Secretariat focused on engaging in policy studies
that would inform the ECD-related work in Africa.
Through these policy projects the WGECD became
convinced that if ECD was to take o in Africa, then
it would be important for countries to integrate ECD
policy planning processes into national development
processes. The integrations would be in such national
policies such as Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers
(PRSPs) that African countries would produce to
kickstart their economies (WGECD, 2007).
The WGECD and the African international
ECD conferences
The WGECD was not overly present in the 1999 and
2002 African International conferences that had been
held in Uganda and Eritrea. Conference participation
by the WGECD became signicant in 2005, ultimately
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
leading to major involvement in organizing the 2009
conference that was held in Dakar, Senegal. A meeting
for the launch of the Steering Committee of the
WGECD was held in Mauritius in December 2003 and
was used as a platform to plan for the Third African
International ECD Conference (Makokoro, 2021). This
event also coincided with some of the members of
the University of Victoria’s ECDVU cohort (see Chapter
7), which was discussing, among other things, how
they would also participate in the ECD conference that
was tentatively scheduled for 2004. The participation
of the ECDVU cohort, as the meeting minutes would
show, would be through conference programme
development, as conference resource persons and
through presenting conference papers. The main
outcome of the Steering Committee launch meeting
was to provide the WGECD with a mandate to “provide
guidance and direction and legitimacy to the activities
of the WGECD” (WGECD, 2003, p. 8).
It was at the Mauritius WGECD Steering Committee
launch meeting where it was agreed that the Third
African International ECD Conference would be held
from 30 May to 3 June 2005. Minutes of meetings held
by the Steering Committee of the WGECD, and other
documents analysed, revealed that there were several
factors that had led to those dates being agreed
upon by the meeting participants. What emerged
as the biggest inuence on dates was rstly that the
main sponsor of the conference, the World Bank, had
its nancial year ending on 30 June and therefore
these dates would provide sucient time for the
year-end nancial reports to be compiled. Secondly,
these dates would ensure that the ECD conference
deliberations would be fed into the New Partnership
for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) consultative process
that was underway at that time. Thirdly, there would
be sucient time to distil and package the ECD
conference outcomes in time for the ADEA biennial
in 2005. Along with agreements on the dates of this
upcoming conference, the December 2003 Steering
Committee meeting also decided upon the venue for
the conference. Ghana and Senegal had oered to
host the conference, with both countries presenting
competitive bids. However, through consultations
with the UNICEF headquarters and the World Bank,
Ghana emerged as the selected host. As part of
its reorganization during the 2003-2004 period,
the WGECD Steering Committee then recruited a
full-time Coordinator who would work to implement
the decisions of the Steering Committee and lead
the in-country aspects of the conference planning
process. This 2003 meeting of the WGECD Steering
Committee in essence provided the entry point into
ECD conferences by this network.
Along with taking the lead in the 2005 and 2009
African international conferences, WGECD had to
develop initiatives that would ensure that children
were getting improved access to quality basic services
that included integrated early childhood development
programmes at a national level (WGECD, 2007). This
provides a convenient segue into discussing the rise of
the Early Childhood Development Network for Africa
that was established in 1994.
Establishment of the Early Childhood
Development Network for Africa
(ECDNA)
A UNICEF meeting, led by UNICEF staers Aklilu Habte
and Fay Chung, was held from 6 to 14 May 1994 at
the Hotel Calamar in Mauritius, setting the stage for
the formation of the ECDNA through the Calamar
Declaration (Makokoro, 2021). The meeting that was
held in Mauritius had been part of a series of training
sessions held by UNICEF to implement the Education
for All (EFA) Jomtien Conference recommendations.
This meeting was held under the theme “Parenting,
Young Child Development and Quality Learning”
and it discussed the need to have an early childhood
network that would bring together stakeholders within
the early childhood sector to advance issues such as
access to early childhood development and sharing
of research information (ECDNA, 1997a). In conrming
the purpose of the meeting and cementing how the
idea of the ECDNA came about one of the organizers
noted:
we set a special focus on ECD at this meeting and
came up with the Calamar Declaration that was
named after the hotel where the workshop took
place. The Early Childhood Network for Africa was
then set up with a dozen countries supporting the
Declaration. (Dalais, 2013)
During this meeting at the Hotel Calamar in Mauritius
in 1994, a small group of donors composed of the
Bernard van Leer Foundation (BvLF), the Aga Khan
Foundation (AKF), and the Coordinating Group on
Early Childhood Care and Development (CG-ECCD)
provided commitments to provide seed funding to
support the development of a funding proposal that
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
would be considered by the DAE group (ECDNA,
1995). Those representing the interim group of donors
within the DAE included Dr Kathy Bartlett (AKF), Dr
Cyril Dalais (UNICEF), Dr Judith Evans (CG-ECCD), and
Dr Nat Colleta (World Bank). Two proposals were
subsequently developed for the funding of the ECDNA
activities and funding for the network secretariat, with
a rst draft circulating in 1995 and a revised version
circulating in 1997. The proposals were developed and
presented by Margaret Kabiru and Barnabas Otaala.
The 1994 meeting in Mauritius then produced the
Calamar Declaration (UNESCO BREDA, 2008), that
set out the role and function of the ECDNA as an
institution to provide support in capacity-building of
members on early childhood development issues on
the African continent. Participants further expressed
support for the establishment of an early childhood
network. In this meeting it was recommended that the
network should be open to all African countries and
should complement the work that was being done by
the African Ministers of Education and the eorts in
ECD programming that were being made by non-
governmental organizations (ECDNA, 1997a).
The ECDNA was then formalized in December 1994
with the support of nine countries from the Eastern
and Southern African region who had gathered in
Mauritius to address integrated programming in
ECD utilising the EFA goals, such as: expanding early
childhood care and education; provision of free and
compulsory primary education for all; and promoting
learning and life skills for young people and adults as a
guiding strategy. The nine founding member countries
of the ECDNA were Uganda, Kenya, United Republic of
Tanzania, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Mauritius, Ethiopia,
Lesotho, and Malawi.
A team from the Kenya Institute of Education (KIE),
led by Margaret Kabiru, that had earlier developed
what was called the Coee Plantation ECD project
with funding from the BvLF was also instrumental
in the hosting of the ECDNA at the Kenya Institute
of Education. The importance of professional
relationships that are intertwined with working
towards a common agenda were important to
establish these ECD networks. For example, Professor
Barnabas Otaala (see his prole in Chapter 4), an
academic from Uganda, played a signicant leadership
role within the ECDNA. He initially worked with
the ECDNA in Kenya and continued doing so as he
moved from Kenya to Botswana and eventually to
the University of Namibia, where he would play a key
role in what were initially referred to as ECD Summer
Institutes (later ECD Seminars), discussed below, that
were led by Dr Alan Pence from the University of
Victoria, Canada. The connections and professional
relationships between Dr Cyril Dalais, Dr Alan Pence,
and Dr Barnabas Otaala, as well as Pence’s relationship
with Dr Marito Garcia from the World Bank, would also
become benecial in the establishment and running
of the ECD conferences that are discussed in Chapter
5.
The purposes and goals of the ECDNA
The establishment of the ECDNA was premised on a
strategy that aimed to address an ECD networking and
partnership gap that existed in the Africa region. The
network had a strategic focus of building partnerships
among ECD actors on the continent, creating
awareness among policy-makers and donors as well as
mobilizing resources for eective implementation of
ECD interventions on the continent (ECDNA, 1997b).
The main purpose of the ECDNA was to strengthen
partnerships with stakeholders and allies with similar
concerns in the promotion of ECD in Africa and in this
process to gain awareness and clear conceptualization
of ECD issues and to secure resources for more
improved and coordinated programming and
implementation (ECDNA, 1997b). The establishment of
the ECDNA was seen as a response to many challenges
that were being faced by children in the 1990s. The
most pressing problems and challenges at that time,
as identied by the network founders, included the
lack of a clearly dened vision, policy, and strategy for
ECD in Africa; the absence of integrated holistic ECD
programmes and systems for execution of eective
programs; lack of an overall eective ECD networking
system in Africa; and the need for systematized
and comprehensive parent/community awareness,
education, and support programmes (ECDNA, 1995).
The continent-wide problems and challenges that
the ECDNA identied above were seen as being
answered through an eective ECD network that
could facilitate the “sharing of experiences and
expertise needed in capacity-building, resource
mobilization, policy and legal framework provision”
(ECDNA, 1995). The establishment of the ECDNA was
premised on the strategy that aimed to also full the
ECD networking and partnership gap that existed in
the Africa region. The network had a strategic focus
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
of building partnerships among ECD actors on the
continent, creating awareness among policy-makers
and donors as well as mobilizing resources for eective
implementation of ECD interventions on the continent
(ECDNA, 1997b).
To address the problems and challenges that had
been identied, the Secretariat of the network went
on to establish some specic goals for the network
that included building awareness of ECD through
collaboration across sectors in Africa. Another goal
was of creating an environment where donors and
African governments and organizations operated
on an equal footing and partnership to address ECD
issues (Makokoro, 2021). The ECDNA also aimed at
helping key African ECD practitioners and activists
to jointly inuence regional ECD policy, planning
and resource allocation, encourage regional ECD
programme learning and documentation of
experiences, and facilitate Africa’s participation in
international ECD dialogue (ECDNA, 1998).
During the ve-year existence of the ECDNA, the
network championed several activities that included
translation of various manuals and the organization
of ECD Summer Institutes in Africa (later termed ECD
Seminars). These ECD materials were distributed to
countries implementing national ECD programmes
as well as at the ECD Seminars as materials for the
leaders being trained. A co-founder of the ECDNA,
Cyril Dalais, noted that at a UNICEF-sponsored meeting
held at the Innocenti Centre in Italy in 1996, a total of
US$80,000 for the ECDNA had been obtained through
pledges. These funds would then enable the ECDNA to
implement its programme of action for the following
two years, up to 1998. The programme of action
included supporting partnership-building activities on
the continent, creating awareness among ECD policy-
makers and development workers, and for mobilizing
more resources for ECD programmes in Africa. The
pamphlet shown in Figure 1.2 shows some of the ways
the ECDNA worked on creating awareness among ECD
policy-makers and other stakeholders.
Figure 2.1 Front and Back of Pamphlet advertising ECDNA in 1995
106
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Administrative arrangements for the ECDNA
A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) had been
signed between the Early Childhood Development
Network for Africa (ECDNA) and the Kenya Institute
for Education (KIE) which specied that the host
organization (KIE) would subsidize the oce
rentals that were to be paid by the ECDNA. Within
this arrangement, the Director of the KIE would
be a signatory to the ECDNA account to increase
transparency and for the accountability of funds. In
addition to this, KIE had requested to also be part of
the Early Childhood Development Network for Africa
(ECDNA) Executive Committee, a request that was
acceded to by the meeting participants.
In a December 2007 meeting held in Cape Town,
South Africa, the ECDNA Secretariat that was headed
by Margaret Kabiru was then tasked with developing
a draft constitution that would be tabled by the end
of January 1998 (ECDNA, 1997a). This would enable
the Secretariat to then investigate the possibilities
of registering the network in Kenya meaning that
the ECDNA would now have an established base
in Kenya up to the time that this network might be
merged into another network. Another discussion
at this meeting was that the ECDNA Secretariat
was requested to begin planning for the 1998 ECD
Seminar. To do this the Secretariat had to request the
UNICEF Regional oce to facilitate the possibility of
having the Institute hosted in West Africa with a major
focus on Francophone countries. This was important
because, as noted above, the ECDNA had not had
representation from West African countries when it
was established. An ECD Seminar in West Africa would
assist in addressing this anomaly. We turn to look at
the achievements of the ECDNA.
Achievements of the ECDNA
By 1999, the ECDNA had made some notable progress
in meeting its foundational goals and purpose. In
addition to supporting the ECD Seminars, the ECDNA
worked on several publications, translation of major
papers for use in local languages, and coordinated
local training programmes for trainers in several
countries in SSA. The ECDNA had been represented
at several regional meetings and promoted ECD as an
important component for the Education for All (EFA)
agenda. The founders and supporters of the network
were also clearly happy with the progress that the
ECDNA had made. Part of the achievements for them
was gaining recognition from other developmental
partners who would come in to provide additional
support to the mission and vision of the network. For
example, a co-founder of the ECDNA noted that at an
ADEA caucus of ministers meeting the ECDNA:
caught the interest of several Governments –
Ghana, Namibia, Kenya, Mauritius, the Netherlands,
and Finland. UNICEF, UNESCO, and several
international non-governmental organizations
supported the ECDNA nancially and with
materials. This support extended over a couple of
years and set in place an interactive/participatory
training programme for trainers in Africa while
the University of Victoria was incubating the ECD
Virtual University with a round of regional seminars
in Namibia and Gambia. (Dalais, 2013)
Margaret Kabiru, one of the co-founders, recalled
the achievements that were made by the ECDNA by
commenting that the ECDNA achieved a lot through
various activities. ECDNA championed the training
of ECD leaders, lobbied for increased government
involvement in ECD and for the mainstreaming ECD
in government ministries such as education, health,
and social services. In addition, ECDNA contributed
through human capacity development, sharing of
ECD information and by promoting the role of local
communities and parents as key partners in ECD
(Makokoro, 2021).
The ECDNA and African international
ECD conferences
The seventh Conference of Ministers of Education
of African States (MINEDAF VII) meeting that was
held in Durban, South Africa, in April 1998 helped
pave the way for a series of African international
ECD conferences with parallel and complementary
plans evolving for the First African International ECD
Conference in Kampala, Uganda, 1999 (Makokoro,
2021). The inaugural conference in Uganda was
followed by conferences in Asmara, Eritrea (2002),
Accra, Ghana (2005), and Dakar, Senegal (2009). These
conferences, for example the Uganda and Eritrea
conferences, had planning and organizing support
from the ECDNA (see Chapter 5).
The ECD inuencers on the continent in 1999,
including the World Bank in particular, had determined
that it would be most appropriate logistically and from
experiences learned in organizing conferences, that
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
biennial and triennial conferences would work better
than attempting annual ones. They recognized that
annual conferences were too challenging to organize
in the time available (Pence, 2005). The World Bank,
in cooperation with the Government of Uganda,
then took the lead in providing funds to organize an
African International Conference on Early Childhood
Development. Building on the activities of the Early
Childhood Development Network for Africa (ECDNA),
which would later be merged into the Working Group
for Early Childhood Development (WGECD), the
conference was initially intended as the third in a series
of African ECD Seminars organized by the ECDNA,
UNICEF and the University of Victoria. The ECDNA
had a leading role in the rst and second African
international ECD conferences up to the time of its
merger with the WGECD.
Merging of the ECDNA and the WGECD
The ECDNA Secretariat had worked hard for it to
become a recognized network and gain ocial
recognition from the Association for the Development
of Education in Africa (ADEA). The ECDNA partnered
with various ECD experts on various projects, including
working with UNESCO to update the directory of NGOs
in Africa and working on the translation of the “Toward
a Fair Start for Children” by Robert Myers into Kiswahili
(Evans, 1998). This work had been carried out as part
of the programming by the ECD Network and part
of the journey of gaining credibility and recognition
by stakeholders in the early childhood development
sector in Africa and globally. In December 1997, the
ECDNA hosted a meeting in Cape Town on Policy
and Programming on ECD in Africa. At this meeting,
Professor Barnabas Otaala advised that the ECDNA had
just acquired a new status as an ADEA Working Group
to consider alternative ECD policies and programmes
in Africa (ECDNA, 1997a).
The arrival of the Dutch government saw the Early
Childhood Development Network for Africa (ECDNA)
being incorporated into the Association for the
Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) working
group model. As this was happening, ADEA itself was
now putting out a call for bids for organizations or
development partners that would then come and
host what would be called the ADEA Working Group
for ECD. When the bid from the Netherlands became
successful, the rst step by the Dutch Government was
to carry out an ECD sector analysis so that they would
have more information. This led to the ECD policy
studies that were discussed earlier above, being one
of the big projects being implemented by the WGECD.
The Dutch Government, through their winning
bid to host the Working Group for Early Childhood
Development (WGECD), stepped forward to take the
leadership role.
ECD networks: a Sankofa perspective
The Akan image of the Sankofa bird assists us in
revisiting these networks with a dierent lens.
Questions that have emerged when writing this
chapter include, what worked well during this period
wherein two ECD networks operated side by side?
How can the current national and regional ECD
networks adapt some the lessons learned for their own
contexts?
I boldly attempt to respond to these questions by
providing some perspectives that should be seen as
provocations and conversation stimulants among
ECD stakeholders on the African continent and
beyond. The COVID-19 pandemic awakened the
need for collaborative approaches in early childhood
development and the call to “play together in
the sandbox” can be brought in to reinforce the
notion that it takes a village to raise a child and that
collaborative approaches will lead to great positive
results for the ECD sector. This becomes important
when drawing from the work of the ECD networks
and looking to the future, and how these lessons can
shape the ECD networking agenda on the African
continent.
Early childhood development networks in Africa and
in particular those operating at a regional basis have
many lessons that can be learned from the past which
can be taken forward as countries move beyond the
COVID-19 pandemic. In the past decade there has
been a surge in ECD-specic policies being developed
in Africa. However, what still lags is the implementation
of the same. While the progress in developing ECD-
specic policies has been noted, there is still a need
to ensure that there is a convergence across policies,
programmes, and practices. It is felt that with an
integrated framework, a whole child approach
becomes more attainable.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Below I outline some of the lessons learned from
African ECD network history and therein I make
propositions on how the ECD networks can address
gaps and challenges that exist.
One, the ECD networks in the 1990s were instrumental
in advocating the development of sector-specic
policies and also developing capacity of stakeholders
through trainings as in the case with the ECD
Seminars held in Namibia (1997c) and in Gambia
(1998). The current ECD networks both at a country
and regional level can work to have comprehensive
ECD frameworks further strengthened, adopted, and
implemented in their countries and for the regional
networks, by the regional political blocs. Africa-wide
ECD networks can look and draw from the lessons of
the past by developing and implementing strategies
for building the capacity and retention of skilled sta
within the early childhood development sector. This
will be going beyond just focusing on knowledge
generation and information sharing activities. To
support this, the regional ECD networks should
have well-articulated and collaboratively developed
capacity-building strategic plans. These capacity-
building plans, developed at a regional level in
collaboration with national ECD networks, will support
sta capacity development on emerging issues such as
evidence-based advocacy, demanding accountability
on ECD nancing by governments, and fostering
transparency on ECD policy development and
implementation issues in their countries. To do this,
the ECD networks should strengthen the capacity of
national country-level networks through institutional,
policy and technical training to enable advocacy,
knowledge generation and networking activities.
These activities should be funded and carried out as
part of ECD network sta capacity development.
Two, partnerships with organizations such as the Early
Childhood Development Virtual University, through
its aliations with the University of Ibadan in Nigeria
representing West and Central Africa, the University of
South Africa (UNISA) representing East and Southern
Africa, and Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Senegal
to support similar capacity promotion throughout
Francophone Africa, should be established to meet
this leadership capacity development objective.
Those regionally based institutions should also work
with post-secondary institutions in participating
countries to advance ECD research and education at
national levels. ECD networks, at regional and country
levels, should work with these training institutions to
strengthen the technical capacity of ECD stakeholders
at a country and regional level.
Three, ECD networks have assisted in advancing the
case of increased support of the sector in Africa.
Progress has also been made on investments by
countries in the ECD sector, but there is a need for
a rapid expansion in breadth and depth of these
investments. Payment of ECD teachers, renovation,
or construction of ECD facilities, training of teachers
inter alia, are signicant investments that still need
to receive increased budgetary support by countries
in the African region. If anything, the COVID-19
pandemic also exposed the African ECD sector to
the lack of disaster preparedness policies and plans.
Regional ECD networks must work with national level
ECD networks to advocate disaster preparedness
policies that include mechanisms for supporting the
early childhood development sector. Considering the
frequently occurring pandemics and natural disasters
in Africa, strategies for implementing ECD during
emergencies need to be put in place. Scenario and
standard operating plans should be developed by the
ECD networks and shared with senior government,
civil society and parliamentarians for consideration
and adoption. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed this
lack of preparedness by ECD networks to address and
provide direction to the early childhood sector. An
emergencies and pandemic playbook plan should be
developed and revised continuously so that developed
guidelines and standards remain relevant. ECD should
not remain on the periphery and be ignored when
pandemics set in, children should be prioritized and
be able to access ECD services in a safe and secure
environment that promotes their optimal growth and
development even during periods of uncertainty.
Four, one of the threads that can be seen already
within this Section 2 of this Sankofa Volume is the
importance of relationships and a “playing together in
the sandbox” mentality. This is important if African ECD
is to advance forward, meeting the needs of young
children on the continent. The networks of professional
relationships among ECD stakeholders need to be
stronger to inuence ECD Policy at a country level
through building synergies and sharing of good
policy practices between national ECD networks
across Africa. This can be implemented by regional
ECD networks through the intentional designing
and implementation of networking and learning
events that focus on governance, organizational
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
development, policy analysis, research, negotiating
and building skills to inuence change agents. The
skills acquired and relationships formed by the ECD
stakeholders at a national level are then used as tools
to engage governments in the form of policy forums
for policy advocacy, research, and knowledge sharing.
Regional ECD networks should work with national
ECD networks to hold governments to account on
ECD policy issues through learning and sustained
advocacy that promotes access to quality, inclusive
and equitable ECD in Africa. All of this can be done
even better when there are relationships that are built
and coalesce around similar objectives, the main one
being, advancing the rights, welfare, and wellbeing of
young children on the continent. An Ethiopian proverb
comes to mind, and it says “when spiderwebs unite,
they can tie down a lion.” Indeed, when ECD network
leaders, member organizations, and funding partners
come together, then more challenges can be tackled
to the benet of the young children in Africa.
Five, the networks of professional relationships among
ECD stakeholders need to be stronger to inuence ECD
Policy at a country level through building synergies
and sharing of good policy practices between national
ECD networks across Africa. This can be implemented
by regional ECD networks through the intentional
designing and implementation of networking
and learning events that focus on governance,
organizational development, policy analysis, research,
negotiating, and building skills to inuence change
agents. The skills acquired and relationships formed
by the ECD stakeholders at a national level are then
used as tools to engage governments in the form
of policy forums for policy advocacy, research, and
knowledge sharing. Regional ECD networks should
work with national ECD networks to hold governments
to account on ECD policy issues through learning and
sustained advocacy that promotes access to quality,
inclusive and equitable ECD in Africa.
Conclusion
ECD networks should build alliances with civil
society, other national ECD networks, transnational
organizations, multilateral, and donor partners to
bring to the fore all the voices that will promote,
implement, and ensure participatory legislative
and policy development processes by national
governments. Taking some of the lessons learned as
outlined in this chapter, at a regional level, the ECD
Network should create an ECD Policy coordinating
mechanism that is charged with the responsibility
of working with regional political blocs to inuence
ECD policy development processes. At a national
level, the national ECD network should replicate this
coordinating mechanism and have responsibility for
ensuring that there is inclusivity, broad consultation,
and participation by all the ECD stakeholders in Africa
and beyond. Thus, when looking at current events of
ECD networks globally and in Africa it can be possible
to draw parallels with what occurred historically. Thus,
the past can always be seen as a prelude of events
of things that will come. This Sankofa volume has
therefore given us the ability to look back, reect and
think about the post-COVID-19 world.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
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—. 1998. ECDNA Draft Constitution. Unpublished draft
document.
Evans, J. L. 1998. Inclusive ECCD: A fair start for all children.
The Coordinators” Notebook, Vol. 22, pp. 1-23.
Makokoro, P. 2021. The establishment and outcomes of
African early childhood development networks and
conferences, 1990-2009 Ph.D. dissertation, University
of Victoria, Canada.
Pence, A. 2005. Reections on Asmara Conference
in Background and Planning Paper For: African
International Conferences on ECD. Unpublished
document.
Torkington, K. 1999. The Future of the ADEA WGECD.
Unpublished discussion paper, Consultative Meeting,
The Hague, 1999.
UNESCO. 2000. The Dakar framework for action: Education
for all: Meeting our collective commitments. Dakar
Senegal, pp. 26-28.
UNESCO BREDA. 2008. The ADEA Working Group for ECD.
An historical perspective. Dakar, Senegal, Bureau
régional pour l’éducation en Afrique for the
Working Group on Early Childhood Development.
Available at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/
pf0000184870
Vargas-Barón, E. 2005. Planning policies for early childhood
development: Guidelines for action. Paris, UNESCO.
WGECD. 2007. Strategic Plan. Unpublished document.
WGECD. 2003. ADEA Consultative Meeting 2 April 2003.
Unpublished report from meeting of ADEA, Grand
Bay, Mauritius.
World Bank. 1988. Education in Sub Saharan Africa: Policies
for adjustment, revitalization, and expansion (English).
Washington D.C., World Bank Group. (World Bank
Policy Study.) Available at: http://documents.
worldbank.org/curated/en/816101468009945118/
Education-in-sub-Saharan-Africa-policies-for-
adjustment-revitalization-and-expansion.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Chapter 3
Key inuencers –
Seen and not seen
Mary Eming Young and
Patrick Makokoro
Introduction
This chapter considers the role and importance of
“inuencers” in early child development (ECD).
The majority of the rst part of this chapter focuses
on a single individual, Dr Fraser Mustard, whose
contributions to ECD in the Majority World are
rarely recognized as those contributions are largely
through “behind-the-scenes” inuence he had on key
individuals, who in turn made major contributions
through the funds they facilitated for ECD. The rst part
is written by the lead author for this chapter, Dr Mary
Eming Young.
A former World Bank employee, Young mobilized
the Bank’s ECD initiative and led the initiative among
development agencies from the mid-1990s to 2010.
She was a close colleague of Dr Mustard and of the
then president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn
(1995-2005), and his wife Elaine Wolfensohn, both
of whom were staunch supporters of ECD, believing
it was a key contributor to social and economic
development globally.
The second part of the chapter identies individuals
who had a much more focused engagement with
ECD in Africa – individuals that second author Dr
Patrick Makokoro became keenly aware of during
the development of his dissertation (2018-2021),
which focused on ECD in Africa in the period 1990-
2010. Makokoro’s selection of the seven individuals
proled in the second part of the chapter reects a
focus on those who, in various ways, helped create
foundational support for ECD development in Africa.
It is a foundation that helps address Makokoro’s key
question, rst asked in 2010, that helped inform
the need for this “Sankofa volume”: “Why has my
generation of ECD not known about what came
before?!”
While the focus of this volume is primarily on Africa,
there are a great many ECD inuencers and change
agents acting within countries and communities in all
the world’s regions. Much can be learned by studying
the work of these individuals and their initiatives in
ECD. Many of their signicant stories have yet to be
told, and they, too, are important “Sankofa elements” in
the history of ECD research and action. In all likelihood,
their stories will yield valuable insights on the great
need to support development of ECD leadership and
capacity across local, national, and regional levels, as
well as internationally.
The two parts of this chapter underscore the need to
appreciate the multiple levels, from global to local,
that are key to eective ECD developments that can
make a dierence for children and their families.
They also highlight the range and the diversity of
initiatives taking place at dierent points in time and
space; a diversity that is central to creating conditions
for a “owering” of ECD. As noted in this chapter’s
conclusion, there are a wealth of stories yet to be
written from around the globe and from myriad local
communities that collectively provide invaluable
“Sankofa-inspirations” for the future of children in Africa
and globally.
Dr Fraser Mustard
Dr Fraser Mustard was a Canadian with an M.D. from
the University of Toronto (1953) and a Ph.D. from
Cambridge University (1956). He dedicated his career
to helping others by fostering the development of
ideas, innovation, and scientic research and over
time becoming a champion for children and their
early development. Early in his career, in the 1960s
and 1970s, he was part of the research team that
discovered how aspirin could ward o heart attacks.
He was also one of the seminal founders of the
new McMaster University Medical School in 1965 in
Hamilton, Ontario, and served on the faculty there
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
from 1966 to 1982. This medical school is known for its
innovative problem-based small-group learning and
decision-making model, which has since been copied
by numerous institutions around the world, including
at Harvard University.
Early in the 1980s, Fraser directed his energy toward
the establishment of the Canadian Institute for
Advanced Research (CIFAR). An “institute without walls”
CIFAR drew intellectual input from researchers across
Canada and the globe to promote transdisciplinary
investigations in wide-ranging and emerging research
areas. Fraser was its founding president and had an
immense impact on its organization and research
endeavours. Fittingly, in 1994 Canada recognized
Fraser’s achievements by making him a Companion of
the Order of Canada, the highest award his native land
could give him.
Beyond this well-deserved recognition, Fraser is also
a Canadian gift to the children of the world. He rst
made his mark in ECD in Canada, in part through
his ability to access high-level individuals within
key organizations and government ministries. His
innovative mix of health, population health, and
human development, combined with a charismatic
delivery, opened an important avenue for ECD moving
forward. Fraser’s signature contribution, in Canada and
globally, was to raise awareness of ECD by translating
the emerging science of ECD for government ocials,
policy-makers, and other key stakeholders and urging
them to pursue ECD action. This science, which
continues to evolve, has shown denitively that
early brain development relies on the experience of
infants and young children, and that healthy child
development promotes strong economies and
tolerant, healthy, and pluralistic societies.
Experience-based brain development:
the science unfolds
As the science of ECD unfolded and coalesced,
Fraser promoted interdisciplinary research on ECD
and human development, developed a framework
for research and action in ECD, and synthesized
knowledge on ECD from longitudinal studies.
Interdisciplinary research on population
health. By 1982, Fraser had turned down many oers
to serve as a university president. Instead, he plunged
into the founding of CIFAR to bring together the
brightest minds from dierent disciplines to pursue
high-quality, interdisciplinary research (Packham,
2010). He already had a signicant scientic reputation
and could draw on a broad, collaborative network of
individuals from academia and government.
As founding president of CIFAR, Fraser’s rst act was
to form a Research Council to explore potential
research areas for the organization. The council’s
decision-making process was thorough, and Fraser led
the eort to develop each research theme; identify,
interview, and recruit potential research members;
and raise funds for each programme. Given Fraser’s
medical background, population health could have
been a rst choice for CIFAR to tackle. Instead, he and
the council selected elds that were newly emerging
in signicance and largely untapped. The rst research
programme was Articial Intelligence, Robotics and
Society (AIRS), and the second was the Cosmology and
Evolutionary Biology.
In 1987, to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary
of Manulife (a Toronto-based insurance and nancial
services company), the Chair of its board designated
a donation to CIFAR to launch what became the third
research program: Population Health. For this initiative,
CIFAR brought together researchers to focus on
studies of health inequalities, which had shown that
the environment in which people live and work is a
crucial factor for determining health, and that health
conditions present as gradients when assessed against
individuals” social and economic circumstances. Fraser
combined important pieces of evidence from studies,
such as Michael Marmot’s Whitehall Civil Service Study
(Marmot and Smith, 1991), which subsequently led to
WHO’s Social Determinants of Health work programme
(WHO, 2008) that put forth healthy early development
as a powerful equalizer (i.e., “equity from the start”) for
nations.
CIFAR’s founding of the Population Health group in
1987 (led by the late Clyde Hertzman) was followed
by a second programme founded in 1993 that worked
closely with Population Health (and shared some
members): the Human Development group (led by
Dan Keating). Interest in the importance of the early
years was also evident in the United States at that time.
In 1994 the Carnegie Corporation published Starting
Points: Meeting the Needs of Our Youngest Children – a
call to put young children on the agenda in the U.S.,
with reverberations in Canada and beyond (Carnegie
Corporation of New York, 1994).
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Major changes were taking place in the world in
the 1990s. Three of these were: market-oriented
development (e.g., a reduced/dierent role in
government coupled with free trade); an emphasis on
democratic government (with elected governments,
decentralization, and the participation of civil society);
and a revolutionary pace of new discoveries in science
and technology (e.g., gene manipulation in bioscience,
ascendancy of digital information, and advances in
healthcare).
These three developments all have one thing in
common – they put a premium on having a skilled
and educated population. In 1995, Wolfensohn,
as the newly appointed World Bank president,
had an opportune moment to reframe the Bank’s
development strategy, and the central message
became that human development is key. It was now
argued that for countries to be able to compete in the
global market they must have a skilled, high-quality
work force, and the creation of this work force begins
in early childhood. Young, a paediatrician and public
health specialist at the Bank, had already begun to
distil newly emerging evidence of the importance of
early childhood (e.g., Starting Points) coming from the
social sciences and neuroscience and examples of best
practices from the Bank’s lending portfolio in health,
nutrition, and education. In 1996, her distillation of
research evidence and practice was published in a
World Bank Directions in Development monograph
entitled Early Child Development: Investing in the Future
(Young, 1996). The main message was that providing
the youngest children with appropriate healthcare,
nutrition, education, and stimulation gives them a
chance to develop their full potential before it’s too
late and that countries can save millions of dollars by
helping their children, families, and communities break
the cycle of poverty in this way.
To promote an international focus on early child
development, the World Bank went on to sponsor
a rst international ECD conference, held in Atlanta,
Georgia, on 8 and 9 April, 1996. The conference
proceedings, entitled Early Child Development: Investing
in Our Children’s Future (1997), included a cross-section
of ECD perspectives from12 United States and
international scholars (Young, 1997). This conference
and publication were a key step forward for the
World Bank as it expanded its support of ECD as a key
contributor to human development within the Bank’s
basic mission – to reduce poverty and improve the
quality of people’s lives.
These somewhat parallel interests in the importance
of children’s early years continued throughout the
1990s, with Keating and Hertzman co-editing a
volume entitled Developmental Health and the Wealth
of Nations that provided, in part, an overview of the
two CIFAR groups” work (Keating and Hertzman, 1999).
At about the same time the United States National
Research Council and Institute of Medicine published
From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early
Childhood Development (National Research Council,
2000), and Fraser, with Margaret McCain, co-authored
what would become the rst of three early years
studies, entitled Early Years Study: Reversing the Real
Brain Drain (McCain and Mustard, 1999).
Fraser, through engagement with CIFAR colleagues
and others, continued to synthesize new evidence
from many disciplines (e.g., sociology, neuroscience,
paediatrics, epidemiology, developmental psychology)
beyond the close of the Human Development and
Population Health groups in 2003. A central message
for Fraser, with his numerous personal and online
presentations throughout this period and into the
2000s, was that the early years of development from
conception to age 6, and particularly the rst three
years, set the base for competence and coping skills
that aect learning, behaviour, and health throughout
life. That message, and other new empirical ndings
in neuroscience, were communicated in Early Years
Study 2, Putting Science into Action (McCain et al.,
2007) and Early Years Study 3, Making Decisions, Taking
Action (McCain et al., 2011). The new knowledge from
research in neuroscience and the behavioural and
biological sciences had grown exponentially and had
provided evidence of how the social environment
of early life gets “under the skin” in the early years to
shape learning, behaviour, and health throughout the
life cycle.
Building a World Bank portfolio for ECD
Amid widespread protests outside the World Bank
in Washington, D.C., in April 2000, the World Bank
held a global conference entitled “From Early Child
Development to Human Development – Investing
in Our Children’s Future”. This event was a welcome
antidote to the animosity being expressed about
the Bank’s structural adjustment policies of previous
decades, and it helped to change the Bank’s direction
– a change that continues today. Young had rst met
Fraser in 1997 at a seminar held at the Inter-American
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Development Bank a few blocks away from the World
Bank, in Washington, D.C. The seminar was open to
everyone in the Washington, D.C. community who
was interested in child development and health, and
Fraser presented remarks on the socio-determinants
of health. After the meeting, Young approached Fraser
and gave him a copy of the Bank’s proceedings of the
rst ECD conference in Atlanta (Young, 1997), telling
him that “we from the other development bank –
the World Bank – had already started to address the
synergistic eects of health, nutrition and stimulation.”
Subsequently, Young invited Fraser to take part in the
World Bank’s country dialogues on ECD and to give
the keynote speech at its 2000 global conference on
ECD. His speech, entitled “Early Child Development
and the Brain – the Base for Health, Learning, and
Behavior Throughout Life” (Mustard, 2002), opened
the conference proceedings, which consolidated the
Bank’s ECD agenda for the decade ahead (Young,
2002).
This global event was widely attended by senior
policy-makers from developing countries in many
regions (Africa, Latin America, East and South Asia),
multilateral organizations (UNICEF, UNDP, WHO,
UNESCO), bilateral development agencies, and
foundations (e.g., Aga Khan, Save the Children,
World Vision, Children’s Fund). In fact, the two Bank
conferences, rst in Atlanta, Georgia (1996), and then
in Washington, D.C. (2000), put ECD eectively on the
agendas of the World Bank and the broader global
development community. The events brought ECD to
the attention of Wolfensohn, as World Bank president,
and his wife, Elaine, who became avid supporters of
ECD within the Bank and its lending portfolio. Elaine
became a good friend of Fraser’s, often remarking that
she wanted him to be the World Bank’s ambassador
for ECD and to share the “brain story” with all heads-of-
state and ministers of nance interested in attaining
lending support from the Bank. In 2005, the World
Bank hosted a third international gathering, this time
to spur translation of research into ECD action. Once
again Fraser contributed valuable insights, updating
the science of ECD, and urging the measurement
of child development to leverage ECD policy and
investment. These proceedings, entitled “Early Child
Development: From Measurement to Action. A Priority for
Growth and Equity,” also includes the expertise of others
on evaluating, monitoring, and nancing ECD (Young,
2007).
By the end of 2010, the World Bank’s cumulative
support for ECD had reached more than US $2 billion.
Beginning with a handful of ECD projects in the early
to mid-1990s (in Bolivia, Colombia, Kenya, Nigeria,
and the Philippines), the World Bank’s agenda grew to
include 89 projects in 52 countries. Of the $1.6 billion
lent for ECD in 2005, 9% was in Africa. The projects
ranged from educating and supporting parents to
direct delivery of services to children, building capacity
for ECD among caregivers and teachers, and using
mass media to enhance ECD knowledge and action in
practice.
The growth in World Bank programmes and lending
in ECD was made possible in many ways by Fraser’s
inuence, expertise, and encouragement. For example,
for the Bank’s publication entitled Africa’s Future, Africa’s
Challenge: Early Childhood Care and Development in Sub-
Saharan Africa (Garcia et al., 2008), which is part of the
Bank’s Directions in Development series, Fraser distilled
solid evidence about brain development in the early
years to make a case for investing in ECD in Africa as a
key societal imperative based on the benets of ECD
(Young and Mustard, 2008). The increased awareness
of the science and benets of ECD, which resulted
from this book, led the Bank to explore alternative
lending options, such as conditional cash transfers,
beyond its traditional lending practices in health,
education, and social protection sectors.
Scaling up ECD programmes. After Wolfensohn’s
tenure at the World Bank (1995-2005), he moved to
Brookings Institution, where he set up the Wolfensohn
Center for Development. A key theme at the centre
was the eectiveness of development and scaling
up of ECD programmes nationally. Fraser was invited
to advise the centre on this work, and two African
countries, South Africa, and Madagascar, were among
the countries identied for study.
Championing national investments in ECD. At the
World Bank’s global ECD conference in Washington,
D.C., in April 2000, George Soros, founder of Open
Society Foundations, was the luncheon speaker. And in
his remarks, Soros gave a special tribute to Fraser and
credited him with having had a major inuence on the
initiation of Open Society’s Step by Step programme.
Soros noted that he was convinced by Fraser’s
argument on the science of brain development
and that this led to Open Society Foundations”
commitment to invest $100 million over 20 years for its
agship Step by Step programme.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Recently, Soros recounted how he was inspired by
Fraser to get into early childhood development in the
rst place (Klaus, 2020). In the early 1990s, after the
transition of Eastern Europe to a market economy,
he had planned to launch what became the Central
European University in the former communist
countries, to develop a new generation of leaders
and provide post-graduate education in the social
sciences. He widely consulted the best academic
minds regarding these plans, and it was Fraser who
presciently remarked that “university is too late.” Fraser
told him about the newly emerging research on
experience-based brain development in the early years
and advised him to start younger, in early childhood,
to set a foundation for democratic open societies.
Launched in 1994, Step by Step transformed early
education in 30 countries across Central and Eastern
Europe and Eurasia, as well as in Argentina, Haiti,
and Mongolia. In 1998, Open Society began to spin
o Step by Step to develop a network of national
non-governmental organizations addressing early
childhood across Europe and Eurasia, and by that
time a rst African Regional Foundation for Southern
Africa had been established as well. The focus on ECD
continued, through Open Society’s Early Childhood
Programme, which traced back to the initial Step
by Step programme. In 2020, the Early Childhood
concluded more than two decades of providing
support for families with children aged 0 (new-borns)
to mid-childhood (primary and middle school). By
2020, Open Society had invested more than $175
million in the Early Childhood Programme, reaching 80
countries in all world regions (Klaus, 2020).
Creating an institute for human
development in the Majority World
In 2015, in Nairobi, Kenya, His Highness the Aga Khan
launched the Institute for Human Development as a
part of Aga Khan University, which he had founded
in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1983. The new institute was
the realization of a vision that Fraser formulated in
2004. The story begins with Fraser’s long involvement
with Aga Khan University dating back to his days as
vice-president of the Faculty of Health Sciences at
McMaster University. At that time, he was approached
by Shamsh Kassim-Lakha, the head of a committee
charged with building a hospital in Karachi for the Aga
Khan organization (and who became the founding
president of Aga Khan University). Fraser led the
McMaster team of health sciences faculty in aiding
on the design of a school of nursing. Afterwards,
he continued to provide advice to the Aga Khan
organization and served as a founding member of the
board of Aga Khan University.
In 2004, Fraser prepared a vision paper for the
board, in which he outlined a need to integrate the
exponential growth occurring in knowledge about
the determinants of human development, including
ECD, across diverse disciplines – the health sciences,
neuroscience, economics, psychology, education,
social sciences, and natural sciences. He presented this
vision at the board’s meeting in East Africa in 2007; it
was enthusiastically received, and His Highness the
Aga Khan gave his agreement.
Fraser’s vision became the guidance for founding
the AKU-Institute for Human Development based
in Nairobi, Kenya. He considered this achievement
to be one of his most important endeavours and
contribution – that he was able to obtain agreement
on introducing a unique, multidisciplinary, and
multinational institute of human development in the
Majority World and that it would link the ECD agenda
with a human development programme.
Fraser translated the evolving transdisciplinary
science on experience-based brain development and
underscored that now, as never before, we have the
science and what we urgently need is to “get on with
it” to do more and better in translating that science
into action.
Africa-focused inuencers
This section, developed by Patrick Makokoro, provides
insights into some of the key individuals who played
important roles in the evolution of ECD in Africa
in the past three decades. These individuals were
purposefully selected based on their involvement in
the development of ECD strategies, programmes, and
policies between 1990 and 2000 – a key formative
period for ECD in Africa.
The new generation of ECD scholars and practitioners
on the African continent has an opportunity to learn
from these short biographical accounts of inuential
leaders to better plan their own ways forward and
realizing their own dreams for ECD in Africa. Many of
the leaders proled in this section have worked largely
out of the limelight, allowing their inuence to be
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
felt primarily through their work. Several of the global
leaders noted here are sadly no longer with us, or have
retired, but the impacts of their work continue.
Ms Margaret Kabiru
Margaret Kabiru is a Kenyan who obtained her
bachelor’s degree in education from Makerere
University, Uganda. She started teaching geography
in secondary school upon graduating in 1970. She
was, however, interested in understanding how young
children grow and develop. This interest was aroused
during the child development classes that were
led by very inspiring lecturers, especially MsHarris
and Prof.Barnabas Otaala. In 1972 she enrolled for
a master’s degree in Educational Psychology at the
University of Nairobi. In 1974, she joined the Kenya
Institute of Education, now known as the Kenya
Institute of Curriculum Development.
For 22 years, Margaret Kabiru was attached to the
National Centre for Early Childhood Education
(NACECE), a department of the Kenya Institute of
Curriculum Development (KICD). While at the Institute,
she served in the team that developed the Preschool
Education Project, which was a partnership between
the Kenyan Ministry of Education and the Bernard van
Leer Foundation. The project was involved in practical,
eld-based research to develop a relevant ECD
programme for the country. The team piloted dierent
training approaches, local curriculum materials and
ways of working with local communities. Margaret
acquired a great deal of experience in training,
research, and evaluation of ECD and primary-level
programmes while working in this project, which was
later expanded to become the national programme.
Margaret also served as a consultant in policy and
programme development in several Eastern and
Southern African and Asian countries.
In 1996, she became the director and founding
member of Mwana Mwende Child Development Trust,
a registered NGO in Kenya. The Trust was involved in
empowering teenage mothers, training ECD teachers,
and building the capacity of parents and communities
to provide quality care for children and youth. The
Trust was later registered as Mwana Mwende ECD
Training Centre, a private training institution for ECD
teachers and trainers. For a few years, the Kenya
Institute of Curriculum Development hosted the Early
Childhood Development Network for Africa (ECDNA).
Several ECD leaders from Eastern and Southern African
countries were attached to KICD to prepare them to
develop programmes in their countries.
The contributions made by Margaret Kabiru have
led to major developments in programmes and
services for children since the 1970s. Today, the
Kenyan Government has increased funding for ECD
programmes and is providing policy guidelines.
The Ministry of Education has the responsibility of
developing policy guidelines, training, and registering
teachers and supervisory sta, developing the
curriculum, registering preschools, inspecting, and
supervising the programme. The Ministry collaborates
with other ministries such as Health, Internal Aairs,
Devolution, and Local Governments to ensure that the
health, nutrition, protection, and other welfare needs
of children are met. Government ministries work in
partnership with parents, local communities, faith-
based organizations, NGOs, and other development
agencies.
Margaret Kabiru co-authored several books for ECD
teaching and training (Kabiru and Njenga, 2007;
Kabiru and Njenga 2009) and others for more general
information regarding ECD (Swadener, Kabiru, and
Njenga,1997; Hyde and Kabiru, 2006; Njenga and
Kabiru, 2001; Prochner and Kabiru, 2008). Margaret
Kabiru was a co-founder of the Early Childhood
Development Network for Africa (ECDNA) and played
a leading role in bringing together African countries to
advance the ECD agenda.
Dr Emily Vargas-Barón
Dr Vargas-Barón remembers that from the age of four
onward, the world region she most wanted to visit
was Africa. She felt drawn to its peoples, beautiful
landscapes, and fascinating animals. In 1982, USAID
invited her to work in Lesotho. She remembers
the warmth of the welcome of Sesotho and Xhosa
peoples, their lovely villages, deep and rich choral
music, dances in each village, and democracy at work
in community pitsos. Decades later, from 2011-2013,
she helped several ministries conduct participatory
policy planning processes at community, regional and
central levels to support the development of Lesotho’s
rst National Policy for Integrated Early Childhood Care
and Development (Lesotho Ministry of Education,
2013).
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Born in Seattle, Washington, Dr Vargas-Barón is the
daughter of a Colombian professor of Romance
Languages and Literature and a Norwegian-German
linguist, and the granddaughter of Colombians who
were engaged in national educational planning
and development. From her early years onward, her
family oered her a smorgasbord of opportunities for
diverse careers. While studying at Stanford University
for a doctorate in anthropology, with specializations
in cognitive, linguistic, cultural, and educational
anthropology, Dr Vargas-Barón abandoned her
expected career in anthropology and travelled to Paris,
France, to apply for a position in UNESCO. Four months
later she secured an entry-level post in educational
planning under the leadership of Dr Seth Spaulding,
then the director of the School and Higher Education
Department. She led or participated in several
educational planning projects in Africa, South America,
the South Pacic, and Spain.
During her time at UNESCO, she became aware that
most national educational policies and plans prepared
in countries of all economic levels had not been
implemented. Instead, they were yellowed, gathering
dust in shelves and planners’ desks. No one was using
them to improve or expand education systems, and
certainly not for early childhood development. She
realized that all the educational policies and plans
had been written by “experts” – either national or
international – seated in ministerial oces. Civil society
organizations that worked in education as well as
parents, communities, regions, and other ministerial
leaders had not participated in formulating the policies
and plans. From that point forward, she experimented
in developing and applying participatory processes for
planning national policies in the elds of education,
ECD, health, and nutrition.
Once her children left for college, she accepted an
invitation to become a Deputy Assistant Administrator
of USAID and the director of the Human Capacity
Development Centre that was charged with leading
the agency’s programmes in the elds of education,
international training, and telecommunications in
80countries. Returning to Africa was one of the
benets of her new work. She visited and directly
supported country programmes for basic education,
ECD, and higher education in Malawi, Senegal, South
Africa, United Republic of Tanzania, and Uganda. She
also helped the Leland Initiative bring Internet-access
to many African countries.
As the United States” representative to UNESCO’s
Education for All Conference held in Dakar, Senegal,
in 2000, she played a central role in the drafting of
the Dakar Framework for Action that encouraged all
countries to prepare and adopt national multisectoral
policies for ECD. After she resigned from USAID in
2001, she founded the RISE Institute. Soon thereafter,
she was invited by UNESCO, the Association for the
Development in Africa (ADEA), and the Netherlands
to lead a challenging project to support ECD policy
planning in three countries in West Africa: Burkina
Faso, Mauritania, and Senegal (Vargas-Barón, 2004;
Vargas-Barón, 2008). Based on her earlier work in ECD
policy planning and this three-country planning work,
she prepared Planning Policies for Early Childhood
Development: Guidelines for Action (Vargas-Barón,
2005). Sponsored by UNICEF, UNESCO, and ADEA, this
book was published in English, French, Russian and
Spanish.
Upon successfully completing that three-country
project in 2003, she was invited to join the ADEA
Working Group on ECD at its third consultative
meeting on 2 December 2003, in Mauritius, prior to
the ADEA biennial. She continued to play an active
role in the ADEA Working Group until 2011. During
her work with ADEA to promote the development of
ECD policies and programmes in Africa, the World Bank
commissioned her to conduct two evaluations of the
Early Childhood Virtual University (ECDVU) founded
and directed by Dr Alan Pence. ECDVU successfully
prepared at least two generations of African leaders in
ECD policy and programming. The rst evaluation was
an impact evaluation (Vargas-Barón, 2005), and the
second one focused on participant outcomes (Vargas-
Barón, 2011).
As part of her contributions to the ADEA Working
Group, she participated in Pan-African ECD
conferences held in Eritrea (2002) and Ghana (2004).
Subsequently, Dr Pence, who had led, or co-led,
planning for three highly successful Pan-African ECD
Conferences, encouraged Dr Vargas-Barón to plan
and conduct the fourth conference that was held in
Dakar in 2009 (Vargas-Barón, 2010) (see Chapter 5).
After that conference, ADEA changed its course, and
in 2012 ADEA ocially transferred its ECD work to an
ADEA mechanism named the Inter-Country Quality
Node (ICQN) on ECD that was established in Mauritius
(Makokoro, 2021). This centre focused on discrete
technical activities in selected African nations. No
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
further African ECD conferences were held until the
establishment of African Early Childhood Network
(AfECN) in 2015, which held its rst conference in 2018.
Dr Vargas-Barón says she has had the joy of seeing
African ECD policies that were developed using
participatory techniques be implemented eectively
(see Chapter 14). However, some nations have been
unable to achieve their policy objectives, most
especially those with authoritarian leaders who did
not encourage the use of democratic participatory
planning processes. She observed that she has been
uplifted by the growth and lifegiving contributions of
hundreds of community-led programmes in all regions
of Africa. Yet she remains deeply concerned that much
remains to be done to conduct advocacy for the
good health and development of African children of
all abilities and very especially those who have been
orphaned during the pandemic (Vargas-Barón, 2021).
Dr Judith Evans
Dr Judith Evans’s rst introduction to Africa, East
Africa in particular, was in the early 1960s. She
arrived in Kampala, Uganda, in 1963 in time to join
in independence celebrations. It was a time of
great optimism, everyone looking forward to being
part of an evolving new identity. Evans returned to
Uganda in the late 1960s and conducted research
on children’s cognitive development. She was
interested in discovering whether Piaget’s theories
of young children’s cognitive development held true
across cultures. Her research showed that children’s
classication systems in Uganda were dierent from
those of children in the West. Evans posited that
cultural dierences and language development
inuenced children’s cognition. This work set the
framework for her approach to development; it must
be rooted in the local context, rather than imported
from abroad. Rather than continuing to do research,
Evans shifted to a more applied focus on young
children’s development and how it can be supported.
Dr Evans’s approach to ECD was strongly inuenced
by her work with Head Start, HighScope Educational
Research Foundation in the U.S., and her international
cross-cultural experiences in Latin America, Africa,
and the Middle East. At HighScope, her focus was on
infant development and the preschool curriculum,
co-authoring the book Good Beginnings: Parenting
in The Early Years (Evans and Ilfeld,1982) which oers
a non-prescriptive, generative process for working
with preschool-aged children. This greatly inuenced
Dr Evans’s commitment throughout her career to
participatory generative processes.
Dr Evans was fortunate to collaborate with and learn
from several African visionaries. In 1986, as the Ocer
for Early Childhood Education with the Aga Khan
Foundation (AKF), she supported the creation of the
Madrasa project in Mombasa, Kenya. Evans had the
privilege of working with Biswaya Said, a highly
respected Muslim teacher, who led the development
of a culturally appropriate preschool programme to be
implemented in Madrasa settings. Evans saw her role
as one of conversing with key stakeholders to support
the evolution of the programme. The approach
being created in the Mombasa model was taken
up in Zanzibar where Dr Bishara Seif (see Section 1,
Zanzibar), another visionary, put a uniquely Zanzibarian
twist on the programme. At the same time, AKF was
providing support to a Kenyan ECD training system,
funded in its early development by the Bernard van
Leer Foundation. Evans had the privilege of working
with many Africans whose commitment to their roots
helped drive development of community based ECD
programmes.
In the early 1990s Evans shifted her focus to
advocacy work with the Consultative Group on
Early Childhood Care and Development (CG), an
international consortium focused on promoting an
understanding of young children’s development and
advocating for increased investment in supports for
their development (see Chapter 2). Evans became
the Director of the CG in 1993, where she promoted
collaborative research and evaluation eorts with
member organizations. One example was a series of
studies on childrearing practices in African countries
(Mali, Malawi, Zambia, and Nigeria), the results of
which were presented at a workshop in Namibia in
1993. While dierent methodologies were used in
each of the studies, the common focus of each was
to provide an understanding of how dierent cultures
perceive and support children’s early development.
In its capacity-building role, the CG supported
the development of regional networks. In Africa,
the CG began its work primarily with Dr Barnabas
Otaala, Margaret Kabiru, and Dr Margaret Akinware,
supporting their outreach and connecting them to
partners in donor and research communities.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
In 1999 Dr Evans joined the Bernard van Leer
Foundation. Her work focused on overseeing the
Eectiveness Initiative (EI), a set of studies designed
to understand the characteristics of eective ECD
programmes. This multi-country study (Kenya,
Mozambique, India, Philippines, Colombia, Peru,
Honduras, Israel, the Netherlands, and Portugal) was
able to identify aspects of all the programmes that
many (outsiders and insiders) agreed contributed to a
strong and enduring programme.
From 2002 onward, Evans undertook a variety of
consultancies focused on capacity-building. Of note
in Africa, Evans facilitated a year-long study by a team
of South Africans from diverse sectors (ECD service
providers, researchers, and political strategists) tasked
with providing the African National Congress with
a comprehensive overview of ECD needs, current
provision, supports available, and recommendations
for government inputs. The results of the study led to
the development of a White Paper on ways in which
the new ANC-led government could support young
children and their families.
Other activities undertaken by Dr Evans after 2002 that
had a bearing on ECD in Africa were:
● Co-Facilitator, the global Leaders Initiative,
sponsored by the World Forum; where 20 to 30
ECD leaders from more than 15 countries in each
cohort participated in a joint training workshop
and developed a country-specic advocacy
project to be conducted over the following year.
Several Global Leaders from Africa continue to be
strong supporters of ECD.
● Creator and disseminator of the Integrated Early
Childhood Development (IEC) Approach to Early
Childhood Programming training package (fty-ve
modules) used by UNICEF country oces to train
their sta and counterparts in ECD programming
and policy work. In Africa, Dr Evans facilitated a
workshop for UNICEF representatives from eastern
and central African countries in Malawi, July 2003.
Another workshop for French-language countries
was facilitated in Senegal in July 2009.
● Faculty member in the Early Childhood
Development Virtual University (ECDVU)
programme across four cohort deliveries in Africa
and two in the Middle East North Africa region
(MENA).
Some of Dr Evans’s learning experiences are reected
in publications. She was the lead author on Early
Childhood Counts (Evans, Myers, and Ilfeld, 2000), a
book that provides a framework for the development
of early childhood programmes in the Majority World.
This was accompanied by a CD-ROM that contains
a rich library of ECD materials for advocacy and
programme development. Evans was the primary
author and editor of the Coordinators” Notebook, a
bi-annual publication of the Consultative Group. Along
with Dr Alan Pence and Dr Marito Garcia she edited
a book titled Africa’s Future, Africa’s Challenge: Early
Childhood Care and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa,
published by the World Bank (Garcia, Pence, and Evans,
2008).
Dr Alan Pence
Professor Alan Pence’s rst experience with ECD in
Africa was in 1977 when he spent several months
in Kenya on a research trip. The result was an article
in the major professional journal for ECD in the U.S.,
Young Children, entitled: “Childcare in Two Developing
Countries: Kenya and the United States” (Pence, 1979).
The purposefully provocative title was based on
Pence’s seven years as a frontline childcare worker,
programme director, then eld trainer and instructor
in the United States, and was largely a critique of the
United States lack of a system of ECE/ECD as compared
to certain relatively advanced structures he found in
Kenya.
A few years after the Kenya experience, Pence
relocated from the United States to Victoria, Canada,
and joined the School of Child and Youth Care at the
University of Victoria. His rst book was, essentially, an
homage to Professor Urie Bronfenbrenner’s critique
of “normal” developmental science (Bronfenbrenner,
1979) entitled Ecological Research: From Concepts
to Methodology (Pence, 1988), with an introduction
provided by Bronfenbrenner. The importance of
context for Bronfenbrenner and the discovery of
unexpected ECD strengths in Kenya stood Pence in
good stead when he was invited in 1989 by a large
tribal council in northern Canada to be a university
partner in developing an accredited, community-
based, culturally and contextually sensitive approach
to ECE/ECD education for the Council’s Indigenous
communities. The First Nations Partnerships (www.
fnpp.org) attracted the attention of Dr Cyril Dalais, then
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Senior Advisor for UNICEF Headquarters in New York,
who invited him to use similar concepts in promoting
senior-level ECD capacity in Africa.
Pence’s work with UNICEF (Dalais), and with the Early
Childhood Development Network in Africa (ECDNA:
Dalais, Otaala and Kabiru), began with a series of
African ECD Seminars, the format of which had
evolved over a half-dozen years in Canada and which
included Dalais’s, Cassie Landers’s, and Robert Myers’s
participation in its rst “internationally focused” seminar
in 1994. The feedback from participants at that UVic-
based seminar, and from the second held in 1995,
called for the launch of regional seminars globally. The
rst regional seminar was held in Windhoek, Namibia,
in 1997, supported by UNICEF and the ECDNA, with a
second held in Banjul, Gambia, in 1998 (see Chapter 5).
The ECD seminar series proved eective as a capacity-
promoting activity itself and as an eective informal
network committed to furthering ECD developments
in Africa. When planning began for a third seminar, this
time to be held in East Africa, specically in Kampala,
Uganda, the level of newly found support from the
World Bank suggested an expansion of the seminar/
workshop approach to a much larger African focused
event: an ECD Conference that would provide an even
richer smorgasbord of ECD innovations, experiences,
and interactions.
The Kampala Conference, the First African International
Conference on ECD, was successful, generating
enough enthusiasm to mount a second (and then
a third and fourth) conference (see Chapter 5). The
Kampala Conference not only birthed a second
conference (and then a series), but participants also
responded very positively to a proposal to develop
an online, graduate-level, ECD Leadership focused
course (see Chapter 7). Not only did the great majority
of those attending the Kampala Conference indicate
their strong support for such a programme, but many
(perhaps the majority) also asked for registration
materials, when available, to be sent to them.
The online ECD Leadership programme, surveyed
in Kampala in 1999, became a reality, in 2001 with
the launch of the Early Childhood Development
Virtual University (ECDVU). The initial cohort of 30
participants from ten dierent African countries, was
followed by ve other cohort deliveries with a total of
130graduates (95% completion rate), from 17 African
countries with virtually no brain-drain out of Africa
(only one out of the one-hundred and thirty grads).
The fth cohort (2016/2017) was a shared, “transition”
delivery with the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, with U.
Ibadan subsequently undertaking two “solo” deliveries
under the leadership of Prof. Esther Oduolowu (see
Chapter 7).
Building on the systemically diverse set of ECD
capacity development initiatives noted above (see
www.ecdinafrica.org), in 2008 Pence, with colleagues
Marfo, Serpell and Nsamenang, launched an African
Scholars and Institutions initiative (ASandI) that
focused on bringing together “next generation” African
scholars in a series of seven workshops between 2008
and 2019. In that same year, 2008, Pence launched the
UNESCO Chair for ECD in Africa, subsequently being
joined by Prof. Hasina Ebrahim in 2017 and Prof. Oumar
Barry in 2021. These UNESCO Tri-chairs are joined
by recent Ph.D. scholar Patrick Makokoro (an ECDVU
graduate) in editing this volume.
Dr Cyril Dalais
Dr Cyril Dalais was born in Mauritius, Africa, where he
also trained and practiced as a teacher before working
as a child psychologist in the United Kingdom. He
completed postgraduate studies in Child Development
and Children with special needs at University College
London and then at the University of York. He directed
psychological and child guidance services in the
United Kingdom before being appointed as Academic
Director of the Joint Child Health and Education
Project (1974-1984), a long-term study of a Mauritian
cohort of nearly 1,800 preschool children, focusing on
their physical, psychological, and social development.
The results of this study were published internationally,
and informed policy on integrated ECD in Africa and
Asia. Subsequently, he joined UNICEF, becoming a
programme ocer in Haiti and China, Senior Adviser
for ECD at UNICEF Headquarters, and ultimately
Country Representative in Cote d’Ivoire. Dr Cyril Dalais
was the principal sponsor for the ECD Seminar series
that later evolved into the ECDVU – one of several ECD
international initiatives that beneted from his vision
and energy.
After “retirement” in 2000, Dr Dalais became an
international consultant, professor in the ECDVU,
and an Adviser to the Ministry of Education, Culture
and Human Resources in Mauritius. He contributed
to the work of the Preschool Trust Fund (2003-2005),
that subsequently became transformed through
an Act of Parliament into the Early Childhood Care
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
and Education Authority, with overall responsibility
to supervise, coordinate, and develop “young child
integrated programming” throughout the Republic of
Mauritius, with its population of 1.3 million. The need
to sustain policy development and implementation
through strategic planning led to having discussions
and building relationships with, for example, the
ECDVU head Prof. Alan Pence, African university
programmes for ECD, and international agencies,
to reinforce the capacity of personnel working in
integrated ECD programming in the region.
Dr Dalais then worked with colleagues in the ECD
sector to develop a concept for a North/South-South/
South collaborative programme to establish “Centres
of Excellence,” “Knowledge Hubs”, and accelerated
training for personnel in integrated young child
development programmes. Dr Dalais’s heart of service
was not limited to establishing these hubs. Along with
Ms Margaret Kabiru and Professor Barnabas Otaala,
Dalais co-founded the Early Childhood Network for
Africa (ECDNA) in 1994. This network was formed to
respond to the challenges that children in Africa were
facing in the 1990s. The co-founders had observed
that the lack of an ECD networking system in Africa
and the apparent lack of integrated and holistic ECD
programmes hindered child development (Makokoro,
2021). Colleagues of Dr Dalais knew him as a person
who had Africa at heart and always worked to build
relationships across sectors, organizations, and
countries. Prof. Alan Pence notes that his “warmth,
vision, bilingual communication skills and unwavering
commitment to the well-being of children – in Africa
and beyond – drove many key initiatives throughout
his years with UNICEF and beyond. He is greatly missed
by many in the ECD community.”
As a result of this collaborative approach in his work,
the ECDNA was then formally established in Mauritius
in December 1994 with the full backing and support
of nine countries. These countries were drawn from
the eastern and southern parts of Africa and convened
in Mauritius to address integrated programming in
ECD, utilizing the EFA goals, such as: expanding early
childhood care and education; provision of free and
compulsory primary education for all; and promoting
learning and life skills for young people and adults as a
guiding strategy.
Dr Dalais worked to strengthen partnerships with
stakeholders and allies with similar concerns in the
promotion of ECD in Africa and in this process to
increase awareness and clear conceptualization of ECD
issues and working to secure material and nancial
resources for improved and coordinated programming
and implementation. During the ve-year existence of
the ECDNA, the network then translated various ECD
manuals and was involved in the organization of ECD
Seminars in Africa (see Chapter 7). These ECD materials
were distributed to countries implementing national
ECD programmes as well as at the ECD Seminars
as materials for the leaders being trained. Dr Dalais
mobilized resources for the ECDNA and at a UNICEF-
sponsored meeting held at the Innocenti Centre in
Italy in 1996, a total of $80,000 for the ECDNA was
obtained through pledges (Makokoro, 2021). These
funds would then enable the ECDNA to implement its
programme of action for the following two years, up to
1998. The programme of action included supporting
partnership-building activities on the continent,
creating awareness among ECD policy-makers and
development workers, and for mobilizing more
resources for ECD programmes in Africa.
Dr Barnabas Otaala
Dr Barnabas Otaala was born in Ngora, Uganda,
and was a life-long educator. He was a graduate of
London University, where he earned his B.A. degree.
He did his postgraduate studies at Teachers College,
Columbia University, in New York, where he earned his
master’s and doctoral degrees. In the early 1960s, while
attaining his master’s degree, he was a Fellow of the
Carnegie Foundation in New York City (1961-1962).
His illustrious career included being a professor in
educational psychology at Makerere University in
Kampala, Uganda, between 1975-76, followed by his
appointment as the Dean of the Faculty of Education
at Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya (1977-1979).
Following that stint in Kenya, he lectured at the
University of Botswana (1979-1985) and later became
a programme advisor at Lesotho University in Maseru
(1985-1990). During the period 1994-1995 he served
as a pro-vice chancellor at the University of Namibia
while serving as a consultant for international non-
prot organizations. During 1995-1998 he was also the
Dean of Education at the University of Namibia. He
was Professor of Educational Psychology and Special
Education at the University of Namibia until the end of
December 1998.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
As an educational psychologist, he had an interest and
specialization in early childhood education. His area of
interest was children aected and infected by HIV and
AIDS. During a 30 year plus career in Early Childhood
Care and Development, Professor Otaala concentrated
his work on the African continent. However, he also
advised at an international level working with the
World Forum Foundation in the late 2000s. He was
especially involved as an international adviser in the
use of the child-to-child approaches developed by
the Child-to-Child Trust at the Institute of Education,
University of London. To recognize his scholarship and
research work, Prof. Otaala was a recipient of a research
award by the Ford Foundation in Kampala in 1972
and would later serve as a Distinguished Fulbright
Fellow with the United States Information Agency in
Washington, D.C. in 1995.
Professor Barnabas Otaala played a signicant
leadership role in the founding of the Early Childhood
Development Network for Africa (ECDNA) in 1994.
He initially worked with the ECDNA in Kenya and
continued doing so as he moved from Kenya to
Botswana and eventually to the University of Namibia,
where he would play a key role in what was known as
the ECD Seminars, working closely with Prof. Pence,
and serving as a faculty member for the seminars. Prof.
Otaala led the work to establish the ECDNA, which was
then formalized in December 1994 with the support of
nine countries from the eastern and southern African
region who had gathered in Mauritius to address
integrated programming in ECD. The premise of the
integration was utilizing the EFA goals: expanding early
childhood care and education; provision of free and
compulsory primary education for all; and promoting
learning and life skills for young people and adults as a
guiding strategy. The nine founding member countries
of the ECDNA were Uganda, Kenya, United Republic of
Tanzania, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Mauritius, Ethiopia,
Lesotho, and Malawi. Prof. Otaala chaired a meeting to
discuss the Africa Regional ECD initiative held in Cape
Town in 1997. The ECDNA provided an opportunity
for dialogue with dierent early childhood actors from
several African countries. Through his leadership, the
network then conducted four case studies in South
Africa, Namibia, Eswatini, and Uganda to address early
childhood in the context of the AIDS pandemic.
Dr Augustine Bame Nsamenang
Augustine Bame Nsamenang was born in Bamenda,
Cameroon. Known within the African ECD and Child
Development sector as a teacher, scholar, innovator,
and activist, Bame devoted his academic life to having
African voices and perspectives heard in the child
development and the early childhood education,
care, and development (ECD) literature. He served as
a Nurse Practitioner from 1973-1976 in Bamenda, and
later continued his studies at the University of Ibadan
in Nigeria, completing a Master of Education degree
in Guidance and Counselling in 1980, and a Ph.D.
in Clinical Child Psychology in 1984. In 1993, Bame
Nsamenang was recruited as an Assistant Lecturer in
Psychology at the University of Yaoundé, Cameroon,
rising to the rank of Associate Professor in 2004 upon
his return from a term as a resident scholar at the
Stanford University Center for Advanced Study of
Behavioral Development. Following his promotion to
the rank of Full Professor in 2011, and in recognition
of his administrative skills, he was appointed Head
of the Division for University Cooperation at the
University of Bamenda, then pioneer Head of the
Department of Guidance and Counselling, followed
by his appointment as the Director of the Higher
Teacher Training College, where he galvanized the
improvement of teacher education in Cameroon
before his retirement in June 2017.
Prof. Nsamenang had several publications he
developed over the course of his career, including
some joint eorts with his colleagues (Pence and
Nsamenang, 2008; Nsamenang and Tchombe, 2012;
Nsamenang and Lamb, 2014; Serpell and Nsamenang,
2015). Much of his work was focused on child
development in the African context, addressing
theories and concepts, and he was a leading voice in
promoting the importance of community and culture
(Nsamenang 1997; 2008; 2012) when developing ECD
programmes in Africa.
Bame Nsamenang was also known for advocating
African approaches (Nsamenang, 1992; 1995; 1997) to
early childhood development that engaged the child
quite early through dierent types of cultural activities,
rituals, and shared experiences. These would become
opportunities where the child learned how to solve
simple problems, enrich creativity, use imagination,
and engage their curiosity and memory. Traditional
practices set out to ensure that children are socialized
very early in Afrocentric virtues and values. This
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
culture was to enable them to function and develop
and start contributing to quality communal life while
experiencing happiness, joy, success, and love, among
others. Accordingly, Prof. Nsamenang shed light on the
need to appreciate the rich and stimulating interactive
African context during early childhood where all
socialization agents strive to act and interact with
children.
Ejuu (2019) noted that Nsamenang’s thoughts revolved
around a theory that most Africans” education was
based upon curricula and pedagogies that mimicked
the West and worked with teachers who failed to keep
“sight of the soil out of which the existing African
society had grown and the human values it produced”
(Kishani, 2001, p. 37). In his inaugural, international
volume, Human Development in Cultural Context: A Third
World Perspective (1992), Prof. Nsamenang made the
case that “the exclusion of Third World ecologies […]
limits the evolution of a truly international psychology.”
Prof. Nsamenang was a pioneer in this ECD and Child
Development landscape – one who sought to stay
such discrepant power imbalances – to add to, not
take away.
Pence (2019), in his tribute to Prof. Nsamenang,
lamented that while his stay with us was too short,
perhaps it was long enough to create a staying power
that will ensure African scholars” voices are heard
globally, and that they will become signicant for
the future of Africa’s, and the world’s, children. These
imbalances require great eorts to stay that power
to have other voices be heard, other ideas pursued,
other possibilities imagined – not only in support of
nurturing an African base of expertise and knowledge,
but in providing benet to the world more broadly
whose claims for “universals” ring hollow in knowledge
landscapes bereft of “the local” and “the other”.
Conclusion
The accounts narrated in the two sections above
provide a glimpse of how the early childhood
development sector was transgured through the
leadership and dedication to ECD in Africa and
globally by these inuencers. Certainly, there are
other inuencers in the elds of ECD in Africa and
international development than those noted in
this chapter. Often organizations are cited for their
contributions to ECD, yet often it is not an organization
so much as key individuals within an organization who
are able to place ECD high on the agenda, and whose
departure can signal a change in priorities. The eld
of ECD globally has undergone many such changes
over the years and the recent COVID-19 pandemic has
provided an opportunity to revisit the past and tell the
stories of these individuals who inuenced the sector
in dierent ways.
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Chapter 4
15 Bame Nsamenang, a key gure in this chapter, typically used “Africentric” instead of the more commonly used “Afrocentric”. Accordingly,
references re Prof. Nsamenang’s work use Africentric in this chapter.
African perspectives
and africentrism
Patrick Makokoro and
Thérèse Tchombe
Introduction
This fourth and nal chapter of Section 2 discusses
African perspectives on, and approaches to child
development and the need for an “Africentric”15
vision and understanding to be brought forward
when implementing ECD programmes in Africa
post-COVID-19. The late African scholar Bame
Nsamenang (deceased 20 February 2018) published
Human Development in Cultural Context: A Third World
Perspective in 1992. The volume did not create “waves”
when it was published. However, over time the work
by Nsamenang came to be seen as prescient for a key
ECD facet that was in danger of being left behind: the
role of Africentric approaches to and understandings
of child development. This work by Nsamenang has
been a fundamental inspiration for a “new generation”
of African scholars.
In undertaking doctoral-level research, Patrick
Makokoro (co-author) observed that “there has
been a resurgence of the use of Western-driven
epistemologies at the expense of existing knowledge
bases on child development in Africa” (Makokoro,
2021). This inspired the co-author to propose this
chapter to the editorial team with the premise that
scholars, practitioners, and stakeholders in the ECD
sector on the continent can revisit African knowledge
bases, identify lessons drawing from the past. With
such a lens, ECD in Africa would be grounded in
Indigenous epistemologies and be able to build back a
much better post-COVID-19.
Early Childhood Development (ECD) is increasingly
found on national agendas in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA),
as pointed out by Pence and Nsamenang. (2008).
Illustrating these views, they indicated that important
actions were taken during many signicant meetings
such as the Third African International Conference
on Early Childhood Development in Accra, Ghana,
in May-June 2005, the Eighteenth Congress of the
Association for the Development of Education in
Africa (ADEA) held in Gabon in March 2006, and the
launching of activities for the Education for All (EFA)
including the Dakar Framework for Action (2000). For
example, the Dakar Framework in Goal1, Articles 30
and 31, highlighted the importance of quality in early
childhood by highlighting the need for all children
to be nurtured in safe and caring environments that
promote healthy growth and development. With this
goal in place, governments were urged to establish
policies that would provide the necessary mechanisms
that were both exible and suciently comprehensive
to address quality and appropriate development
during early childhood.
Pence and Nsamenang (2008) in their Working
Paper51 on Early Childhood Development contributed
to “a case for early childhood development in sub-
Saharan Africa”. This increased awareness of critical
issues of fundamental importance regarding early
childhood care and development in Africa, opening
new Africentric views to the academic platform.
Their analysis of the international declarations and
frameworks showed that Africa had well-grounded
systems for childrearing and holistic early childhood
care and development. Early childhood rearing in
Africa is based on an informal, well-dened, expected
prole based on an Indigenous and holistic view
of socially competent persons. These practices and
proposed explanatory theories can help guide
programming, practices, and research.
This chapter focuses on historical perspectives pre-
COVID-19, Indigenous Knowledge and value systems,
and African beliefs about pregnancy. It also considers
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
how Africans have managed health crises, discusses
knowledge generation using Africentric approaches,
and raises arguments on why the Sankofa call for
African Leadership in ECD is vital at this point in history.
Historical perspectives pre-COVID-19
Historical viewpoints inform the fact that traditional
African perspectives on development have a lot
to oer to contemporary child developmental
psychology and early childhood development.
Nsamenang (2008) postulated that the hegemonic
lens of the West failed to consider the intricacies
of not only what it meant to be an African child in
local and culturally specic contexts but also African
childhood in general. Through dierent narratives
about childhood and early childhood in Africa, this
chapter discusses the long-standing values and views
about what children experience during their early
development years. Nsamenang insisted on a position
that the seed of all future knowledge existed in the
mind right from birth. In an African context however, a
stimulating environment has historically been thought
to enhance and enrich the functioning of the mind.
Nonetheless, during colonial times there was a
perception by colonizers that Africans did not provide
stimulating environments for their children. Western
missionaries and European colonialists who came to
Africa to evangelize and to impose Western ways of
life did not acquaint themselves with what existed
in the Indigenous setting as regards childhood care
and development (Makokoro, 2021). Often the Biblical
reference would have been “train up a child in the
way he should go, and when he is old he would not
depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). This would then have an
emphasis on a verbal, instructional process – a “school”,
as opposed to a less formal observational approach
that grants the child the agency for self-learning. This,
it seems, was a strategy that was used to enslave the
African mind and destroy the critical thinking abilities
of young children and their families.
Indigenous knowledge
and value systems
As authors, we take the Sankofa approach to revisit the
history of Indigenous Knowledge (IK) and draw from
it useful lessons for current and future generations.
Nsamenang (2007) posited that developmental
learning through participatory models in an eco-
cultural context reected the recognition by African
Indigenous cultures of the dierent phases of
children’s emerging minds. Manda (2008) argued that
African traditional values were grounded in communal
philosophies and socialization skills that were instilled
in children very early in their development, hence
building on their inner strength to cope with life’s
challenges. The socialization process was a key part of
learning for children, with Serpell (1996) noting that
African child development emphasized the social
values of sharing, reciprocity, and respect for elders
with a person acting in a system of social relations.
Nsamenang and other scholars paved the way to
ensure that Africentric perspectives in early childhood
were visible in scholarship and academia. For example,
Nsamenang was a professor with the Early Childhood
Development Virtual University (ECDVU), which was
used as a vehicle to elevate local knowledge and
contextually relevant evidence of ECD practice in
Africa. The ECDVU (discussed in Section 3, Chapter 3)
created a new platform that put Africentric Indigenous
knowledge on the academic and research platform.
The ECDVU provided a means to develop the capacity
of African ECD practitioners and inform others in the
Minority (“Developed”) World about African early
childhood theories and practices while at the same
time illustrating the limitations of discourses on
universality. What this highlighted was the centrality of
the cultural-situational perspective in understanding
early childhood development.
In relation to the actual implementation of
programmes, Schafer et al. (2004) argued that the
provision of ECD in Africa could be seen through
the lens of Indigenous knowledge philosophies that
existed prior to their transformation by colonization.
Adeyemi and Adeyinka (2003) posited that traditional
African education was specialized and that educational
practices equipped children to full various obligations
within society. Tchombe (2019a) argued that African
participative pedagogies through engaging children
in daily chores enabled them to learn, construct and
develop their competencies, skills, and attitudes.
Ogbu (1994) premised that even when children were
not instructed, they extracted knowledge, skills and
intelligence that existed in their culture. This notion
was supported by Tchombe (2019a), who noted that
children in African communities rarely learned through
instruction but would learn better through activities
that enabled them to initiate, create and discover.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Africentric rich cultural beliefs and perceptions
about the signicance and importance of a child,
more especially the Indigenous values attached to
development during the early years for building a
socially competent person, made the period critical.
This was augmented by the belief of perceiving the
child as a gift from God with ancestral benediction
that motivated the spirit and eort for good parenting.
On this account, training built on holistic principles
and education that was communal addressed actions
and activities early enough through valuable routines
and rituals, in which by age 3, children were already
anticipating and responding to the needs of others
while engaging in errands. Tchombe (2011) argued
that these African values could be taught to children
through activities that would be based on the interest
of children, and these were expressed through the
“oral tradition of storytelling, dialogue, narratives and
mediated mutual reciprocity” (p. 212). In advancing the
notion of mediated mutual reciprocity, discussed later
in this chapter, Tchombe postulated that elders and
children learned from each other through input and
output processes with no one being superior in the
learning process.
Understanding Africentric perspectives
The period of early childhood, according to
Nsamenang (2005), stretched between the
developmental periods of social apprenticeship and
social entrée. In the early years of these developmental
stages, the child was expected to recognize social
roles, acknowledge self in connectedness, develop a
high sense of peer interaction and perform household
chores. Fortes (1938), writing about the Tallensi in
Ghana, commented on how age and gender were
considered very early, especially as the child began
to participate in the daily events at home and the
community. We attempt here to chart the Africentric
paths in socialization from infancy to illustrate how
early parents began educating the children. For
instance, the focus of children from 0 to 2 was on
bodily protection (clothing), feeding, toilet training,
good sleeping programme, rich language input
(object names), and much infant indulgence. The
rich language environment was a function of the
communal socialization approach to early childhood in
Africa that encouraged and provided a stimulating rich
interactive environment.
Accordingly, the language precocity (Warren, 1972) of
the African child was demonstrated by the richness of
the environment wherein dierent activities required
communication. From age 2 to 3 there was more care
done to restrict the child’s movements. By the age
of 4 African children assumed responsibilities and
even taught younger siblings. Children as young as
4 or 5 would fetch water, but today where there are
wheelbarrows, life is made easier for some of them.
Generally, therefore, from 3 to 6, the child in most
cases learned how to care for domestic animals (when
any are kept), to maintain self-hygiene, and how to
bathe. Children at that age are also taught how to feed
younger siblings, carrying younger siblings on their
backs, and singing lullabies to their younger siblings
for them to sleep. Children run errands, do farm work,
are taught moral values of sharing, empathy, feeling
and respect for others. Other activities that children are
involved in include gardening and setting the table,
washing plates and even their clothes, and cleaning
the house or compound.
Rogo, Newcombe, Fox, and Ellis (1980) found that in
many cultures, children aged 5 to 7 are assigned and
do perform family chores such as tending animals or
younger children. By the age of 8 years, children have
become highly skilled in using talk combined with
manual demonstrations, verbal feedback, explanations,
and guiding younger learners. African children learn
by participation, observation, and imitation (Tchombe,
1993). This is the rst level of competence geared at
producing a well-adjusted and competent individual.
Socio-moral activities are addressed through self-
control in play, cooperation, respect, and training
in storytelling. Running errands is a way of utilizing
the shared community responsibility for childrearing
by giving children opportunities to interact in the
community (Ogunnaike and Houser, 2002).
Very early in life, children are assisted to develop the
ability to establish positive interpersonal relationships,
an important early developmental action with their
human and physical environments encompassing
both intra- and interpersonal processes. They learn
to live communal lives and to share (Fiske, 1991) and
be collaborative and supportive. This African way
of doing things seems to nd historical support in
the works of Tarde (1900) and Baldwin (1894) both
of whom perceived imitation as the basis of society,
socialization, and the formation of the self.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
A basic belief inuencing African socialization assumes
that individuality and autonomy are essentially
relational and interdependent – contrary to Western
beliefs in the importance of individualism and
independence. Ties between individuals are not
lost, because everyone is expected to look after self
and others in the immediate and extended family
contexts. Thus, from birth, children are educated
and initiated into strong cohesive in-groups
whereby individuals learn to protect and to be loyal.
Ethnographic observations (Witkin and Berry, 1975)
show children’s engagement in activities that impact
their development. Early studies on childhood in the
African context, specically in Nigerian and Cameroon,
illustrated children’s teaching skills as well as how
these increased through play (Durojaiye, 1975).
Older siblings continue to be great agents that help
younger siblings to participate in family tasks. Children
are socialized through these values which begin with
caring for siblings, eating together from the same
plate and praying together. These activities, which are
modelled by parents and family members, provide the
basis for learning and for continuity, demonstrating
family solidarity and communal spirit. Siblings
constitute the basis for establishing relationships
and the practice of social values. An evolving sense
of interdependence among siblings develops skills
for interpersonal relationships and understanding.
Children learn about their environments with the help
of others in the process of socialization. Beginning
from the early years, children are integrated into the
economic, social, cultural, and physical activities going
on in their environment. This leads us to draw on the
beliefs on conception and pregnancy. There is no
doubt that Africans are particular about the period of
pregnancy by ensuring that as much as possible the
beginning point of life is well cared for and protected.
African beliefs about pregnancy
The concern for quality child development starts
during pregnancy when the unborn child is protected
through regulations about the woman’s behaviours
regarding what and how she eats and the type of
work tasks she engages in. Beliefs about pregnancy
inform the value Africans continue to place on
children. In some cultural contexts, purication rites
are administered to a woman during her pioneer
pregnancy to limit the degree of blood loss at
childbirth. In some cultures, pregnant mothers are
not supposed to walk at night to avoid the foetus
from being bewitched. Expectant mothers are also
not allowed to look at masquerades otherwise the
pregnancy will result into a miscarriage. These beliefs
may seem faulty, but what is being demonstrated by
these practices is how protective the culture is of the
mother and her unborn child.
For every African family, pregnancy brings a sense of
pride because it is the fruit of a successful marriage.
Most importantly, it is viewed as a sign of fertility and
ensures continuity of the bloodline. The children are
seen as the future generation of their communities
and are therefore well catered for so that they will be
able to intelligently represent the community in ways
acceptable to the culture, customs, and traditions of
the people. In most African communities, the birth
of a child is marked by birth rites and traditional
sacrices. Naming ceremonies are accompanied
by such sacrices to ensure proper development,
resonating with the cultural legacies of their ancestors.
Accordingly, the pregnant woman is expected to live
a healthy and happy life free from tension and anxiety
during the period of gestation. As we look at health
issues, we now provide an insight into how this was
addressed in the community context.
Africans managing health crises
As we look past the COVID-19 period, we must
consider cultural lessons deeply engrained in African
society. There is no denying that the many treatments
used today for treating or preventing COVID-19 were
employed by several ancient peoples throughout
Africa. Before the European invasion of Africa, medicine
in what is now Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa, to
name just a few places, was more advanced than
medicine in Europe (Tchombe, 2016). As pointed out
by Van Sertima (1983), some of these practices were
later conrmed in the twentieth century, including
the use of plants to heal pain, diarrhoea, and malaria.
Historically, using indigenous knowledge, Africans
identied medicinal plants which they then boiled,
covered, and drank. They also covered themselves
with thick blankets to release illness. These practices
have been in existence before COVID-19. The issue
of vaccination, which is the major treatment to help
with the management of COVID-19, had existed prior
to colonization, though not specically for COVID-19.
Vaccines are used to stimulate a person’s immune
system to produce immunity against a specic disease,
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
protecting the person from that disease. The mode
for administration of a vaccine is usually through
needle injections as is the case with Western medical
practices. In some cases, it can also be administered
orally. For this chapter, narratives on traditional
approaches for curative and preventive methods were
sought through oral tradition.
From them, we learned that dierent curative and
preventive approaches were employed based on
underlying cultural belief systems guiding and
directing early childhood care. Generally, mothers give
monthly enemas using specic plants and perhaps red
soap to clean the bowls of the children to avoid the
contraction of any disease. This was to ensure a sort of
internal hygiene mostly done during early and middle
childhood. Some of the plant leaves were squeezed
and boiled for children to drink; for example, the use of
“Fever Grass” or lemongrass for malaria and others. In
terms of curative measures, say in the case of measles,
“Kalaba chalk” (known in formal English as “calamine
lotion”) is applied on the whole body of the child and
sometimes palm wine is splashed all over the sick
child. After this the sick child is isolated from the others
to avoid contamination. Other such treatments are
given through cuts on the body and mixed leaves and
kernel or other oils are massaged through the cuts in
the hope that it will enter the blood stream and heal.
Above all high-quality food, though very traditional,
was oered to the growing child for immunity and as
preventive measures. Disease prevention increasingly
involved education and isolation, focusing on the
regulation of social life as a means to control the
transmission of newly identied microbial pathogens.
African families have always known how to protect
children in cases when a child contracted one of
the diseases such as measles, mumps, etc. Such a
child is usually isolated and asked to maintain social
distancing, for example, the child is fed alone and
quarantined in the care of an adult. Additionally,
washing of hands has always been insisted upon,
especially as mothers and older siblings managed
hygiene during toilet training of younger children.
The only strategy not used was the wearing of a mask.
Thus, there are many lessons that Africans drew from
their past as they managed the COVID-19 pandemic
in their communities. The Africentric perspectives
are therefore key in providing insights into the way
children were raised, protected, and cared for. It is
important for knowledge informing early childhood
development in Africa to be generated using these
philosophies and ways of being that have been
inherent within the continent for generations.
Research using Africentric lens
Scholars should not negate or forget that Africans
had and still have a viable informal education that
starts during gestation. Sadly, even attempts at cross
cultural psychological research have been about the
production of psychological knowledge favouring
Western epistemologies (Tchombe et al., 2013). Thus,
ECD in Africa ought not to be seen as a period of
intervention and remediation but a period when
traditions and values are inculcated for sustainability.
In a study by Tchombe and Mbangwana (2013)
on socialization models for transitions from early
childhood to adolescence in African migrant families
in Europe and America it was found out that African
migrant families in Europe and America adopt dierent
socialization models within dierent developmental
phases. For example, focusing on the early
transmission of cultural values of their home country
was considered vitally important before becoming
exposed to the dominant host culture as children
start formal education. Western ethnographers (Atran
and Sperber, 1991) expected to nd adults telling
children about the culture: teaching them how to do
things, explaining the reasons for certain activities and
instructing the children about basic precepts. They
were surprised to nd that very little of this took place;
children learned most of their cultures through their
personal initiative, without any formal pedagogy.
This value-driven approach has never been adequately
captured even though scientic consensus from the
Western view exaggerates the compartmentalization
of child development. The approach separates
physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional dimensions of
development, narrowing the rich philosophical African
worldview. It is time the distinctive features of African
socialization patterns and styles be made more visible
to the Western world to erase the decit held model
caused by an ignorance of indigenous knowledge.
This chapter underscores the unique nature of
eco-sociocultural and spiritual contextual realities
conditioning childrearing knowledge, attitudes, and
practices. Once this is clearly understood, much of the
research carried on early childhood development will
adopt a culturally sensitive method. From Nsamenang’s
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
works, we observed distinctive African approaches to
child socialization focusing most especially on social
responsibility. The focus of African education during
childhood is to develop social competence skills,
self-esteem, good moral values, social behaviours,
spiritual behaviour, communal spirit, interpersonal
understanding, and a positive attitude towards work
(Mbuagbaw 1984; Gwanhfogbe, 2011). As pointed out
by Onwauchi (1972) in Agya Boakye-Boaten, (2010),
Indigenous African societies educate their children
through ongoing processes of life in their traditional
customs and values. Other areas include a sense of
interdependence, endurance, and patience. They
play together, supporting those needing help and
participating in other age group activities that are
valuable.
Parental childrearing reects a changing trend but still
ensures the maintenance of cultural values and norms.
At the same time, we must try to blend the constraints
and creativity of Indigenous practices and modernity
as these unfold in everyday lives of children during this
stage in develop. Almost every African ethnography
of children or socialization comments on the fact that
children take the primary initiative and responsibility
for working out for themselves how to participate
in their culture; a position strongly advocated by
Tchombe (2019b) in the mediated mutual reciprocity
(MMR) theory. Understanding the nature and
characteristics of how the child/learner at all levels
of development engages in the process is what
the MMR addresses focusing on the child/learners
as co-constructor and co-structurer of knowledge
within a context, where all involved are co-learners.
In the MMR approach the child/learner demonstrates
the capacity and cognitive authority to give, receive,
recognize, negotiate, redene, redirect, inuence, and
exchange ideas, thus making meaning, learning, and
developing. Children observe, imitate, experiment,
and participate. Imitation is therefore seen as the
principal source of mental development. Interestingly,
Baldwin’s (1894) theory of imitation addresses such
a concept of agency. Baldwin emphasized that
children imitate selectively and generalize from
their imitations, learning how to learn and to invent.
Donald (1995) opined that exceptional capacity for
social learning through imitation is where a human
adaptation appears to be an essential foundation for
the development of culture. Nsamenang and Serpell
(2014) made mention of vast gaps in research on
African early childhood. They identied constraints
characterized by limitations in databases and in the
range of authorship and of culturally appropriate
research. Thus, the socio-economic and cultural
context of socialization and conditions of African
children, especially those in the rural areas, requires
much more research and documentation. These
conditions are uniquely Indigenous, as they hold rich
values for understanding African local knowledge,
attitudes, and practices for childrearing. Nsamenang
and Serpell (2014) contend that the Indigenous
cultures of rural African families contain many
elaborate and eective, informal socialization practices
for nurturing such competencies.
We note that in the absence of African formulated
and generated research and knowledge in the
implementation of early childhood development
programmes, Western research epistemologies
will continue to be seen as the “gold standard”
(Nsamenang, 2008) or best practice for
implementation over local Indigenous knowledge
(Penn, 2000). The notion, as Chilisa (2005) pointed
out, of not using the Western research epistemologies
to assume universal validity in implementation of
knowledge systems is an important departure point
from idolizing or seeing anything from the West as
a best practice. African researchers must rise to the
occasion by generating and documenting African
child development practices and sharing with the
global community. This will counter the proliferation of
Western research and imposition of philosophies that
are not reective of African communities and value
systems.
Teo (2010) termed this implementation of Western
research philosophies over Indigenous knowledge
as epistemological violence. Teo (2010) dened
epistemological violence as a situation “when
theoretical interpretations regarding empirical
results implicitly or explicitly construct the Other
as inferior or problematic, despite the fact that
alternative interpretations, equally viable based
on the data, are available” (p. 298). Oppong (2015)
opined that epistemological violence is a result of
the utilization of what is viewed as “global standards”
to present perspectives of human development and
experiences as universal. The result of utilising this
view of childhood development would as Oppong
(2019) argued “lead to situations in which African
children, adolescents and adults are presented as
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
weak, inferior and needing interventions to improve
when compared to Eurocentric ideals as if those are
universal” (p. 294).
Grande (2004), Yellow Bird (2005) and Kincheloe
(2007) argued that there is a great need for dialogue
between critical theorists, Indigenous scholars, and
Indigenous peoples. This is especially important if
we are to understand the evolution of ECD in Africa.
Smith (2003) proposed a four-direction Indigenous
research agenda, where decolonization, healing,
transformation, and mobilization are incorporated
into practices and methodologies. This new view
focuses on survival, recovery, development, and self-
determination. The agenda is focused strategically on
the goal of self-determination of Indigenous peoples.
Self-determination in a research agenda is more than
a political goal to embrace goal of social justice which
is expressed through and across a wide range of
psychological, social, cultural, and economic terrains
(Smith, 2003).
In recognizing the value and importance of
Indigenous knowledge systems, Coe (2005) argued
that the wealth of the traditional knowledge and
methodologies needed to be incorporated into early
childhood development curricula and practices. This
is what we argue should be part of building back
better, a true Sankofa perspective, of looking back and
incorporating that which we hold dear as Africans.
African scholars should be guided by the Indigenous
knowledge that exists on the continent as part of
building back. We now discuss what this may entail.
Africentrism and building back
Traditional African Systems for ECD
Pence and Nsamenang (2008), as well as Prochner and
Kabiru (2008) observed that early childhood services
had a long history dating as far back as the 1820s
with colonial masters and their infant schools. The
Indigenous African pattern of childhood diers from
the imported model. It has its own organizational
coherence that is usefully oriented towards purposes
dierent from those of foreign origin (Nsamenang,
2005b). There are three distinct heritages of ECD in
Africa namely: the Indigenous African, the Islamic-
Arabic, and the Western. Mazrui refers to these three
as Africa’s Triple Heritage (1986). Schafer et al., (2004)
argued that the provision of ECD in SSA could be
seen through the lens of Indigenous knowledge
philosophies that existed prior to their transformation
by colonization. Adeyemi and Adeyinka (2003) posited
that traditional African education was specialized and
that educational practices equipped children to full
various obligations within society.
Kaputa (2011) noted that within an African
epistemology the community determined what
should be taught and assessed based on real life
tasks. Children’s understanding of self is developed
through relationships and in the context of their
families and communities. “Relationships engage
children in the human community in ways that help
them dene who they are, what they can become,
and how and why they are important to other people”
(National Scientic Council on the Developing Child,
2004, p. 1). This introduces the African child to the
value of belonging and being connected very early.
Adding to this, Nsamenang (2012) argued that peer-
group relationships and peer culture were central to
children’s development. Nsamenang (2007) posited
that developmental learning through participatory
models in an eco-cultural context reected the
recognition by African Indigenous cultures of the
dierent phases of children’s emerging minds.
In advancing the rationale for what he termed
an Afrocentric epistemological lens in childhood
development, Nsamenang (2005) argued that African
societies depended on their ability to socialize their
children in the art of survival and sustenance through
core cultural values. Tchombe (2011) argued that
these African values would be taught to children
through activities that would be based on the interest
of children, and these were expressed through the
“oral tradition of storytelling, dialogue, narratives and
mediated mutual reciprocity” (p. 212). In advancing
the notion of mediated mutual reciprocity, Tchombe
postulated that elders and children learned from each
other through input and output processes with no one
being superior in the learning process.
The Sankofa call for African leadership
in ECD
As co-authors, our Sankofa call is for African leadership
in ECD that is indicative of the value of these “hidden
practices” that are creative and innovative for
excellence in early childhood development. These
ways, practices and innovative ways of child rearing
and development should be made visible in the
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
academic arena through research. Though Western
practices persist in ways that are evocative of our
colonial past, it is time the voices calling for such
Africentric leadership in ECD to identify the channel
for these to be heard through informing policies,
establishing new programmes responding to the
education of children despite the numerous socio-
political and cultural challenges that have disrupted
quality, equitable, and inclusive education.
There is the widely held-view that Africa has one of the
lowest rates of access to early childhood education
in the world. Today, there seems to be broad eorts
in Africa to create community early childhood
development centres in rural areas. Besides addressing
some basic academic skills through appropriating
teaching practices, caring strategies in these practices
must be enriched to ensure mental and physical
wellness early so children can develop resilient skills.
The most important developmental task in the
African context focuses more on building positive
interpersonal relationship that addresses values
which if well cultivated enhances the development
of cognitive skills. Such practices create opportunities
for each child to have the chance to excel. In this
African world view, intelligence is seen from a broader
perspective void of formal approaches that focuses
on psychometric concept without the building on,
learning and becoming with long-term gains. All these
ways provide fodder for rebuilding the early childhood
development sector on the African continent
post-COVID-19.
Conclusion – building back better
Attention to how children are born and reared in
traditional African societies should be everyone’s
concern. Bearing in mind Pence and Nsamenang’s
(2008) conclusion that childhood is not the same
across time nor across cultural space, there is a great
need for authentic research to be carried out to
establish how children grow up in traditional African
societies. Schooling in diverse societies is generally
perceived to be dysfunctional because it fails to
guarantee the cultural identity of African children,
breaks inter-generational continuity in the core values
and traditions that dene uniqueness of Africans. This
denies newer generations the competencies and
values necessary to function productively within their
own local contexts and realities (Rogers, 2010). Africa
must revisit its past and carry forward that which
supported child development right from conception.
As Nsamenang (1992) noted, the foundation of all
aspects of child development in the African context lay
in the family even before the child was born.
We have outlined throughout this chapter how
African communities traditionally raised their children
through a socialization process that involved the
surrounding family and neighbours. It was through
this environment that a child would be taught all the
necessary tasks not only for their survival but also
based on the community’s norms, beliefs, values, and
culture. In these communities too, some individual
community members had specic roles to play
but it was clearly understood that raising children
was everyone’s job. In fact, the notion that it takes
a village to raise a child can be seen through this
active participation by everyone in the community
(Swadener, Kabiru, and Njenga, 1997). This is in line
with the argument proered by Bronfenbrenner (1979)
that a child develops within an ecological system of
relationships, with the family being an immediate
integral part of that ecological system. Children
learned and were taught as they participated in the
daily living activities in the home, through ceremonies,
direct instructions, observation, and apprenticeship
(Ejuu, 2012; Kingsley, 2010; Prochner and Kabiru, 2008).
This is an important reection as we move into a post-
COVID-19 world, implementing ECD programmes on
the continent.
Ng’asike and Swadener (2019) argue that the
implementation of early childhood programmes
in Africa should be led by African values and
philosophies and that culture should not be treated
as tokenistic but be an enriching addition to the
learning experience in African early childhood
development programmes. Adding to that, Swadener
(2004) argued that it becomes important to utilize
a process of decolonization in which research and
performance of valuing, reclaiming, and foregrounding
Indigenous voices and epistemologies is carried out.
As Smith (1999) posited, the unnished business
of decolonization needs to be intensied through
actively struggling for the survival of Indigenous
languages, knowledges, and culture.
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SECTION 3
Assembling
“all hands on deck”:
2000-2010
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Introduction
Alan Pence
The chapters
Section 2 included mention of the First African
International ECD Conference, held in Kampala,
Uganda, in September 1999. The Uganda Conference
is the lead-in for Chapter 5. The present author, using
notes and conference materials collected as an
organizer for Kampala, an advisor and support person
for the 2002 Conference in Asmara, Eritrea, and a
co-organizer for the 2005 Conference in Accra, Ghana,
was joined by co-author Emily Vargas-Barón, the
organizer for the 2009 Dakar, Senegal, Conference, in
writing Chapter 5.
Chapter 6 focuses on the importance of an African
Network for ECD, the ADEA Working Group on
Early Childhood Education, Care and Development
(WGECD). Although organized in the early 1990s (see
Chapter 2), it combined with one other Network (the
ECDNA) in the late 1990s, to become the sole ECD
Network in Africa throughout the 2000s and into the
early 2010s. Patrick Makokoro is joined by Rokhaya
Diawara in describing the work of the WGECD.
Chapter 7, the nal chapter in this section, describes a
graduate-level ECD Leadership programme, the Early
Childhood Development Virtual University (ECDVU).
The ECDVU was discussed and supported at the 1999
Kampala Conference and commenced delivery in
2001. That multi-country, cohort-based, and hybrid
(online and face-to-face) programme completed three
deliveries in the 2000s and went on to complete two
more by 2016 (one in partnership with the University
of Ibadan in Nigeria). The University of Ibadan then
went on to complete a solo delivery in 2018, with
funding from the Nigerian Government. Prof. Esther
Oduolowu, programme leader at U. Ibadan, joins the
present author in discussing the history of the ECDVU
and the U. Ibadan ECD leadership programme.
While each of the initiatives noted above was
important in its own right, the advances achieved
for ECD in Africa in the 2000s was largely the result
of a synergy produced across these initiatives. In turn,
that synergy was achieved through a combination:
seeing ECD as a multiple systems undertaking; creating
strategies to bridge those systems; and appreciating
the importance of partnering relationships within
all facets of ECD. With these understandings and
dynamics in place, the potential to achieve meaningful
and lasting capacity was greatly enhanced.
Systems, relationships, synergies,
and capacity
Important experiences
Appreciating systems is fundamental to understanding
ECD, and fortunately one of the most useful
introductions to systems-thinking arose from the eld
of child development: Prof. Urie Bronfenbrenner’s
ecological theory of human development (1974;
1979). In many respects, Bronfenbrenner’s ideas
were swimming against the academic currents of
his time. The majority of the research regarding
children’s development was lab-based, produced by
Western academic institutions. And Bronfenbrenner
critiqued the ndings from that research as: “the
science of the strange behaviour of children in strange
situations with strange adults for the shortest possible
period of time” (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 19). As a
graduate student working in a student-sponsored,
on-campus day care (not a lab) in the early 1970s,
Bronfenbrenner’s statement resonated deeply. The
children in the research literature were quite dierent
from the children and their families that I cared for and
interacted with daily.
Childhood in Bronfenbrenner’s theory was somewhat
like a set of nested dolls, or, to be more specic,
concentric circles; the micro-system at the centre
being systems that the child immediately interacted
with: family, childcare programme, neighbourhood
children, etc. Those micro-systems then formed a
meso-system – a set of interactive micro-systems,
which were in turn part of an exo-system, that existed
within a macro-system. All of the systems and system
levels were interactive with each other. Actions at the
macro-system level could impact a micro-system, and
vice-versa.
Seeing children arrive at the childcare centre each
morning, one could not help but notice that the
child’s “other contexts,” her other micro-systems,
mattered. They inuenced the child’s behaviour in
ways
that were noticeable upon arrival (and quite often
inuenced the parent’s behaviour in turn!). Ecological
theory allowed for complexity – actions seen and not
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
seen. It was a theory that “worked” – at many levels
and its inclusion of multiple systems within those
many levels also made sense. For example, when
licensing ocers arrived (which seemed, resonating
with Bronfenbrenner, “for the shortest possible periods
of time”), they sometimes had checklists in hand. The
checklists had some relevance within the centre itself –
how many of “this and that”. But they did not take into
account the black berry bushes blocks away accessed
by trails up the hill where we would be explorers and
“hunter-gatherers”, bringing our bounty back to the
group.
Bronfenbrenner’s sensitivity to contexts and to
systems, his desire to see how systems, as well as
individuals, through their interactions might precipitate
transformations, was invaluable for an invitation I
received almost 20 years later to work with First Nations
communities that comprised a large Indigenous Tribal
Council in a relatively remote area of northern Canada
(Pence et al., 1993). The reason for the invitation was
that the tribal leadership was concerned that the ECD
training that had been provided for them to date
had been only Western-based, and their question
was “What of us is in here?”. When evaluating the
curriculum, the response that came to mind was:
“Nothing.”
The journey the Indigenous partnership provided
reinforced the importance of context – and culture,
and ways to support leadership without being the
leader. It also opened the door to understanding
how an approach to ECD education and training that
not only appreciated but required that traditional
knowledge be included as part of a full, respectful,
and inclusive education, would impact far beyond
the in-community classroom to signicantly promote
broad-based community development. The Indigenous
Elder who evaluated the First Nations Partnerships
(FNPP) programme (see www.fnpp.org) noted how
communities themselves had been transformed
through the ECD education programme (Jette, 1993).
The success of the FNPP subsequently linked this
Canadian-based work with other Indigenous initiatives
globally – not only focused on ECD (Pence et al., 2007),
but with other advances in scholarly work important
not only for Indigenous peoples, but for all who
had experienced the yoke of colonization. One such
advancement was Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing
Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (1999).
Smith’s is a foundational volume that underscores
the importance of “local” voices, understandings, and
leadership for a science – a contextualized and locally
enabling science – that can truly make a dierence
in the lives of those too long marginalized and ill-
served by the continuing presence of colonizing
methodologies.
An invitation to Africa
In the mid-1990s the First Nations work attracted the
attention of UNICEF, and I was asked to bring my ideas
and experiences regarding ECD capacity development
to Africa. It was an exciting next step: an opportunity
to bring micro-level experiences that started in 1971
as a frontline childcare worker, that then led to being
a eld trainer and director of various child and youth
programmes before entering academia in 1981. Those
experiences subsequently expanded through years
of broadly based ECD research and development
work in Canada, including, as noted, partnering with
Indigenous First Nations communities across western
Canada. It was now on to a dierent location (Africa)
working with key leaders addressing ECD at a country
level.
For the capacity development work envisioned
for Africa the full ecology of ECD was important to
capture, from frontline caregivers through to the
political and policy levels, and from local governments
through to United Nations and other international
organizations and foundations. Many internationally
driven ECD projects are quite narrowly focused:
curriculum creation, programme establishment,
policy development, and engagement with quite
circumscribed local actors. Few are given the
opportunity to work with a very broad canvas that
incorporates the full range of Bronfenbrenner’s ecology.
Work on such a canvas requires many, indeed a
multitude, of painters. It should not, indeed it cannot,
be the vision of one, or even a few – those responsible
must work hard to ensure that the paint on the canvas
is the result of broad participation from the ground
up. To the greatest degree possible it should be the
expression, the realization of the local – for “the local”,
be it the country or the local community, are the ones
who will need to nurture and sustain it. If it is not
theirs, if they cannot see themselves in that creation
(as the First Nations had so objected), that ownership
will never be achieved no matter how much money
is poured into it, no matter how much outsider time it
consumes.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
This perspective, that our job as leaders is not to “paint
the picture”, but to work with and to support those who
seek an ECD picture, was central to the work discussed
in Section 3. From the conferences that sought to,
at the very least, give equal time to showcase what
Africa had accomplished (over highlighting only the
latest and greatest from outside), through a renewed
network that sought to empower local leaders, and
on to a continent-wide, graduate level ECD leadership
programme that was populated by those that each
country nominated, the intent was to generate and
support many, contextualized visions rather than impose
one vision for all – and to do this with those who
stayed in-country and in-context in order to better
serve, stimulate, create and motivate.
The mid-1990s entry point that led to the work in the
2000s was engagement with key, country-level ECD
leaders, many from dierent sectors in government,
but there were also key NGO-based leaders as well. All
were seen as being able to create “cascading benets”,
where they would not necessarily be the educator/
trainer for frontline care-providers, but they could
make the case for and support such programmes. All
came into the ECD Seminars as part of a cohort that
included diverse sectors and dierent organizations
from multiple countries. These leaders were both
learners and teachers, working alongside a faculty of
exceptional, globally experienced ECD innovators.
Over the several week period of the seminars,
the participants became an aectionate learning
community – one open to sharing their experiences
in ways they indicated had not been available for
most of them in their home locations: silos existed,
agendas existed, and chasms existed that blocked
communication and sharing. Given the knowledge that
was evident among the participants, it was clear that
capacity development was not best served by bringing
in “knowledge transfer experts” from outside but using
relationship-building and silo-breaching as means to
make accessible the expertise that existed within that
learning and sharing space.
Something similar was needed at the local level
– knowledge and competency that existed at the
local level was rarely tapped into by care-providers.
That same phenomena had been the case with
Indigenous communities in Canada, and it was only
after knowledge holders (typically respected Elders
in the community) were invited to become part of
the teaching and training team that students, and
the families they worked with, opened up to local
knowledge. Through doing so individuals began to
believe that they did have knowledge and skills to share
– with others in their community, and with their own
children. Recognition was required for empowerment
to proceed and capacity to grow.
It was important to create reinforcing messages
along these lines – from the identied ECD leaders
nominated to join ECD Seminars, “down” to those at
the front line, and “up” to those in decision-making
roles at the top of government – including elected
ocials. The conferences, the Networks and the ECDVU
all sought to extend these messages of competence
and sharing across all levels and all systems. They
sought to demonstrate it through each group being
highly involved with and supportive of the others. In
many cases, individuals served/participated in each
one of the three key “activities” discussed in Section3:
conferences, networks, and the ECDVU. Developing
close working relationships and sharing common
goals and objectives created a synergy across so many
of the activities of the 2000s that made that period
exceptional.
References
Bronfenbrenner, U. 1974. Developmental research,
public policy, and the ecology of childhood. Child
Development, Vol. 45, No. 1, pp. 1-5.
Bronfenbrenner, U. 1979. The ecology of human development:
Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA.,
Harvard University Press.
Jette, D. I. 1993. Meadow Lake Tribal Council Indian Childcare
Evaluation. Unpublished report to the Meadow Lake
Tribal Council.
Pence, A., Kuehne, V., Greenwood, M., and Opekokew, M.
R. 1993. Generative curriculum: A model of university
and First Nations cooperative, post-secondary
education. International Journal of Educational
Development, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 339-349.
Pence, A., Rodríguez, C., Greenwood, M., and Pacini-
Ketchabaw, V. 2007. Indigenous Approaches to Early
Childhood Care and Education: Introduction. Canadian
Journal of Native Education, Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 1-4.
Smith, L. T. 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and
Indigenous Peoples. London, Zed Books.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Chapter 5
African international
ECD conference series
Alan Pence and Emily
Vargas-Barón
Introduction
One of the last events to take place in the 1990s
was the September 1999 hosting of the First African
International ECD Conference in Kampala, Uganda. The
original plan had been that this would be the third in
a series of ECD Seminars co-hosted by the ECDNA and
the University of Victoria, with support from UNICEF
for the inaugural 1997 ECD Seminar held in Windhoek,
Namibia, and by UNICEF and the World Bank in
1998 in Banjul, Gambia. The third ECD Seminar was
planned for 1999 in East Africa, following the earlier
Southern and Western Africa events (see fuller history
in Chapter 7). That third African Seminar morphed into
the First African International ECD Conference, and
it was subsequently followed by three more related
conferences in 2002, 2005, and 2009.
This chapter provides rst an overview (see Table 5.1)
of the four conferences, then each is described in
greater detail providing: orienting aspects regarding
each conference, elements of its development,
planning priorities, key themes, organizational
characteristics, structural elements, key outputs,
and other facets, before providing a conclusion that
considers Sankofa relevant elements from each of the
conferences.
Throughout the chapter the importance of a
“connected series” of ECD conferences, each building
on what came before and each engaging with
key other initiatives and organizations, is evident.
The degree to which a conference, or conferences,
are open to and embedded in a broader set of
initiatives inuences the potential for cascading
synergies and benets. Such a multiple systems,
multiple organizations, inclusive approach to capacity
development is central to what such events can
achieve – in the past and in planning for the future.
“Stats”, dates, themes: an overview
of the four conferences
The table that follows (Table 5.1) provides a quick
overview of the 1999-2009 African International ECD
Conference Series. It shows a steady and impressive
growth in the numbers of participating countries
(19,28, 39, 42 – out of 46 countries in sub-Saharan
Africa); presenters (from 35 to 146); and participants
(from 200 to over 400, with an estimate of 600). The
table also indicates conference themes and conference
output documents.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Table 5.1 African International ECD Conference series: location, size, scope and related features
Conference
Location and
Theme
Date No.. of
Participants
No. of SSA
Countries
No. of
Presenters
Africa-based
participants
African
Government
Representation
Documents
Produced
Kampala, Uganda
Showcasing ECD:
Innovation and
Application in Africa
1999 200 19 35 75% 3 national ministers
Vol. 1:
Summary Rpt
Vol. 2: Conference
Papers
Asmara, Eritrea
Early Childhood
Interventions:
What Works and
Experiences Learned
2002 300
(est.) 28 60 80%
6 national ministers
and 1 international
minister
Asmara
Declaration on
Early Childhood
Development:
Framework for
Action
Accra, Ghana
Moving Early
Childhood Forward
in Africa
2005 300 39 80 85%
6 national ministers
and 27 international
ministers or reps
Communique:
Moving ECD
Forward in Africa
Dakar, Senegal
From Policy to Action:
Expanding Investment
in ECD for Sustainable
Development
2009
406 registered
but estimate
600
42 108 89%
35 Ministers,
2 Presidents
3 First Ladies
Communique: A
Call to Action
(Plus 5 additional
documents; see
Dakar text)
Source: Author
Conference sequence
1. Kampala, Uganda, 6-10 September
1999, “Showcasing ECD Innovation and
Application in Africa’
Uganda was selected for the third African ECD Seminar
due to a desire to host ECD Seminars in dierent
regions of Africa and because the World Bank indicated
that it would be able to provide support for the event
given the benet for a Government of Uganda and
World Bank project: The Uganda Nutrition and Early
Childhood Project (NECD).
The ECD Seminars involved bringing key, Africa-
familiar workshop leaders or presenters to the
workshop location, and at the same time encouraging
participants to see each other as resource people as
well – as colleagues facing and addressing similar
challenges in diverse parts of Africa. Through the earlier
seminars it had become clear how rarely ECD leaders in
Africa were in a position to learn from each other, even
when there were relevant innovations taking place in
neighbouring countries, let alone across the continent.
Given the amount of work involved in mounting an
ECD Seminar, and the desirability of sharing African
experiences more broadly, the challenge in expanding
from a seminar to a conference seemed doable, even
in the short time available: from December 1998 (the
idea) to September 1999 (the event). One key factor
inuencing the “do-ability” of shifting from a seminar
to a conference was that the NECD project already had
some sta on the ground in Kampala, and with the
Government of Uganda, the World Bank, and UNICEF all
supportive of an “expanded vision,” planning began.
Alan Pence was the conference planner for the
rst conference, an advisor for the second, and
co-planner for the third. The rst conference built on
his experiences and contacts from the ECD Seminars
while the second and third benetted not only from
earlier conferences but the growing number of skilled
individuals and countries participating in the Early
Childhood Virtual University (ECDVU). An initial step
in developing the rst conference was to dene its
“theme” and help guide its development. To a certain
degree that theme had already been identied through
earlier seminars – the need to hear from Africans about
African ECD innovations and to cast the net broadly
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
in bringing those voices and experiences together.
The title for the Conference became: Showcasing ECD
Innovation and Application in Africa.
A next step was to identify a venue. The grounds of a
conference facility close to the centre of Kampala with
an adjoining hotel and all within a park-like setting
was ideal, and the facility was secured for dates in
September. The room deemed suitable for the plenary
sessions was slightly smaller than hoped for, with a
capacity of approximately 200, but given that this
Africa-wide ECD Conference was a novel eort and
operating under a very short planning and delivery
timeline, the planners were not certain how many
would be able to attend – amoderately sized plenary
room might be best.
The Conference ran for ve days, from6 to
10September, and a number of those presenting were
invited to continue on in Kampala for a few days as part
of a Uganda-focused “ECD Seminar” in support of the
Ugandan Government and World Bank NECD Project.
From the outset this rst Conference was focused on
“learning from African experiences” – an under explored
resource throughout Africa (and indeed, the rest of the
world). The conference programme did not identify
“Keynote Presenters” – all were presenters with no
named keynotes, and virtually all were active in Africa.
In order to assist individuals to make connections
with each other, brief bios with contact points and
photos were requested of participants and shared at
the conference and in the Summary Report of the
Conference (Uganda Conference organizers, 1999a).
An evaluation distributed at the conclusion of the
conference asked: “What is the most important
accomplishment of the conference?”, and a participant
responded: “Gaining an African perspective!”. Objective
achieved!
Reecting on Kampala Conference. Kampala
was the “eldest” in what became a “family” of African
International ECD conferences. In certain ways it
dened an approach, a path, that would inuence
the conferences that followed, but at the same time
it is clear from the accounts below that each of the
conferences had its own time, purpose, and personality.
16 Some subsequent conferences did have “Keynoters,” but a post-Kampala philosophy statement regarding the conferences noted that
if/when Keynotes were included, they should be by Africans – reinforcing the depth, capacity and learnings within Africa. (A. Pence,
(November 2005), unpublished document re African ECD Conferences).
Perhaps the most consequential decision that was
made regarding Kampala is that the conference would
represent a departure from the very common (then
and now) format of “what the North has to tell the
South about how “to do” XXX” (choose your topic – in
this case ECD). This conference instead would be a
recognition and celebration of “ECD Innovation and
Application in Africa” – in other words, “what Africa has
to teach itself about ECD” (as well as, hopefully, other
parts of the world). The importance of context – local,
national, Africa – remained a dening characteristic of
the conference series over time.
The term “International” was included in the title, but
international was a reference primarily to other African
countries, and even more specically sub-Saharan
Africa. Again, the focus was on the importance of
learning from and about each other in Africa and
forming enduring connections with each other.
Another key aspect of planning the Kampala
Conference that would have a long-term inuence
on future conferences was the decision to reach
out to key NGOs, INGOs, donors, governments, and
others active in and contributing to ECD development
across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and ask them to
sponsor “their own” key presenters for the projects
they wished to “showcase” at the conference. While
the decision was a necessary one for balancing the
budget for the conference, an enduring legacy of the
request was a “partnerships” approach to mounting
each of the conferences that followed. As can be
seen in the programmes and reports produced for
each conference, the list of supporting and involved
organizations active in African ECD was extensive
– extending from those with familiar United Nations-
related names, to small-scale funders and organizations
active in various parts of Africa.
The Kampala Conference theme and philosophy called
out for a structure dierent than the familiar: Keynote
(often not based or focused on Africa), followed by
break-out presentations, then repeat. The relatively
small (200 participants maximum for the plenary room)
allowed for some changes in that approach, including:
no individuals designated as a Keynote Presenter
16
– all
were presenters; virtually all presenters were active in
Africa; participants could themselves initiate a “special
session” in the evenings; and many presenters brought
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
their own programme materials for a “display and
discussion time” available during certain parts of the
day in a large foyer.
In addition, a dierent “Chair” for each day provided
a welcome and an overview for the day, with two
90-minute plenary presentations in the a.m., followed
by a half hour for questions and discussions (with
some becoming quite “animated’!). Lunch also
took place in a shared room with four to six people
per table, facilitating new contacts and discussion
opportunities (with suggestions to change tables
daily). The afternoon typically featured a workshop,
demonstration, or discussion across a range of topics
and proposed initiatives. And, as per many conferences,
a number of excursions were possible on some late
afternoons.
The “outputs” of the Kampala Conference are somewhat
dierent than the conferences that followed. No
nal communique or declaration was issued, and
the number of Ministers and high-level government
ocials from outside Uganda was decidedly smaller
– particularly in comparison to the Accra (third) and
Dakar (fourth) Conferences.
The smaller size of the Conference, however, allowed
for enhanced opportunities to get to know key
ECD leaders from across Africa and for the many
organizations that sponsored the attendance of key
project leaders, to interact and share programme ideas.
The smaller scale also made it possible to share bio
and contact information – post-conference as well as
during the conference – and photos accompanying
that information were included in the Summary Report
(Volume I). Volume II from the Kampala Conference
included 33 full papers from the 13 conference sessions
(Uganda Conference organizers, 1999a; 1999b). Those
publications reected not only the Conference’s
intent to connect individuals across Africa, but also
to contribute to the very limited literature available
produced by Africans regarding ECD in Africa. The
themes addressed in Volume II range from: research
projects to education and training; programme delivery
to child health; ECD and community development to
diverse innovations in specic African countries.
At the conclusion of the very successful Kampala ECD
Conference, Marito Garcia, representing the World
Bank, made two signicant announcements:
1. It was the intent of the World Bank to provide
funds to support the development of a proposed
sub-Saharan Africa, leadership-focused Early
Childhood Development Virtual University (ECDVU),
that was subsequently launched in 2000/2001 (see
Chapter7).
2. One country in particular, Senegal (with a second
interested country, Eritrea, “in the wings”), indicated
their interest to host a “next” conference. (When it
was determined that Senegal would not be in a
position to host, a decision was made to go with
Eritrea, which took place in 2002).
In conclusion, the Kampala Conference had a very
particular “personality”. It was a smaller scale than what
would become (unplanned at the commencement
of the rst conference) a series of four conferences,
but one that emphasized the desirability of ECD
connecting across the continent and celebrating
Africa’s contribution to ECD – aprovider and not just
a recipient of ideas. The dierent “personalities”, and
characteristics of the subsequent conferences are
identied in more detail below.
2. Asmara, Eritrea, October 28-31, 2002,
“Early Childhood Interventions: What Works
and Experiences Learned’
As noted, Eritrea was selected as the host for the
Second African International ECD Conference after
it was determined that Senegal would not be in a
position to do so. The choice was reinforced by the
presence of a major Eritrean government and World
Bank project: Integrated Early Childhood Development
Project (2000-2005, US $49 million), and by the
participation of two very capable Eritrean ECD leaders
in the rst cohort of the ECDVU programme delivery in
Africa (2001-2004).
Those leaders (Abeba Habtom and Wunesh Bairu)
were key gures within the conference planning and
delivery group formed by the Eritrean Government. In
a manner very dierent from the organizing experience
in Uganda, senior ocials and Ministers within the
Eritrean Government were central to the character and
substance of the Second African International ECD
Conference.
The conference venue, the impressive Intercontinental
Hotel situated on the airport road outside central
Asmara, itself made a statement about Eritrea’s eorts
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
to build anew after a 30-year battle for independence
from Ethiopia (1961-1991), had succeeded just over ten
years earlier.
The conference was opened by Eritrean President H.E.
Issayas Aferworki and was closed by the Minister of
Labour and Human Welfare, H.E. Askalu Menkerios.
A news release from the conference noted a total
attendance of around 300, with 100 coming from
25countries outside of Eritrea.
The overarching structure featured three key workshop
themes which were carried across the three days:
1. Policy, Planning and Research
2. Community-based Interventions
3. Orphans and Vulnerable Children
The three workshop themes were addressed each day
by theme-related panel presentations and discussions.
Each panel session had a moderator and a recorder,
and the recordings were then shared back with all
participants during the twice-daily plenary sessions.
In reecting on the conference series, the emphasis
at Asmara on vulnerable children and community-
based interventions, the process of signicant
discussion and reporting forward, and the inclusion of
a signicant number of Eritreans possessed of a strong
spirit of post-war “building anew”, left an indelible
and unique memory. In addition to a conference
programme (Eritrea Conference organizers, 2002c),
which provided an overview of the workshops and
a number of papers from the panel sessions, a Final
Declaration was produced: “Declaration on Early
Childhood Development: Framework for Action” (Eritrea
Conference organizers, 2002a).
Reecting on Asmara Conference. Both the
structure and the organizing dynamic were quite
dierent for Asmara than they had been for Kampala
– yet, at the same time, there was a strong sense of
continuation from and connection with Kampala.
The opening lines of the “Asmara Child Development
Conference: Declaration, Overview and Synthesis
Statement” (2002b) notes that the Asmara, Eritrea
Conference followed the Kampala, Uganda Conference
held in 1999.
The theme for Asmara, “What Works and Experiences
Learned”, related closely to Kampala, which can be
understood as a continuing eort to learn from what
had already been tried in various parts of Africa (28
African countries attended Asmara – up from nineteen
at Kampala). Also continuing from Kampala was a
collaboration between government (in this case Eritrea)
and the World Bank.
The ADEA Working Group on ECD (WGECD) had
attended the Kampala Conference (along with the
ECDNA network) (see Chapters. 2 and 6) but had a
greatly heightened presence at Asmara (and became
a central pillar for Accra in 2005 and Dakar in 2009).
“On board” as well were a number of United Nations
organizations (including UNICEF and UNESCO), key
donors and other organizations that had provided
support in numerous ways to the Kampala Conference
– including providing presenters for initiatives they
were supporting in dierent SSA countries. Unlike the
experience in mounting the Kampala Conference,
various key ministries and their ocials played a central
role in planning the Asmara Conference.
In addition, with Asmara the availability of participants
in the then year-old ECDVU programme (two from
Eritrea and 26 from ten other SSA countries – see
Chapter 7) allowed for quite “direct and familiar”
contacts within those nine other countries. The ECDVU
colleagues not only helped promote the conference
within their home country but also helped to identify
key individuals for presentations and provided support
as needed for other basics in the development and
delivery of the conference. Such conference support
became a key feature for ECDVU participants over the
years.
An overview of the conference proceedings noted
key international documents (such as the Convention
on the Rights of the Child and the Dakar Framework
for Action), as well as research, that supported the
fundamental importance of the early years not only for
individual children’s development but for the broader
social and economic development of countries. That
being said, the Overview went on to note that ECD
“had been poorly represented in the education system
and other sectors of many countries. The overall
distribution and even worse the quality of the ECD
opportunities created are of low quality, inequitably
distributed and with poor allocation of resources.”
(Eritrea Conference organizers, 2002b). Such clear-eyed
and un-sentimental assessments as to the state of ECD
across many countries in Africa reected the “realism”
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
and the need for practical, pragmatic and experience-
based solutions to vexing problems that Eritrea hoped
to bring to the discussion of ECD at “their Conference.”
The structure for Asmara was fairly complex, with
moderators and reporters for each of an inter-
connected set of panel presentations and discussions,
taking place across the workshop themes. While
policy development and integrated ECD planning
played a role across all four conferences, the emphasis
on Community-based Approaches, Disadvantaged
Children and Children at-risk, and Indigenous
Knowledge and Child Upbringing was highlighted as
signicant issues for Eritrea (as well as certain other
SSA countries). These were topics that Eritrea was in a
position to provide useful experiences in addressing.
These were also topics that government wished to
share broadly in-country, as well as with other SSA
countries (hence the large percentage of Eritreans
attending the Asmara Conference).
A follow-up statement from the conference noted
that the key themes were structured “across three
levels of stock-taking which promoted a great deal of
participation and critical reection by all participants”
(Eritrea Conference organizers, 2002b). The process
of recording and then reporting out “thematic stock-
taking” to the full plenary, built across the days of
the conference. Various participants noted particular
emphases that Asmara brought to ECD discussions
in Africa including the importance of: Indigenous
knowledges, capacity-building, partnerships, vulnerable
children, and networking. In addition, visits to local
sites: toy workshop and orphanage, children’s group
home, ECCE Resources and Development Centre, as
well as cultural shows, lms, and visits to archaeological
sites, further grounded participants in the programmes
and contexts of Eritrea.
As part of the conclusion, syntheses statements,
developed across the course of the themes/panels/
plenaries discussions were read for each of the themes
addressed at the conference, and recommendations
were announced that would be included in a nal
Declaration on Early Childhood Development: Framework
for Action. In addition, key concepts were noted that
sought to help hold conference participants together
as they moved forward in anticipation of a third
Conference in the series to take place in 2005:
● understanding the child holistically
● integration of supports and services that are
seamless and complementary
● recognizing that children and families are members
of communities
3. Accra, Ghana, 30 May-3 June 2005,
“Moving Early Childhood Forward in Africa’
Following the Asmara Conference in 2002, two
countries, Ghana and Senegal, wished to host the
third conference in what had by then become a series.
Ministers from both countries met in Accra to discuss
which location would serve for the third conference
and a decision was reached to go with Accra in 2005,
and a fourth conference would be held in Dakar.
A background statement for the conference agged
the question why the earlier conferences had not
“resulted in greater benets to young children in
Africa or to a greater prominence of ECD in national
planning processes” (Ghana Conference organizers,
2005b, p. 1). The statement inuenced planning for
the third Conference, and it went on to note: “it is
with this in mind that the Third African International
ECD Conference […] is expected to increase political
commitment to ECD in Africa that will facilitate
action at country level[s] […] and focus on ECD with
the African Union and regional groupings” (Ghana
Conference organizers, 2005b, p. 1).
The World Bank, as a key supporter for the Kampala
and Asmara Conferences, continued as a supporter of
“the series”, and the Government of Ghana appreciated
that the ADEA Working Group on ECD (WGECD) was
prepared to play a strong role in helping to coordinate
the development of a third Conference. The WGECD
would do so in cooperation with the support of a
number of United Nations and other international
sponsors; the presence of a very strong local organizing
committee; and an experienced planning team led
by Judith Evans and Alan Pence, with Eveline Pressoir
(UNICEF) and Jeanette Volgelaar (WGECD).
As had been the case with Asmara, the local organizing
team was strongly represented both by the four grads
from the rst cohort of the ECDVU programme and
also by three additional Ghanaian participants entering
a second cohort. Those seven provided an excellent
communication stream with the then two cohorts
of ECDVU participants from, at that time, a dozen
countries across sub-Saharan Africa.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
The “need for action” focus for the third conference
led to a unique structure. The rst three days of the
conference were to be a “technical conference” whose
recommendations would be the basis for a two-day
ministerial consultation that followed, with a nal
day conclusion and conference communique: “A Call
to Action” (Ghana Conference organizers, 2005a).
Included within the “technical conference” were
three, key “thematic presentations” each delivered
as part of a plenary session. The rst was entitled:
“Ensuring Eective Caring Practices within the
Family and Community” delivered by Isatou Jallow,
Executive Director of the National Nutrition Agency
in Banjul, Gambia. The second was “Ensuring Access
to Quality Basic Services” delivered by Peter Mwarua,
Lead Researcher for Madrasa Resource Centre in East
Africa. The third was “Ensuring a supportive Policy
Environment” delivered by Agnes Akosua Aidoo, an
internationally recognized specialist in women’s and
children’s rights from Ghana.
The Accra Conference was signicantly larger than
earlier conferences, with a doubling of the number of
countries participating from 19 in 1999 to 39 in 2005;
an increase of 50% in participant numbers, from 200 at
Kampala to 300 in Accra; and an increase in Ministers
from six national and one international in Asmara, to six
national and 27 international at Accra.
The conference produced two sizeable, French and
English volumes:
1. Conference Proceedings (including a detailed
programme; policy recommendations from
technical meeting; ministerial consultation;
communique: Moving ECD Forward in Africa; and
list of participants) (Ghana Conference organizers,
2005b).
2. Thematic Papers (Ghana Conference organizers,
2005c).
Reecting on Accra Conference. Stella Etse, a
member of the ECDVU rst African cohort, was
designated as the “Liaison between Advisory, Steering
and the National Organizing Committees” for the
Ghana Conference. She went on from that position,
post-conference, to join the ADEA-Working Group on
ECD (WGECD). Shortly after the conference, Etse wrote
an account for the ADEA Newsletter (Etse, 2005), which,
along with document review work and memories
of co-organizing by Alan Pence and an historical
perspective on the WGECD (Dalais et al., 2008), served
as the basis for this “Reecting on Accra” account of the
conference.
The Accra Conference was conceived as a logical next
step following the preceding two conferences which
had focused to a signicant degree on examples
of African ECD interventions that had proven to be
eective. In recognizing that promising examples need
to be transformed into larger-scale interventions at
the country level, through integration into ongoing
national development processes, a key objective was
to engage with political and governmental leadership
at national and regional levels. In this regard, the
conference focused on the following three important
priority action areas that were identied as necessary to
accelerate the agenda for young children in Africa:
● ensuring eective caring practices within the
family and community
● ensuring access and use of quality basic services
● ensuring a supportive policy environment
Given the objectives identied for this third conference,
the planners continued the history of combining
continuity with new structural elements – in this case
creating a linked, two-part sequence of three days of
“technical workshops” followed by one and a half days
of ministerial-level meetings to help ensure political
support for the outcome of the technical meetings.
The three days of technical meetings (30 workshops
with 102 presentations) resulted in a set of
recommendations being carried forward to the African
Ministers and representatives of Ministers, with high-
level representation of agencies as observers on Day4
of the conference. In turn, the deliberations of the
ministerial meeting culminated in the adoption of a
communique which was presented to the plenary by
the Vice President of the Republic of Ghana on the
nal day. Pledges followed to take the communique
forward to the Africa Union and ADEA indicated that
the communique would feed into the development of
the seventh ADEA Biennial scheduled for 2006.
Etse noted that by shortly after the conference
concluded there were already some outcomes and
expected multiple ripple eects. For example, to help
ensure that actions would be taken up nationally,
countries were invited to participate in Accra as teams
rather than as individuals. In this regard countries were
requested to form committees (where no national
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
networks existed) and to help ensure that such
committees were multisectoral in nature. In those
12countries that had leaders enrolled in the rst two
deliveries of the ECDVU, those individuals assisted
the country to create such broadly representative
committees.
The Accra Conference also provided opportunities
for “country teams” to draw up Action Plans, and
those plans were expected to be part of rippling and
cascading process going forward across participating
countries. Etse also noted that there were agreements
for collaborative eorts among development agencies
attending the conference in support of ECD agendas in
African countries.
As Ministers representing Ghana and Senegal had
met in advance of the 2005 Conference, the question
of which African country would host the fourth
conference had already been largely resolved. The
Dakar Conference followed in 2009, completing a
ten-year sequence of four inter-connected African ECD
Conferences.
4. Dakar, Senegal, 10-13 November 2009,
“From Policy to Action: Expanding Investment
in ECD for Sustainable Development’
Based on the successful approaches of the previous
three conferences, the fourth pan-African ECD
conference sought to continue to engage Africans
fully in all aspects of the fourth conference, highlight
and celebrate signicant achievements of African ECD
professionals and practitioners, and lay the groundwork
for ECD policy and programme growth in Africa from
2010 onward.
A discussion within the ADEA Working Group on
ECD (WGECD) led to an invitation by the group to
Dr Emily Vargas-Barón to consider organizing the
Fourth African International Conference on ECD.
She had been a member of the WGECD since 2002,
attended the Eritrean and Ghanaian conferences, and
had been dedicated to educational and ECD policy
planning, programme development and research in
Francophone and Anglophone Africa since 1983.
Reecting on Dakar Conference. A full ten-month
period was needed to plan this conference. ADEA
WGECD, and Save the Children supported conference
planning, implementation, and reporting. A detailed
conference planning guide, previously prepared by
Alan Pence, helped guide conference planning (A.
Pence, personal communication, November 2005).
A fully participatory approach was used, and a
multitude of African leaders were involved in planning,
leading, and facilitating the conference. Vargas-Barón
determined that most conference presenters would
be outstanding African professionals and practitioners,
along with a select few of the world’s best ECD
specialists from other world regions, all with extensive
cross-cultural experience.
The Republic of Senegal, the Association for the
Development of Education in Africa (ADEA), the
Working Group on ECD, UNESCO/BREDA (Chair),
and Save the Children (Secretariat) provided key
leaders who played important roles in the fourth ECD
Conference. As with the other conferences in the
series, a wide range of other organizations provided
support for the conference, many through generously
supporting the travel and stay of their own and many
other ECD specialists from around Africa. The World
Bank provided monetary prizes for leaders of ECD
programmes selected to receive awards, personal
recognition, and certicates for their outstanding
achievements in ECD.
The central theme of the conference was “From Policy
to Action: Expanding Investment in ECD for Sustainable
Development”. The four conference sub-themes were:
● expanding ECD investment and assessing costs in a
world of economic, food, fuel and ecological crises;
● implementing and strengthening ECD policies and
plans;
● increasing access to quality ECD and going to scale;
and
● expanding services for vulnerable children aected
by HIV and AIDS, war and severe poverty.
As had been the case in Accra, the fourth Conference
was held in French and English. All participant materials
and documents were provided in both languages
to help meet the overall goal of facilitating greater
communication, collaboration and sharing among
Anglophone and Francophone ECD leaders and
specialists. In the end, some sessions were conducted
in Spanish to meet last-minute requests of participants
from Equatorial Guinea.
As noted earlier, the Fourth Conference was larger than
its predecessors especially because of conference goals
to involve more countries from sub-Saharan Africa, but
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
also because of enthusiastic support of the President
and First Lady of Senegal, the provision of the Meridien
Hotel that could host large pan-African conferences,
and the strong collaboration of UNESCO-BREDA in
Dakar.
Of special note was the support of the Steering
Committee of the ADEA Working Group on ECD and
its Chair Anne-Thérèse Ndong-Jatta who was also the
Director of UNESCO-BREDA. Her ECD specialist, Rokhaya
Diawara Fall, and Pablo Stansbury, then of Save the
Children/USA, supported our conference planning in
Washington DC, and Dakar. The Conference National
Programme Committee was headed by Babacar Fall
and Moussa Ndao, and it included 24 ECD professionals
of the host country Senegal.
The Conference was opened by President Abdoulaye
Wade of the Republic of Senegal and President
Amadou Touré of Mali. First Ladies Viviane Wade,
Senegal, Adelicia Pires, Cabo Verde, and Shadya
Karume, Zanzibar, also participated in a First Ladies”
Colloquium and attended a special luncheon hosted
by Elaine Wolfensohn. Subsequently, they issued a First
Ladies” Proclamation promoting ECD in Africa.
Of 406 ocially registered persons, 89% (362) were
from Africa and 11% were from other world regions.
However, many more attended and we estimated
that over 600 persons – mainly from African countries
– were present so the percentage of Africans
participating was well over 89%. Although 23 Ministers
of Education, Finance, Health, Gender and Social
Welfare were ocially registered, later it was discovered
that 35 ministers had participated in the Conference.
A total of 108 African ECD leaders, researchers and
specialists made presentations during the Conference.
Therefore, in terms of African leadership and
representation alone, the Conference was a notable
success.
Conference objectives and results. The Conference
sought to achieve specic objectives and it attained its
expected results (see Table 5.2).
Table 5.2 Conference objectives and results
Conference objectives Attainment of expected results
Promote dialogue about ECD among African leaders and ECD
professionals regarding ECD investment and costs, policy planning and
implementation, going to scale, and services for vulnerable children.
Conference participants reported they were actively engaged in formal
and informal discussions about conference sub-themes.
Give conference participants opportunities to gain new knowledge
and skills, especially with respect to ECD innovations in Africa and
internationally.
Conference participants attended plenary sessions, participated in
breakout sessions, received the Guide on ECD Innovations in Africa, and
attended Development Marketplace Poster Sessions. In addition, some
chose to go on eld trips. Conference participants reported they learned
new knowledge and skills.
Give greater recognition to needs and demands for expanded ECD
services in Africa.
Keynotes and panels focused on conference sub-themes regarding needs
and demands for ECD services.
Promote greater investment and donor coordination in ECD through
including national decision-makers and international development
partners in policy dialogue.
Some panels and roundtables included decision-makers and
international development partners, and they focused on promoting
expanded ECD investment and donor coordination.
Encourage increased action research on ECD and the utilization of
research results for policy planning.
Key panels encouraged the development of research projects and
promoted evidenced-based decision-making.
Prepare and adopt a conference communiqué with concrete strategies
and next steps to expand investment in ECD and bring ECD services to
scale.
A conference communiqué was adopted, and it included concrete
strategies to increase investment in ECD and take promising programmes
to scale.
Provide guidance to the ADEA Working Group on ECD in SSA regarding
conference follow-up during 2010-2012.
Guidance for the ADEA WG/ECD regarding conference follow-up was
included in the conference report.
Source: Author
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Conference documents and activities
Conference documents provided in French and English
included:
● A printed Conference Programme along with a
folder of additional books and materials was given
to each conference participant. The Conference
Programme was an 81-page book that included
the Conference Concept Note, Agenda, summaries
of presentations, keynote and speaker bios, and
much more (Vargas-Barón, 2009b).
● A Guide to ECD Innovations in Africa: Showcasing
Innovative ECD Strategies, Lessons Learned and
Tools (Vargas-Barón, 2009c) with descriptions of
36innovative programmes from 19countries
selected by four independent judges from many
more entries. Certicates and cash awards were
presented to these ECD programmes during
the Conference. In many cases, this was the rst
time African ECD programme leaders had been
recognized for their contributions beyond their
communities and their joy was memorable.
● Introduction to the ADEA ECD Working Group in
sub-Saharan Africa (Pressoir et al., 2009); a brochure
that informed all conference participants about
the accomplishments of the ECD network that
preceded the Africa Early Childhood Network
(AfECN), which was established in 2015.
● Country Proles on ECD: sub-Saharan Africa for the
Global Early Childhood Progress Report, a precursor
to ECD Countdown 2030 (Vargas-Barón et al.,
2009); that presented statistical data on ECD in
37countries and results from a regional survey
on ECD policies and policy initiatives underway
in 2009. This book was most appreciated by
Conference participants, and it stimulated greater
interest in ECD throughout Africa. (English only).
A successful pre-conference seminar, with press rooms
for African journalists focused on the importance
of investing in ECD and covering the achievements
of national ECD programmes and specialists. This
added element resulted in over 50 articles on ECD in
newspapers and magazines for national and regional
readers as well as extensive radio and television
coverage.
The three keynote speakers were African: Ann Thérèse
Ndong-Jatta, Gambia, addressed the education eld;
Dr Jane Wangui Muita, Kenya, focused on health and
nutritional development; and Dr Cyril Dalais, Mauritius,
spoke about the ECD eld. A total of 30panels were
oered, each with a panel chair and several speakers.
A Development Marketplace was held, composed of
39poster presentations made by 72 ECD specialists
from 16 African countries. Awards totalling $14,000
were given to seven teams from six countries that
conference participants felt had presented the best
posters. Regarding the Guide to ECD Innovations in
Africa, monetary awards totalling $13,000 were given
during the nal plenary session to ECD teams from six
countries. Field trips were also oered to several ECD
programmes in and near Dakar.
Conference communique, First Ladies”
Proclamation, and conference proceedings
The following publications were prepared during and
after the conference to extend its impact to specialists
working in ECD throughout sub-Saharan Africa as well
as to inform persons in other regions about notable
progress that had been achieved by 2009 in Africa:
● Conference Communique: A Call to Action was
prepared during the Conference, reviewed and
revised by ministerial and regional roundtables,
was presented and approved during the nal
plenary session.
● First Ladies” Proclamation was drafted and
approved by the First Ladies and circulated to all
participants and countries throughout Africa.
● Conference Proceedings, a 58-page comprehensive
conference report was provided to all participants
and many others dedicated to ECD in Africa.
The conference evaluation, presented in the
Conference Proceedings, revealed a depth of
success that had not been anticipated given the
challenges of scheduling, languages, distances, and
costs. Conference participants gave high marks to
experiences they found to be very informative and
uplifting. As stated in the Conference Proceedings:
Through their participation in the Conference,
many hitherto “unknown” African ECD specialists
were recognized for their outstanding and
dedicated work. Their valuable papers, creative
poster presentations, and submissions to the Guide
to ECD Innovations in Africa gave them an exciting
presence in ECD in Africa and the world. (Vargas-
Barón, 2009a)
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
It became clear from the high level of presentations
at this Conference that Africa had established a new
generation of energetic and accomplished ECD
leaders, planners, practitioners, and researchers who
have the capacity to greatly improve the quality of life
of African children.
Long-term results of the fourth conference
However, general elation over the success of the
Fourth Conference was short-lived. During succeeding
months, the ADEA Working Group on ECD exhibited
diminished energy, and progressively reduced its
membership and activities. Subsequently, only a small
group of personnel from ADEA, Save the Children and
UNESCO BREDA met infrequently. Several persons tried
hard to copy, conserve and donate computer les,
and to resuscitate the dedicated spirit of the ADEA
ECD Working Group, with the goal of maintaining a
strong pan-African ECD initiative. However, regional
and international donor and technical coordination
institutions chose not to place a priority on regional
ECD networking and coordination activities.
Consequently, the fth Annual Conference on ECD,
planned for 2012 was never held.
The Secretariat, which ADEA had decided to place in
UNESCO BREDA, turned to other activities in education
such as book publication and pre-primary and primary
education. At a later point, in 2015, some WGECD
projects were delegated to a newly established
ADEA Inter-Country Quality Node on Early Childhood
Development (ICQN-ECD), an initiative of the country
of Mauritius, to support activities aimed at improving
and expanding ECD services in ministries of education
in selected African countries. In 2015, various donors
decided to ll other aspects of the WGECD void
through the establishment of a new network, the
African Early Childhood Network (AfECN).
Perhaps it is best to focus on the accomplishments
of outstanding African leaders and specialists who
attended the four ECD conferences. Fortunately, most
of them continue to be devoted to ECD programmes
and the families and children they serve. Several of
them participate actively in the AfECN, and others
with the ICQN-ECD. Both initiatives have proved to be
positive steps forward, although all in-person meetings
have been suspended since early 2020 due to the
COVID-19 pandemic.
Importantly, commencing in 2000 and continuing
through 2009 to the present, an ever-increasing
number of African countries have developed
multisectoral ECD policies. and most of them are
implementing them. Many specialists who attended
the regional Conferences have also helped develop
and lead national ECD networks.
For all who were deeply dedicated to building ECD
policies, programmes and networks in Africa, the Dakar
Conference, and indeed all four Conferences in the
series, remain a time when African ECD leaders and
specialists were able to celebrate their achievements
together.
Most of the early leaders of ECD in Africa continue to
be deeply devoted to ECD services and networks and
they constitute revered “national beacons of hope”
who inspire younger generations to improve the
futures of children and families throughout Africa.
Conclusion: reecting on the series and
considering Sankofa elements
Each of the planners and organizers of the conferences
had similar experiences – heart-warming successes,
with some sobering shortfalls. Indeed, each of the
conferences sought to build and improve on prior
conferences and national ECD achievements to date.
And that is a key value of ECD Conferences-as-a-series:
a mark can be set, a reference point provided, and
progress can be achieved and measured.
But such a series does more than provide a set of
markers, it also provides colleagues with a place
where experiences can be shared, friendships revived,
references updated, and energy renewed. It is that
energy of positive interpersonal relationships that
is critically important for ECD in Africa – be it at the
community level, subregional level, or the continental
level. Conferences from local to international levels
help renew our sense of shared community and
shared purpose. The COVID-19 pandemic has
challenged us to search for and nd satisfactory ways
to re-create that sense of community among ECD
programme leaders, policy planners and researchers.
The arc of the African International ECD Conference
series, from its launch in 1999 through the fourth
Conference in 2009, encompasses a remarkable
decade of development for ECD in Africa. It was a
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
period made remarkable not for the impact of a
singular initiative, or singular initiatives, but for the
impact of synergies created across initiatives.
ECD capacity development is the broad theme that
encompasses the Conference series, and the four
Conferences reached and eectively addressed
certain key facets of ECD capacity development, but
not all facets, not all parts of the complex construct
of “capacity” can be addressed through conferences.
Two other synergistically related initiatives are also
examined in this Section of the book: the ADEA-
Working Group on ECD Network (WGECD – Chapter
6) and the Leadership-focussed Early Childhood
Development Virtual University (ECDVU - Chapter 7)
These were three key drivers for ECD capacity
development in Africa, but there were others – some
already noted and others noted in the following
chapters. Even those are not exhaustive, and broader
histories of ECD development in Africa will be needed
to address local, district, country, subregional, and
international levels of Africa.
The contributions that the African International ECD
conferences brought to the eld of ECD in Africa
varied depending on when they took place, and
where they took place. When they took place is
critical, as to a degree not seen before in African ECD,
the conferences “built” on each other and referenced
each other. The following sets of bullet points briey
highlight what could be considered Sankofa elements,
points gleaned from each of the four conferences that
could be used to help move ECD forward in Africa
from 2022 onward.
Sankofa and the four conferences
The rst conference. This took place in Kampala,
Uganda in 1999, and introduced a number of key
“principles”, or perhaps “considerations”, for such
African-focused conferences. “Showcasing Africa” is
one such principle and part of a broader philosophy
regarding the importance of “local leadership” and
“local voices.” The First Conference also eschewed
formal Keynote addresses, particularly by non-Africans,
and when such Keynoters appeared in the third and
fourth Conferences, those Keynotes were provided
by African leaders. The First Conference sought to
ensure that voices that were not included in the
ocial programme were also able to present their
work through special sessions, poster displays and
discussions – some continuing into the evenings.
The First Conference sought to share as many of the
presentations as possible beyond the time and place
of the conference itself through a two-part publication
available online: one with the core programme
(including photos, short bios and contact points for
ALL participants), and a second volume with copies
of those presentations that were provided by the
presenters (39 papers). A commitment was made
by the key international, nancial supporter of the
conference (the World Bank), and by other key donors,
to plan a follow-up conference.
The Second African International Conference.
This took place in 2002 – in Asmara, Eritrea. As with
Kampala, the country government (Eritrea), with
the World Bank, was the sponsor. The organizational
process for Asmara was much more country-led
than had been the case for Kampala. The principle
of eschewing non-African Keynote presenters
was followed. The Eritrean conference organizers
preferred a consultation-intensive process of thematic
workshops. The somewhat intricate process of
consultations, discussions and reporting back to the
plenary, with further discussions then taking place,
ultimately culminated in an “Asmara ECD Declaration,
Overview and Synthesis Statements” document, and an
“Asmara Declaration on Early Childhood Development:
Framework for Action”. The Conference had a particular
focus on advancing the following in Africa:
● Policy, Planning and Research
● Community-Based Approaches
● Disadvantaged Children and Children At-risk
● Indigenous Knowledge and Child Upbringing
While all four conferences in the series had a strong
interest in “Policy, Planning and Research”, the Asmara
Conference was distinct for highlighting the themes
of: Community-Based, Disadvantaged Children, and
Indigenous Knowledge. Such unique emphases
are an advantage in ensuring that “local voices” are
a key contributor for each conference – not just in
presentations, but also in conference planning and
organizing.
The Third African International ECD Conference.
This was held in Accra, Ghana, in 2005. A key, missing
piece in the ECD Conferences “puzzle” had been
high-level governmental and political leadership
engagement. For the Accra Conference addressing
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
that key part of ECD in Africa was a priority. The various
organizers and planners of the Accra Conference
noted that despite a signicant number of African
and international documents underscoring the
importance of ECD and child well-being “the statistics
on Africa’s infants and young children, still leave much
to be desired.” A plan was developed to address this
weakness through having a two-part conference:
1. An ECD “technicians” session composed of ECD
specialists and professionals.
2. Followed by a “politicians and government leaders”
session that would receive the recommendations
from the specialists and plan facilitative
governmental and political leadership responses
to help move ECD forward across the continent.
The agenda for the Accra Conference prioritized the
following action areas:
● ensuring eective caring practices with the family
and community;
● ensuring access and use of quality basic services;
● and ensuring a supportive policy environment.
As noted above, the numbers attending, and especially
the number of Ministers or ministerial representatives
attending the Accra conference, broke new ground
for the series and added to possibilities for future
Conferences.
The Fourth African International ECD Conference.
This took place in Dakar, Senegal in 2009. Dakar was
the largest of the ECD Conferences, with over 400
registered, but an estimated 600 actually attended at
some point. The conference not only had the largest
number of Ministers (or designates) attending, but
it also had two presidents (Senegal and Mali) and
three rst ladies (Senegal, Cabo Verde and Zanzibar),
representing a steady progression in political visibility
across the four conferences. The number of materials
produced through the conference process was
impressive, and innovations such as a “Development
Marketplace” with substantial prize money was
an excellent innovation. Indeed Dakar, building
strongly on what had come before, laid an exciting
path forward; however, due to international and
regional donor and institutional issues, the supportive
climate for such conferences dissipated, and the Fifth
Conference, planned for 2012, never took place.
The ten years of rapid ECD capacity development in
Africa, bookended by the First African International
ECD Conference in 1999 and its Fourth in 2009,
included an exciting range of initiatives and synergistic
relationships, partially captured in this volume. But
with the hopes for building forward better when the
grasp of COVID-19 pandemic lessens, these stories
from an earlier period should have new relevance – a
relevance born from the spirit of Sankofa.
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on ECD.
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Chapter 6
17 Personal communication between Dr Dalais, Co-Founder ECDNA and Dr Vargas-Barón, March 2010.
18 Uganda, Kenya, United Republic of Tanzania, South Africa, Mauritius, Ethiopia, Malawi, Lesotho, and Zimbabwe.
The ADEA working
group on ECD (WGECD)
Patrick Makokoro and
Rokhaya Diawara
Introduction
This chapter provides a closer perspective of the Early
Childhood Development Network for Africa (ECDNA)
and the merging of its operations with the Working
Group for Early Childhood Development (WGECD).
As one of the earliest networks, the Early Childhood
Development Network for Africa (ECDNA) had been
a key “mover” for the ECD Seminar series, and fully
supported the 1999 Kampala ECD conference (Chapter
5). European (mainly Dutch) members of the Working
Group for Early Childhood Development (WGECD)
also attended the Kampala Conference, and a decision
was reached to fold the two networks into one with
leadership formed from the WGECD. The timing of
the Eritrea conference was relatively soon after the
“merger” and the WGECD was not as involved with
the Asmara conference (2002) as it was with the Accra
(2005) and Dakar (2009) conferences that followed.
The WGECD introduced and championed a range
of initiatives over time, under dierent Secretariat
structures, with, in some ways, leadership for the Dakar
conference representing a zenith in the history of that
Network. By 2013 the WGECD was beginning to plan a
transformation of the Network to a dierent “category”
within the Association for Development of Education
in Africa (ADEA) structure: an Early Childhood
“Inter-country Quality Node”, based in Mauritius. At
approximately the same time discussions had begun
among a few key donors for ECCE/ECD in Africa
about the possibility of developing a “new ECCE/ECD
network”: the Africa Early Childhood Network (AfECN).
As we follow the journey of the two African ECCE/ECD
networks, it is necessary to rst articulate the histories
of the Early Childhood Development Network for
Africa (ECDNA) and the the Working Group for Early
Childhood Development (WGECD) and how they
came to be before the merger.
Background
The formation of the ECDNA
In May 1994, a meeting was held at the Hotel
Calamar in Mauritius that provided the foundation
for the formation of the ECDNA.17 This meeting
brought participants from nine countries from
East and Southern Africa18 to discuss an integrated
approach to ECCE programming and it was also
part of a series of training sessions held by UNICEF
to implement the Education for All (EFA) Jomtien
conference recommendations (Dalais et al., 2008). The
Calamar participants discussed the need to have an
early childhood network that would bring together
stakeholders within the early childhood sector to
advance issues such as access to early childhood
development and sharing of research information
(ECDNA, 1997).
Between 1995 and 1999, the ECDNA was hosted and
coordinated by a Secretariat led by Margaret Kabiru at
the Kenya Institute of Education. The ECDNA operated
with support from several bilateral and multilateral
agencies, organizing and carrying out events that
included ECD Seminars, workshops in Southern
and Western Africa, translation of ECCE booklets,
monitoring and evaluation exercises, and holding
ECCE consultations across Africa (Dalais et al., 2008).
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In December 1997, the ECDNA hosted a meeting in
Cape Town on ECCE/ECD Policy and Programming
in Africa (see Chapter 2). At this meeting Professor
Barnabas Otaala advised that the ECDNA had
acquired a new status within an ADEA Working
Group, to consider alternative ECCE/ECD policies and
programmes in Africa (ECDNA, 1997). The ECDNA
Secretariat had worked hard to become a recognized
network and gain ocial recognition from the
Association for the Development of Education in Africa
(ADEA). Cyril Dalais, Barnabas Otaala and Margaret
Kabiru, the leaders of the ECDNA at that time, had
envisaged that the network would be linked to ADEA
as an independent organization and not as one of the
working groups (Makokoro, 2021). The ECDNA had
worked with various ECCE/ECD experts on various
projects, including working with UNESCO to update
the directory of NGOs in Africa and working on the
translation of “Toward a Fair Start for Children” by
Robert Myers (1990) into Kiswahili (Evans, 1998). This
work had been carried out as part of the programming
by the ECDNA – the work was part of the journey of
the network in gaining credibility and recognition
by stakeholders in the early childhood development
sector in Africa. The ECDNA and the ADEA Working
Group on ECD would eventually be joined together,
but rst a brief history of how the WGECD came to
be and then a discussion of how the two networks
became one.
The formation of the WGECD
In October 1993, the group known as the Donors for
African Education group (DAE), which later changed its
name to become the Association for the Development
of Education in Africa (ADEA), met to discuss the
support being given to early childhood education
in Africa. This meeting in Angers, France was then
followed by an invitation from the Secretariat of the
DAE to set up the Working Group for Early Childhood
Development (WGECD) within the DAE’s Women/
Girls Group that had been established in 1992. This
group would later become known as the Forum for
African Women Educationalists (FAWE), which had
been founded by ve women ministers of education.
Their aim had been to promote girls” and women’s
education in SSA in line with the Education for All
goals (UNESCO, 2000). These women were Simone de
Comarmond of Seychelles, Fay Chung of Zimbabwe,
Paulette Missambo of Gabon, Alice Tiendrebéogo of
Burkina Faso, and Vida Yeboa of Ghana. This then led to
the Working Group on Early Childhood Development
(WGECD) being established as a special interest group
within the Female Participation of the DAE group.
The DAE established the WGECD to promote policy
development and implementation of continent-
wide early childhood development specic activities
(UNESCO BREDA, 2008).
In 1996, the DAE was then renamed to become known
as the Association for the Development of Education
in Africa. The ADEA Secretariat, led by Richard Sack
who was then Executive Secretary of ADEA, requested
that UNICEF coordinate the group and that the
Working Group on ECD should be formally established
as a stand-alone working group and not be part of
the Working Group on Female Participation. Up to
this point in time, UNICEF, which had been leading
the administrative functions of the Working Group,
proposed that a WGECD Secretariat be established and
be tasked with developing a work-plan.
In late 1997, at an ADEA meeting held in Benin,
a formal request by UNICEF to handover the
administrative functions of the WGECD Network to
other members or partners interested in the early
childhood development sector within Africa was
adopted. Several countries expressed their interest in
hosting and promoting the WGECD. Namibia, Ghana,
Finland, and the Netherlands all expressed interest
in hosting and promoting the work of the Working
Group. The bid to host the Working Group for Early
Childhood Development (WGECD) made by the
Netherlands through its Ministry of Foreign Aairs
succeeded and Jeanette Vogelaar became the Working
Group leader.
The WGECD was founded on the realization that
the early years were crucial to child development
(UNESCO BREDA, 2008) and thus it was crucial to have
a network that would ratchet support for the ECCE/
ECD sector in Africa. According to UNESCO BREDA
(2008), the WGECD was formed to pursue an agenda
of promoting holistic development of young children
in the SSA region and to provide a forum in which
dierent actors within the region and internationally
would provide a coherent and coordinated response
to challenges facing early childhood development in
Africa. The WGECD had an overall goal to “ensure that
the African child survives and thrives and has a good
start in life” (UNESCO BREDA, 2008, p. 7).
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Becoming one ECD network
In 1999 the ECDNA merged into the ADEA structure.
This followed a study that had been carried out by a
consultant (Kate Torkington) hired by the Netherlands
Government to carry out an ECCE/ECD in Africa
sector analysis (Makokoro, 2021). The arrival of the
Dutch Government then saw the Early Childhood
Development Network for Africa (ECDNA) being
incorporated into the Association for the Development
of Education in Africa (ADEA) working group model.
In this case, the ECDNA was being merged with the
already established Working Group for Early Childhood
Development (WGECD).
By March 1999, the WGECD had been reconstituted
with a Secretariat working under the Netherlands
Ministry of Foreign Aairs. The new administrative
lead of the network held a meeting in The Hague in
March 1999. At this meeting it was recommended
that supporting the development of national ECCE/
ECD policies should be the major focus of the network
(Torkington, 1999). A two-year action plan was drawn
up and the core of this work-plan was premised
on undertaking “country case studies on policy
development in Africa” (Torkington, 1999, p. 1). This
ECCE/ECD policy development thrust would in turn
begin a discourse on ECCE/ECD policy formulation in
Africa by availing funding support for six countries.
The period between 1998 and 2002 saw the WGECD
being actively involved in two separate ECCE/ECD
policy projects in six countries in Francophone and
Anglophone Africa.19 The WGECD had identied
through a review led by a consultant, that while
there were many ECCE/ECD programmes being
implemented across the African continent, many were
underfunded and largely uncoordinated (Torkington,
2001). As a result of this review, the WGECD focused
its attention on ECCE/ECD policy development. The
WGECD embarked on these pilot policy projects in
three Anglophone countries (Torkington, 2001) and
three Francophone countries (Vargas-Barón, 2004)
to support national development of ECCE/ECD. It is
through these policy projects that the WGECD became
convinced that if ECCE/ECD was to take o in Africa,
then it would be important for countries to integrate
ECCE/ECD policy planning processes into national
development processes (See Chapter 14).
19 Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Namibia, Mauritius and Ghana.
Towards a more formalized
WGECD network
In December 2003, the WGECD held a consultative
meeting in Mauritius where it was decided that a
Steering Committee should be established. The
rationale for this move was that the work of the
WGECD had grown. It was recognized that the WGECD
needed guidance and direction from major players
within the ECCE/ECD sector on the continent and
beyond. The meeting participants recognized the need
to strengthen the administrative and management
capacity of the WGECD to meet the growing scope of
organizational activities.
The proposed Steering Committee would provide
this leadership as well as transform the network into
an “Africa Forum” promoting ECCE/ECD (WGECD,
2003, p. 4). Having identied and brought in leading
ECCE/ECD experts into the Steering Committee, the
WGECD organized a launch of this new structure.
The WGECD Steering Committee now comprised of
members representing regional and international
partners such as the World Bank, UNICEF East and West
African regional oces, UNESCO Regional Oce for
Africa, Early Childhood Development Virtual University
(ECDVU), Coordinating Group on Early Childhood Care
and Development (CG-ECCD) as well as representatives
from the Governments of Ghana, Senegal and Malawi.
This structure now represented an improvement in
the governance of the WGECD because there was
now a transparent structure that one could point to as
opposed to just knowing that the Dutch Government,
through its Ministry of Foreign Aairs, had been
providing support.
The meeting for the launch of the Steering Committee
of the WGECD was held in Mauritius in December
2003. This launch meeting was also used by the
WGECD as an opportunity to initiate planning for
the Third African International ECD Conference (see
Chapter 5) that would be held in Accra, Ghana in 2005.
This event also coincided with some of the members
of the University of Victoria’s ECDVU cohort discussing,
among other things, how they could support the
ECD conference. One of the main outcomes of the
Steering Committee launch meeting was to provide
the WGECD with a mandate to “provide guidance
and direction and legitimacy to the activities of the
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
WGECD” (WGECD, 2003, p. 8). The conferences are
discussed in some detail in Chapter 5 of this section.
In 2006, a decision was made by the WGECD Steering
Committee for the graduation of the WGECD
from ADEA so that it could become a stand-alone
organization. This meant that the WGECD was now
being ocially weaned o from being a working
group of the Association for the Development of
Education in Africa (ADEA). Thus, the WGECD could
now be a legal persona. Firstly, in making this decision
to wean o the network, ADEA argued that the
working group structures were not created to be
permanent structures. Secondly, ADEA submitted that
the WGECD had worked hard to become a stand-
alone organization. This had been evidenced by the
governance structures such as the Steering Committee
that had been established. Thirdly, ADEA argued that
the mandate of the WGECD had extended beyond
the ADEA “constituency” with responsibility now being
shared with other multiple ministries and sectors and
not only the ministries of education. It was in this
year that UNESCO BREDA assumed the administrative
responsibilities of the WGECD. The Chair of UNESCO
BREDA MS Therese Ndong Jatta then seconded ECCE
Specialist Rokhaya Diawara as the UNESCO BREDA lead
responsible for the WGECD.
Table 6.1 WGECD Secretariat responsibilities
Responsibilities of the WGECD Secretariat under UNESCO BREDA
Provision of intellectual leadership in the design and management of all WGECD activities;
Preparation of Strategic Plans, Annual Plans and Budgets according to guidance received from the WGECD Steering Committee and integrating these
to ensure eligibility of funding from ADEA basket funds;
Managing and accounting for WGECD resources, preparing annual activity and expenditure reports to the WGECD Steering Committee and to ADEA.
In November 2007, the Working Group on Early
Childhood Development (WGECD) held its annual
general meeting in Mombasa, Kenya and the
participants agreed to develop a new structure for the
WGECD that would be representative of the dierent
sub-regions on the African continent. A number of
turning point decisions were made at this annual
general meeting and these ultimately changed the
way the WGECD was governed and how it operated.
To start o, the meeting participants agreed upon a
structure that would ensure that both Anglophone
and Francophone countries would participate in the
Network activities. This was a very important move
because Francophone countries in Africa had not been
able to access some education and early childhood
programme development activities. Consistent with
this decision, the participants agreed that the Chair
of the WGECD would be UNESCO BREDA, located in
Dakar, Senegal (ADEA, 2007). This was an important
transitional step because this would see an institution
that was based in Africa coordinate and lead the ECCE/
ECD network as opposed to the previous structure
where the Basic Education Section in the Netherlands
Foreign Aairs ministry had been taking the lead. The
meeting also discussed the membership of the WGECD
and agreed to include SSA ministers championing
ECCE/ECD in their countries, international development
partners working on ECCE/ECD in Africa, national ECCE/
ECD Country Focal Persons and ECCE/ECD experts
active in Africa (ADEA, 2007).
In 2008, the WGECD then put out a call for proposals
inviting organizations interested to be administrators
of the network to apply to host the network. Following
an evaluation of proposals received to host the
WGECD, Save the Children USA from its base in Kenya
was selected as host institution for the ADEA WGECD,
and UNESCO BREDA was selected as the Chair and
Leader of the WGECD to provide the WGECD with the
necessary political leverage.
A memorandum of understanding (MOU) between
ADEA, UNESCO BREDA and Save the Children USA was
then signed and the Secretariat of the WGECD was to
be hosted at Save the Children USA’s regional oce
in Nairobi. This marked the transfer of administrative
leadership of the network from the Dutch Government
to an organization that was based in and working
in Africa (ADEA WGECD, 2009). The entry of the new
host organization saw the relocation of the WGECD
Coordinator from Dakar, Senegal to Nairobi, Kenya.
Below is a table providing a timeline of the activities
from the establishment of the Donors for Education
in Africa group to the eventual hosting of the WGECD
Secretariat by Save the Children USA.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Table 6.2 Timeline of WGECD activities
Year Activity
1993 Donors for African Education Taskforce meeting in Angers, France. Working Group on ECD established as a special
group within the Female Participation of the Donors for African Education.
1996 Mid-term evaluation of the Education for All initiative held at the Innocenti Centre in Florence, Italy. Proposal to
constitute a Working Group on ECD presented.
1997 ADEA meeting held in Cotonou, Benin. Netherlands bid to host the WGECD succeeded.
1998 Basic Education Section, Education and Developing Countries Division of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Aairs
assumed leadership of the WGECD from UNICEF and appointed Consultant.
1999 ADEA WGECD reconstituted with a Secretariat working under the Ministry of Foreign Aairs, Netherlands.
1999 WGECD and ECDNA merge under auspices of ADEA to become the ADEA-WGECD.
2008 Save the Children USA assumes Secretariat role of the ADEA WGECD and establishes base in Kampala, Uganda with
UNESCO BREDA being Chair of the ADEA WGECD.
2009 Fourth African International ECD Conference held in Dakar, Senegal. WGECD involved in organizing and hosting the
conference.
2013 WGECD transforms to become an Association for Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) “Quality Node”, based in
Mauritius.
2015 African Early Childhood Network (AfECN) is established and headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya.
Source: Authors
WGECD and ECD Conferences in Africa
Conference participation by the WGECD became
signicant in 2005, as the co-organizer for the Third
African International ECD Conference held in Accra,
Ghana. The conference took place when the Dutch
Government was the lead for the WGECD. This key
role for the WGECD was subsequently taken up by
the WGECD under the leadership of UNESCO-BREDA
for the Fourth African International ECD Conference
that was held in Dakar, Senegal in 2009. Conference
organizing by the WGECD was very signicant because
there was an evolving symbiotic relationship between
the ECCE/ECD networks and the conferences moving
from limited involvement by the networks in the First
African International ECD Conference held in Kampala,
Uganda in 1999, to signicant participation and
assumption of lead organizing roles in 2005 and 2009
(see Chapter 5). This represented a “coming of age,”
as the network had increasing strength and capacity
to organize conferences having learned from earlier
conferences. A key part of that capacity development
process was the emergence of participants in the
ECDVU programme playing key leadership and
organizing roles – particularly for the second (Asmara)
and third (Accra) conferences. Those participants also
strengthened the conferences” ties to networks and
leaders in a number of the conferences” participating
countries.
Along with agreements on the dates of this upcoming
conference, the December 2003 WGECD Steering
Committee meeting also decided upon the venue for
the conference. Ghana and Senegal had oered to
host the conference, with both countries presenting
competitive bids. However, through consultations
with the UNICEF headquarters and the World Bank,
Ghana emerged as the selected host. As part of its
reorganization during the 2003-2004 period, the
WGECD Steering Committee then recruited a full-time
Coordinator (Stella Etse, an ECDVU participant)
who would work to implement the decisions of the
Steering Committee and lead the in-country facet of
the conference planning process.
There was much progress with the ECCE/ECD sector
on the African continent with the WGECD being
involved in several key programmes and activities.
Earlier we have highlighted how the WGECD
supported ECCE/ECD policy studies in Francophone
and Anglophone countries as one of the key
programmes for advancing the ECCE/ECD agenda.
The WGECD continued this trajectory by building
up partnerships aimed at establishing regional
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
dynamism with a view to inuencing national policy
development. The WGECD was involved in organizing
the third ECD conference that took place in 2005
as well as taking a lead in organizing the ECCE/ECD
sessions at an ADEA Biennale held in Gabon in March
2006. These activities indicated the direction that the
WGECD was taking in appreciating the need to have
an integrated approach and understanding of ECCE/
ECD.
Demise of WGECD
While the major focus of this chapter is on the WGECD
in the period 2000-2010, it is useful to note that in the
early 2010s a transition process was already underway
to transform the WGECD from a working group to
another category supported by ADEA: an Inter-country
Quality Node (ICQN). This was seen as a “next step”
in the evolution of an ECCE/ECD Network for Africa.
During its history, the WGECD had provided leadership
within the ECCE/ECD sector in Africa as indicated by
the various projects it undertook. The WGECD policy
studies project (see Chapter 14) provided an impetus
for African countries to develop their ECCE/ECD
policies and frameworks for implementation. After
supporting 17 countries to develop ECCE/ECD policies,
the WGECD was transformed in 2013 into an Inter-
country Quality Node (ICQN) aiming to move from a
partner driven process to governments driving the
ECCE/ECD agenda in Africa (Makokoro, 2021).
The closure of the WGECD was done according
to a plan. A ve-year action plan, a technical and
nancial report, a stang plan, and the necessary
institutional arrangements were all prepared. A
workshop to present all these documents was
organized in Mauritius. An ocial handover ceremony
was organized on the sidelines of the Africa regional
consultation on the preparation of post-2015. Thirteen
African ministers participated in this ceremony. The
closure of the WGECD was an amicable process. The
process was not even considered as a dissolution
but more of a transformative process. Through this
process UNESCO appreciated that African countries
were taking the leadership through the Inter-country
Quality Node (ICQN). However, by the time that an
ICQN was established (based in Mauritius) a new
network was being established based in Kenya: the
Africa Early Childhood Network (AfECN). The period
of the 2010s represents a quite dierent phase in
the evolution of ECCE/ECD in Africa with some new
organizations and new initiatives emerging – all
complicated by the emergence of COVID-19 in 2020.
That history is still being written.
UNESCO reections on support to WGECD
In reecting on the support given to the WGECD
by UNESCO BREDA, the co-author of this chapter
(Rokhaya Diawara) classies achievements into three
broad initiatives. The rst is that UNESCO recognized
that at an institutional level it was important to
develop systems of accountability and tracking the
work that was being done by the various partners in
the network. UNESCO recognized that it would be
important to assess how the WGECD could achieve
results for ECCE/ECD by giving more responsibility to
governments. Governments were encouraged not
to view ECCE/ECD as only a responsibility of their
bilateral and multilateral partners alone, but that this
was an area that required leadership and investment
by the governments themselves. Addressing that
objective, UNESCO developed opportunities for
stronger government engagement by, for example,
putting in place institutional arrangements such as
bringing in ministers to sit on the WGECD Steering
Committee. These ministers would then champion
ECCE/ECD in their dierent countries and become
ECCE/ECD advocates. UNESCO also encouraged buy-in
at a subregional level by ensuring representation from
the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC),
the East African Community, West and Central Africa as
well as from North Africa. All these regions would be
represented by one or two ministers who sat on the
steering committee or board. UNESCO then worked to
strengthen the leadership of countries on the WGECD
Steering Committee by ensuring that there was
broader ministerial representation beyond ministers
of education. This meant the inclusion of ministers
of health, child protection and social services among
others who would be involved in the WGECD as well.
The second key initiative undertaken by UNESCO was
to move the WGECD from being only a coordinating
agency, to a cocoordinating agency that would have
multiple agencies supporting the work being done by
the ECCE/ECD network. In this regard, working closely
with Save the Children USA was part of a strategy to
bring in more organizations within the WGECD to
provide leadership and coordination.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
A third key initiative focused on enhancing nancial
and technical sustainability through bringing in not
only additional nancial resources but also technical
resources to support the WGECD. UNESCO worked
actively to have country partners be more invested
in ECCE/ECD by making active contributions, for
example, most ministers would cover their own costs
of travel and engagement with the WGECD.
Conclusion
It would be unfortunate if as authors we fail to
acknowledge the Sankofa admonition of looking
back and carrying forward important lessons from
the period that the WGECD operated as an ECCE/ECD
Network in Africa. ECCE/ECD networks must develop
and implement strategies for building the capacity and
retention of skilled sta within the sector. To support
this, regional and national ECCE/ECD networks should
work to produce well-articulated and collaboratively
developed capacity-building strategic plans. These
should be centred on conducting sta development
in evidence based ECCE/ECD advocacy, demanding
accountability and fostering transparency on ECCE/
ECD policy issues in their countries. To do this, the
ECCE/ECD networks should strengthen the capacity of
national country-level networks through institutional,
policy and technical training to enable advocacy,
knowledge generation and networking activities.
Partnerships with ECCE/ECD leadership capacity
development institutions should be established
to meet this objective. ECCE/ECD networks should
work with these partners to strengthen the technical
capacity of ECCE/ECD stakeholders at a country and
regional level.
ECCE/ECD networks in Africa must promote
Indigenous and Afrocentric approaches to ECCE/ECD
as part of providing a stronger foundation for lifelong
learning for children on the continent. This should be
done by the ECCE/ECD networks, governments and
funders commissioning research that establishes the
grounding of ECCE/ECD in an African context as well
as informs the African communities on the various
traditional epistemologies and ways of raising and
supporting children over time on the continent (See
Chapter 4).
The WGECCE/ECD succeeded in championing ECCE/
ECD policy development and advocacy work on the
African continent. This work must be followed through
with the successor networks, including the Africa Early
Childhood Network (AfECN) and the Inter-Country
Quality Node (ICQN) engaging with national ECCE/
ECD networks to advocate for disaster preparedness
policies that are developed around the existing ECCE/
ECD policies. These should include mechanisms
for supporting the ECCE/ECD sector considering
frequently occurring pandemics and other natural
disasters in Africa. The ECCE/ECD networks should
develop with urgency the strategies for implementing
ECCE/ECD during emergencies and put these in place
so that children are not disadvantaged from accessing
much needed services. Scenario and standard
operating plans should be developed by the ECCE/
ECD networks and be shared with senior government,
civil society and parliamentarians for consideration
and adoption as part of ECCE/ECD business continuity
when pandemics and other tragedies hit. ECCE/ECD
should not remain on the periphery and be ignored
when pandemics set in, children should be prioritized
and be able to access ECCE/ECD services in a safe
and secure environment that promotes their optimal
growth and development.
This volume has provided the opportunity for the
authors to revisit the past using a Sankofa lens and this
has provided perspectives and reections on African
governance, accountability, and transparency when it
comes to prioritizing funding for ECCE/ECD.
ECCE/ECD networks should focus on demanding
transparency and accountability from governments
in Africa on issues such as ECCE/ECD nancing, ECCE/
ECD policy formulation and implementation. This
can be implemented through establishing bilateral
and multilateral partnerships with clear and tangible
win-win objectives between the funders, ECCE/
ECD networks and the country recipients of ECCE/
ECD designated funds. This should be done through
developing clearly outlined partnership engagement
strategies that promote linkages designed to support
eective mobilization and use of nancial, intellectual,
and other resources. Regional ECCE/ECD networks
should partner with national ECCE/ECD networks to
hold governments to account on ECCE/ECD policy
issues through learning and sustained advocacy that
promotes access to quality, inclusive and equitable
ECCE/ECD in Africa. Regional ECCE/ECD networks
should have greater involvement in monitoring the
utilization of funds and assessing funding eectiveness
in promoting children’s access to quality ECCE/ECD
services in Africa.
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As authors, we recognize that it is important for
ECCE/ECD leaders and stakeholders to work together
in unity for the advancement of the sector on the
African continent. The inter-connected networks of
relationships among ECCE/ECD actors need to be
stronger to inuence ECCE/ECD policy and for building
synergies and relationships with national ECCE/ECD
networks across Africa. This can be implemented by
Regional ECCE/ECD networks through intentional
designing and implementation of capacity
development initiatives that focus on governance,
organizational development, policy analysis, research,
negotiating and inuencing change agents. The skills
acquired by the ECCE/ECD networks at a national
level are then used as tools to engage transnational
organizations and governments in the form of policy
forums for policy advocacy, research, and knowledge
sharing.
This Chapter and Chapter 2 have not only provided
the reader with a glimpse into the work of the oldest
African ECCE/ECD networks that were established
between 1993 and 1994 but has also provided even
deeper insights into the work of the WGECCE/ECD over
time. We have also provided some recommendations
above, aimed primarily at established and emerging
regional and national ECCE/ECD networks.
It is our fervent hope that these networks do not see
their work as singular, or as silo activities, but that
they pick up from the history of networks in Africa,
learn from experiences, identify lessons learned and
use these to build back. In essence it is through
understanding our history, knowing the leaders that
pioneered work in ECCE/ECD on the African continent,
recognizing the ECCE/ECD networks that had
numerous breakthroughs in the sector and how these
have led to the current debates and positioning of
ECCE/ECD in Africa. We learn from all these narrations,
and we take forward the lessons and work towards
“building forward better” the ECCE/ECD networking
sector in Africa.
References
Dalais, C., Etse, S., Pressoir, E., and Vogelaar, J. 2008. The
ADEA Working Group for ECD: an historical perspective.
Unpublished report.
ECDNA. 1997. Research proposal. Unpublished document.
Evans, J. L. 1998. Inclusive ECCD: A fair start for all children.
The Coordinators” Notebook, Vol. 22, pp. 1-23.
Makokoro, P. 2021. The establishment and outcomes of
African early childhood development networks and
conferences, 1990-2009. Ph.D. dissertation, University
of Victoria, Canada.
Myers, R. G. 1990. Toward a Fair Start for Children:
Programming for Early Childhood Care and
Development in the Developing World. Paris, UNESCO.
Pressoir, E., Dalais, C., Etse, S., Pence, A., Vargas-Barón, E.,
and Vogelaar, J. 2009. Introduction to the ADEA ECD
Working Group in sub-Saharan Africa. Abidjan, Ivory
Coast, ADEA ECD Working Group.
Torkington, K. 1999. The Future of the ADEA WGECD.
Unpublished discussion paper based on Consultative
Meeting.
—. 2001. Working Group on Early Childhood Development
(WGECD) Policy Project: A synthesis report.
Unpublished report.
UNESCO BREDA. 2008. The ADEA Working Group for ECD. An
historical perspective. Dakar, Senegal, Bureau régional
pour l’éducation en Afrique (BREDA) for the Working
Group on Early Childhood Development (WGECD).
Vargas-Barón, E. 2004. Final report: Project to support
national policy planning for early childhood
development in three countries of West Africa. Abidjan,
Ivory Coast, AADEA-WGECD.
WGECD. 2003. ADEA Consultative Meeting, 2 April 2003.
Unpublished report from meeting at Grand Bay,
Mauritius.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Chapter 7
20 Somewhat later a second request came from SE Asia/Pacic, but following seminar deliveries in both regions, and an assessment that SE
Asia had greater regional capacity, a decision was made to focus on Africa.
Promoting capacity
and cohesion through
the Early Childhood
Development Virtual
University (ECDVU)
Alan Pence and Esther
Oduolowu
Background
As with the African ECD Conferences (see Chapter5),
the origins of the Early Childhood Development Virtual
University (ECDVU) lie with the earlier ECD Seminars
that Mauritian-born Dr Cyril Dalais, then ECD lead for
UNICEF headquarters, had requested be developed by
Alan Pence, based at the University of Victoria (UVic),
Canada. The invitation by Dalais followed Dalais’s
participation in a 1994 “Summer Institute,” a series
that Pence had held annually for ECE/ECD leaders in
Canada starting in the late 1980s. Dalais proposed that
Pence and UVic host a 1995 Summer Institute focused
on ECD as a key part of international development.
UNICEF subsequently supported 22 ECD leaders from
14 Majority World countries from multiple dierent
global regions to attend, which subsequently led
participants to make three requests back to UNICEF:
UNICEF should continue to support ECD institutes
through UVic; global institutes should be
supplemented by regional institutes; a distance
education, graduate-level ECD leadership
programme should be developed to help ll
a vacuum in such higher-level studies. UVic’s
experiences in providing distance education,
graduate-level ECD leadership seminars, and
Indigenous community-based post-secondary
education (see www.fnpp.org) make them uniquely
well qualied. (Pence, 1995)
The rst regional ECD Seminar to be proposed was
for Africa.20 The invitation to host the rst regional
ECD Seminar in Africa came from UNICEF and from
the Early Childhood Development Network in Africa
(ECDNA), which Dalais had helped launch in 1993 with
several other ECD leaders in Africa (see Chapter 2).
The African ECD Seminar was held at the University
of Namibia (UNAM) from September 29-October 17,
1997. UNAM was the academic home of then ECDNA
Chairperson Prof. Barnabas Otaala, a co-organizer
of the seminar. Twenty-six UNICEF-identied ECD
leaders from 11 primarily eastern and southern
African countries attended, representing a range of
governmental, NGO and UNICEF employees. At the
conclusion of the seminar a participant from Gambia
proposed a second ECD Seminar be held in his West
African country the following year.
The second ECD Seminar was indeed held the next
year – Nov. 9-20, 1998, in Banjul, Gambia – with
28participants from 12 primarily western and central
African countries. The presentations, panels, and
discussions were held in French and English, with
translation support provided by the World Bank –
newly aware of the ECD leadership and capacity
promoting seminars.
At the conclusion of Gambia ECD Seminar a third
regional location, Uganda, in East Africa, was proposed
for 1999. In order to prepare the groundwork for a
third ECD Seminar, the organizer (Pence) travelled
to Uganda in late 1998. Appreciating the continuing
support of UNICEF, and an increase in funding
due to the World Bank’s support for the Ugandan
government’s Nutrition and ECD initiative (NECD), a
larger event, the rst Africa-focused International ECD
Conference, was proposed to the World Bank, UNICEF,
ECDNA, and the Ugandan government – all were
supportive.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
The theme selected, “Showcasing ECD Innovation
and Application in Africa,” was largely informed
by experiences heard at the 1995, 1997 and 1998
ECD Seminars. From those events, it was clear to
the organizer that African ingenuity, diversity, and
creativity in the realm of ECD was under-reported and
under-appreciated – not just globally, but within Africa
itself. Africa had important ECD “stories” to tell, and
a venue that would bring a much larger number of
African leaders together (larger than the seminars) to
share their experiences and their learning was needed.
From Pence’s years of working with Indigenous
communities in Canada, he was well aware of
persistent colonial mentalities that resisted giving “the
other” a chance to be “the teacher,” and not just “the
taught.” The term “capacity” is a slippery word, open
to the abuse of very common “knowledge transfer”
processes (from “greater” to perceived “lesser” vessels),
rather than a more egalitarian knowledge sharing and
“knowledge generation” approach that appreciates
the importance of diversity – of many knowledges
– and the sense of power and empowerment that
comes from hearing “your words and ideas” spoken
from the front of the room. The idea of an African ECD
Conference predicated on “showcasing Africa” was
clearly a much-needed step in Africa’s ECD capacity
development: Africa recognizing its own strengths
and its own knowledgeable voices, and in so doing
becoming a recognized contributor to an ECD global
knowledge base.
At the First African International ECD Conference in
1999 a survey was distributed outlining a proposed
“ECD Capacity Development for Africa” and asking
those attending to indicate their interest to participate
in such a programme if it was available. The results
were overwhelmingly supportive (echoing a call rst
heard at the 1995 International ECD Seminar/Institute
held at UVic). The World Bank got the message and
announced on the last day of the conference its intent
to support the development of such a programme.
The ECDVU was on its way!
21 Owen’s programme was subsequently introduced to Africa by the 1830s, in part through his rst male employee, James Buchanan, when
Buchanan emigrated to South Africa. Infant schools are believed to be the rst reported import of a European ECD/ECE model to Africa
(Pence, 1980; Oliver, 1989).
ECDVU: a conceptual backstory
Beyond the background provided above, the ECDVU
also had a unique backstory, or “formative history,” with
threads of inuence that included:
1. A personal background (Pence) in providing
ECD services “on the ground” (starting in 1971),
enhanced through the 1970s scholarly writings
of Prof. Urie Bronfenbrenner, who underscored
the importance of ecological contexts and the
problems of an a-contextualized “science” of child
development (CD) and ECD (1979).
2. An awareness that the evolution of ECD in the
West was not linear nor on a path of continuing
improvement, with programme evidence as far
back as principles of care enunciated by Scottish
textile mill owner Robert Owen in his 1816
founding of a factory-based “New Institution
for the Formation of Character,” which included
an infant school (workplace childcare). In that
programme Owen sought: a balance of male and
female instructors, healthy outdoor exercise every
day, and exploratory learning (as opposed to direct
instruction). In short, a proposed level of quality
care rarely found globally today – over 200 years
later.21
3. Adding to Bronfenbrenner’s critique of “normative,
a-contextualized development theory” was an
applied post-colonial critique that grew out of
years of supporting Indigenous leadership for
Indigenous ECD and appreciating the importance
of local knowledge in the development of local
ECD services (commenced in 1989).
4. The experience of working in Indigenous contexts
then opened up to post-modern critiques of
who denes “best” and who denes “appropriate”.
Appropriate was a term used by the U.S.’s
largest early childhood association, the National
Association for the Education of Young Children
(NAEYC) in their landmark (and subsequently
challenged) Developmentally Appropriate Practice
(DAP) (Bredekamp,1987).
5. DAP’s top-down directives regarding “appropriate”
launched a countermovement in the United
States in 1992, Reconceptualizing Early Childhood
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Education (RECE), which coincided with more
European inuenced critiques in Valuing Quality
(Moss and Pence, 1994) and Beyond Quality
(Dahlberg et al., 1999). Beyond Quality was
subsequently translated into 13 languages across
three editions.
The most immediate inuence on the ECDVU was
the First Nations Partnerships (FNPP) (www.fnpp.
org). The FNPP, launched in 1989-1990, had been
successful in challenging various aspects of UVic’s (and
virtually all European and North American universities’)
“normal practices,” for example: increased exibility in
recognizing readiness for post-secondary education,
in-community deliveries, exibility in term deliveries,
and the inclusion of Elders as co-instructors within a
“generative curriculum” approach that appreciated
the importance of local and Indigenous knowledges
as well as Western sources of knowledge (Pence et al.,
1993).
So, while the ECDVU was only announced as approved
for development funding in late 1999, through a
substantial history of cross-cultural educational
innovation (accompanied by positive external
evaluations – an evidence base), conceptually it
was already partially designed. In addition, it had a
backstory of progressive ideas that stretched back
decades, and while those ideas and methods were
not the “dominant strain” of education as part of
international development, that dominant strain had
been found wanting. Its very dominance represented a
global weakness as far as the majority of the world was
concerned – new, as well as “retrieved” (Sankofa), ideas
were needed.
Operationalizing the ECDVU
ECDVU may have been partially formed, particularly at
a conceptual level, but it was far from operational for
a new initiative that envisioned change and capacity
development at individual, community, national,
and regional levels. That being said, the nascent
programme did have ideas as to how “capacity” had
been lost, as well as to how it might be gained.
First, there was more that needed to be learned about
the dynamics within the second largest continent
in the world, with 46 countries in sub-Saharan Africa
alone. The ve-plus years of work with the ECD
Seminars had produced a rolodex (remember those?)
of contacts with programmes and leaders across
SSA, but ECDVU required more research, including
in particular tech capacities and options for the
envisioned online seminars (plus mid-term, two-week,
face-to-face seminars).
A feasibility-study, led by a leading IT consultant based
in South Africa, proposed a primarily asynchronous
system, with a basic level of functionality and back-up
print materials for each student (ECDVU, 2000). That
advice was conrmed as sound closer to the launch
through a UVic Kenyan grad student in computing,
who visited all participants” sites, provided personal
connecting assistance, and linked stronger with
weaker computer users within the cohort. In addition,
there was more to determine regarding how the
institution of UVic itself could be as maximally
facilitative and as minimally problematic as possible.
Much had already been put in place to help UVic be
“supportive” through the FNPP programme, but the
ECDVU was to be a graduate level programme, and
much remained to be accomplished by the university
itself for facilitating the creation of graduate-level
programmes, including recognizing graduate diplomas
that became the norm from cohort SSA-2 on.
The 1999-2000 timing was fortuitous, as the parent
department at UVic (School of Child and Youth Care)
had just begun the development of a proposal for a
master’s degree, and this was augmented to include
an international online component as it wound its
way through the university and provincial approval
processes.
Funding for the ECDVU programme would come
from a wide range of international organizations not
typically handled by UVic, including the World Bank,
UNICEF, and various international foundations. Keeping
university overheads low, and operational autonomy
for the programme high, required negotiation and
relationship building. Again, the earlier presence of
the FNPP had provided key contacts throughout the
university system who were supportive of worthy, but
not “normal,” approaches to various systems within
UVic.
With a developing sense of curricula (generative) and
technology (low-end) approaches, the team formed
a high-level ECD International Advisory Group. The
group met early in 2001 to discuss relevant earlier ECD
initiatives in Africa (pitfalls and successes), criteria for
identifying priority countries in Africa, additional key
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
contacts in target countries, discussion of the draft
curriculum plan, and potential international faculty
members knowledgeable about ECD in Africa.
Based on that meeting, Pence prepared for trips
to advisory-identied, top priority SSA countries,
requesting to meet with a broadly representative
country-committee of 10 to 15 ECD knowledgeable
individuals to discuss key issues and objectives for
each proposed country. The intent was to not impose
a top-down, outsider-identied agenda, but for
each country’s leaders to meet and determine their
own country’s short- and mid-term ECD goals and
objectives.
Each country committee was also tasked with the
responsibility to advertise broadly the upcoming
intake for the inaugural ECDVU delivery (noting
that accepted individuals would remain in their
existing ECD-related employment throughout). The
country committee would then vet the applications,
submitting a list of up to four, typically multisectoral
individuals for the programme.
Development of the ECDVU programme had many
“moving parts,” but the development team needed
to be lean to keep costs down. Most team members
assumed more than one area of responsibility, and
sharing and coordination was ongoing.
While the World Bank had agreed to fund the
development of the ECDVU materials, they agged
that the costs of delivery would need to be funded
by a broader array of organizations. Securing funding
commitments from international groups such as
UNICEF, UNESCO, CIDA, and the Bernard van Leer
Foundation was time-consuming and challenging,
but the amount required was often supplemented
by country-level donors including UNICEF oces,
governments, and by a number of the participants”
employers. A principle of no out-of-pocket costs for
participants (who were often low income), worked
constructively with a principle of achieving employer
and country buy-in to the programme.
Delivering ECDVU
The rst African ECDVU cohort (SSA-1) commenced
in August 2001 with 29 participants in 11 countries;
however, one participant was not able to “launch”
due to personal reasons and a second was not
able to participate beyond the rst half of Term 1,
leaving the SSA-1 cohort with 27 participants in
10 countries. Of the 27: 20 were in ve four-person
country-teams; four were in two two-person country-
teams; with three singletons. The four-person teams
most closely matched the envisioned multisectoral
composition which was purposefully designed to
enhance communication and coordination across
key government ministries, NGOs, post-secondary
institutions, and other groups (and silos) in-country.
Those with two participants and with singletons
were envisioned as pioneers for their country with
an increase in numbers to follow through additional
cohorts (assuming evaluations supported future
cohorts – which was the case).
Each country team-member received a copy of their
country’s ECD goals and objectives developed by the
country committee and those statements served as
an ongoing point of guidance for the participants,
with progress on them being discussed at each
face-to-face, mid-term seminar. In addition, a major
assignment in one of the rst two courses was the
development of a country report with sections to be
developed by specic individuals for their contribution
to the overall Report. Those Reports served as a
second, ongoing point of reference for the country
team.
Participants from within each country typically knew
each other before the programme, but virtually
none of the participants knew those from other
countries. After three months of only online course
communications, the opportunity to meet each
other in-person, putting faces to digital (non-video)
“images,” was extremely entertaining for all. That
also became the moment for those who had similar
ECD responsibilities, but in dierent countries, to
begin ongoing, cross-country sharing – stitching
together a technicolour quilt of many countries and
responsibilities.
Such a quilt, covering the breadth and depth of ECD
across countries, is invaluable. Its stitches provide a
form of cohesion that allows initiatives to grow over
time, to connect with those less connected, and to
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amplify the power of singular events to become links
in an ongoing series that evolves and grows through
those connections.
These linkages have been all too rare in African
ECD. One example of how an ongoing leadership
programme like the ECDVU can connect and
strengthen the fabric of ECD across Africa is the
relationship between the four-part ECD conference
series launched in 1999 and continuing through
2009. That series is discussed in Chapter 5, but what
is not discussed in great detail there is the degree
to which some of those conferences were not only
led by ECDVU participants (particularly Asmara in
2002), but for Asmara, Accra (2005), and Dakar (2009)
ECDVU participants played key roles in alerting their
17 countries about the conferences, developing
presentations and enabling others to be presenters,
and helping conference leaders in numerous ways
“on the ground.” Those roles assumed by ECDVU
participants were similarly present in the development
and the activities of the key ECD network during
the 2000s period – the Working Group on ECD (see
Chapter 6).
The ECDVU proved to be a remarkably durable quilt,
one that still warms those who constructed it and one
that has been renewed over time as four additional
multi-country cohorts were mounted with the support
of an expanding number of international and national
donors. (In addition, there was one solo-country
delivery led by the University of Ibadan in Nigeria –that
story is covered later in this chapter.)
The growing comradery and sharing within the SSA-1
not only had benets within the cohort, and for
events like the conferences, but spilled over into the
participating countries (SSA-1 and beyond). Those
in-country as well as cross-country “ripples” were
eectively captured in two major external evaluations
sponsored by the World Bank, as well as a major
internal evaluation undertaken by the ECDVU. In many
respects the value of the ECDVU approach to ECD
leadership and capacity development is best captured
by those who participated in it, and an overview of
those views is provided next.
External and internal evaluations
As noted in the introductory background and the
backstory, the ECDVU sought to go well beyond
the too often hollow and/or narrow foci of “capacity
development” to promote capacity within and across
individual, community, national, and regional levels.
This section draws on ndings from three evaluations
of the ECDVU’s eectiveness in promoting capacity in
sub-Saharan Africa. These evaluations include external
and internal evaluations of SSA-1, the three-year
graduate programme (Vargas-Barón, 2005; Schafer
et al., 2005), and an external evaluation that included
SSA-1 participants and graduates from the one-year
SSA-2 and SSA-3 programmes (Vargas-Barón and
Joseph, 2011). The two external evaluations were
contracted and overseen by the World Bank.
Most of the evaluation data discussed here are based
on participant surveys from these evaluations, all
of which had very high response rates – ranging
from 85% and 90% for the 2005 and 2011 external
evaluations, respectively, to 100% for the 2005
internal evaluation. The focus for this section of the
chapter provides an evidence base that extends from
impacts at an individual level through organizational,
national level, and in some cases regional impacts,
largely achieved through “ripple eects” or “multiplier
impacts” that are facilitated through an “embedded” or
contextualized approach to education and support.
Impact on ECDVU graduates” work and lives
Increased condence. Whether educational
programmes empower or disempower participants
hinges in large part on the relevance of the topics
and activities to learners” contexts. When education
provides people with the knowledge and skills
to become recognized leaders within their own
organizations and countries, it empowers. When
learning is disconnected from context, it can
undermine learners” eectiveness and others”
perception of them as knowledgeable and suitable
leaders.
The structure and learning activities of the ECDVU
were designed to take place within and be relevant
to the local context of the learners, and to value
the knowledge of their communities and countries
as well as to learn from international sources (a
generative approach). The great majority of ECDVU
participants reported that the programme increased
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
their condence, allowing them to participate actively
in decision-making and policy development at higher
levels than before the programme.
During the internal evaluation (Schafer et al., 2005),
researchers followed up with the supervisors
and co-workers of the ECDVU graduates to gain
their perspectives on the program’s impact. Most
respondents commented on the increased condence
of ECDVU participants, echoing the comments of the
learners themselves: “the course has given her a lot of
condence to speak in public about early childhood
issues and to help other organizations develop
programs” (Schaefer et.al., 2005).
Increased skills to enhance capacity promotion.
ECDVU graduates gained many key capacity-
promoting skills through the programme, including
leadership, management, research, policy analysis,
networking, and computer skills. When asked
to assess how much ECDVU had contributed to
their development of such skills, the majority of
respondents reported a great improvement (see
Figure7.1). Leadership skills were cited as showing
great improvement by the highest proportion of
graduates (over 85%) – a clear success given the
program’s emphasis on leadership development.
Following close behind was the use of integrated
approaches to ECD, a skill that is considered
critical to advancing the health and well-being of
children and families in sub-Saharan Africa and one
promoted throughout ECDVU learning activities and
assignments.
Figure 7.1 Participants” rating of their skills improvement due to the ECDVU Programme
Source: Vargas-Barón and Joseph, 2011, p. 50
Not surprisingly, SSA-1 graduates, who received two
more years of training than SSA-2 and SSA-3 graduates,
and who had worked longer since graduation at the
time of the evaluation, were more likely to report
additional skills, such as: helping to plan ECD policies,
plans, regulations, or standards; improving ECD
coordination in their programme or countries; and
providing ECD training workshops. All these skills
were essential to creating the “multiplier eects” of
the ECDVU programme in the participants” home
countries.
Enhanced professional experiences in ECD. While
ECDVU graduates” increased self-condence and skills
are signicant, the program’s impact goes far beyond
the individuals directly involved. Each ECDVU graduate
left the programme with extensive experience as
an advocate for culturally relevant, respectful, and
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
integrated ECD, because this skill and perspective
is an integral part of the programme. In coursework
and major projects, ECDVU learners are required to
disseminate information and resources and to apply
their learning to their everyday ECD responsibilities
at work. This “keep-in” (in situ), as opposed to “pull-
out” (leave employment for graduate work “away”)
approach allows learners to be active in the ECD eld
within their countries throughout the programme,
with wide-ranging, cascading impacts at multiple
levels. Table 7.1 shows professional activities in which
participants have engaged since their graduation.
Table 7.1 Professional activities since graduation
Professional Activities %
Helped plan ECD policies, plans, regulations, or standards 85.3
Improved ECD coordination in your programme or nation 76.5
Implemented ongoing ECD services and/or programs 76.5
Provided ECD training workshops in your country 75.0
Planned or designed new ECD services and/or programs 72.1
Helped integrate ECD services across sectors 63.2
Gave talks at local, national, or regional meetings 63.2
Engaged in networking among programs 61.8
Prepared or adapted ECD curricula, materials, or methods 57.4
Developed inter-institutional partnerships 52.9
Conducted programme monitoring activities 50.0
Conducted research or evaluation projects 47.1
Source: Vargas-Barón and Joseph, 2011, p. 58
The professional activities noted above impacted
key aspects of ECD capacity development within
participating countries. Several of those key areas
include the following.
ECD policy. ECD policy is critical to advancing the
ECD agenda in sub-Saharan Africa. Nearly all SSA-1,
SSA-2, and SSA-3 graduates reported helping to
plan ECD policies, regulations, or standards – indeed,
many ECDVU graduates work as policy developers.
Whether through their jobs or other commitments,
ECDVU learners took on new, more inuential
roles in advancing ECD policy in their countries by
participating in policy forums, lobbying, and advocacy.
During the ECDVU deliveries, nations represented
in the ECDVU programme were at dierent stages
in developing comprehensive, holistic ECD policies.
For example, during the three-year delivery of SSA-1,
Malawi went from having no policy to having an
approved policy in place, largely due to the work of
key ECDVU participants (Kholowa and Chalamanda,
2015). As another example, Tanzania developed a
very eective, nation-wide network (TECDEN), which
provided the foundation for signicant governmental
and NGO interaction, ministerial coordination, and
policy framework development work (Bakuza and
Mwinuka, 2015). Additional policy related impacts
include Nigeria, which had an original complement
of 4 participants in SSA-1 and went on in SSA-4
and SSA-5 to have the majority of participants. That
dramatic increase reected the Nigerian federal
government developing in 2007 a policy that called
for the establishment of a pre-primary programme
in every primary programme in the country (Salami,
2016). The new policy called for dramatic increases in
training for pre-primary teachers – a challenge that
is described later in this chapter by ECDVU grad Prof.
Esther Oduolowu.
Certain professors contracted by the ECDVU also had
key policy-related impacts. For example, Drs Cyril Dalais
and Judith Evans had played key roles with various
African countries” eorts to develop policies, and in
Ghana, Prof. Jophus Anamuah-Mensah, the then Vice-
Chancellor of the University of Education-Winneba was
the instructor of the ECDVU leadership course in SSA-3,
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SSA-4, and SSA-5. In 2004 Prof. Anamuah-Mensah had
authored the White Paper on Education which called
for pre-primary programmes throughout the country
(Adu-Gyam, 2016).
ECD curriculum and training. In 2001, when the
ECDVU programme was launched, many participating
countries had identied ECD curriculum development
as a key objective. The need for ECD curriculum,
materials, and methods that t the multilingual,
multicultural nature of sub-Saharan Africa remains
pressing – typically, overly simplied Western-based
ECD curricula and materials are used.
The 2011 external evaluation indicated that nearly
60% of participants in SSA-1, SSA-2, and SSA-3 have
prepared or adapted ECD curricula, materials, or
methods since graduation. These initiatives have
reached hundreds of individuals in some countries
and thousands in others. In Nigeria, one ECDVU
participant alone reached 420 people through
training on important topics such as the use of an
Indigenous communicative teaching approach and
the management of child-friendly schools. Another
prominent achievement was the work by ECDVU
participants in Ghana and Eritrea to create curricula
for non-formal caregivers, a key but often neglected
sector in ECD.
Across sub-Saharan Africa, there has long been
tremendous demand for “training of trainers” in
holistic, integrated ECD principles and practice. ECDVU
participants have signicantly impacted this area of
the ECD eld: 75% of graduates from SSA-1, SSA-2, and
SSA-3 became workshop trainers, taught ECD classes,
or spoke at related events after graduation. Below are a
couple of examples of innovative training endeavours
that ECDVU graduates led (Schafer and Pence, 2005):
● In Eritrea, one graduate introduced a Training of
Trainers Strategy, which reached approximately
200 community caregivers across the country,
enabling them to provide service to parents and
children in villages in the most remote parts of the
country. A second graduate organized training in
administration, nancial accounting, procurement,
communication, and using technology for
ECD leaders, who could then train other ECD
stakeholders at the regional and subregional levels.
● In Uganda, one ECDVU graduate used her ECDVU
learning to train others in the use of computers
and the Internet in ECD research. A second
graduate provided training to facilitators, local and
zone leaders, grandparents, and guardians in ECD
and HIV/AIDS.
Innovative programme development. Following
graduation, many ECDVU learners piloted new
programmes or brought innovative approaches to
existing programmes – many became models that
were replicated throughout their country. The 2011
evaluation found that 72.1% of participants said they
had planned or designed new ECD services and/
or programmes and over 73% said they had helped
to integrate ECD services and/or programmes at
the community level since graduation. Indeed, an
internationally recognized colleague from a prominent
university in the United States contacted the ECDVU
Director to say that as she went from country to
country across SSA, the ECDVU graduates were
invariably the most knowledgeable and capable
in helping her to move forward with her own ECD
project.
The internal evaluation in 2005 highlighted the
importance of one participant’s creative approach
in working with hard-to-reach populations using a
community development approach:
She is piloting new approaches in working with
single women and teenage mothers. […] She
has already expanded the programme […] to 15
new areas where participation by all community
members is key for sustainable ECD programmes.
Communities are opening communal gardens to
feed the children and sell surplus for buying other
necessities. (Schafer et al., 2005)
While enrolled in ECDVU, one SSA-1 student worked
on a highly innovative programme with grandmothers
who care for AIDS orphans in Uganda. The quality
of her work was recognized by the Bernard van Leer
Foundation, whose representatives came to Uganda
in September 2003 to visit her project and asked her
to write a three-year funding proposal, which was
approved.
In-country, pan-African, and international
contacts, partners, and networks. One motivation
to create the ECDVU programme came from African
ECD leaders” expressed need for more networking
between ECD partners within countries, across Africa,
and internationally. The ECDVU programme explicitly
recognizes the strength of network building as a tool
for leadership and for capacity promotion in Africa.
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Importantly, networks, and the relationships they
can build, also help to eliminate the “silo” mentality
that often characterizes sectoral ministries. Those
closer relationships can then lead to the creation of
policies and programmes that put the interests of
children before the political efdoms of government.
ECDVU participants spoke of the relationship building
processes within the ECDVU:
We formed a “Country Team,” which in itself is [an
advance for ECD] as four very dierent personalities
from dierent ethnic and socio-economic
backgrounds became a group that would grow and
work together for the next two and a half years.
(Participant, Malawi, SSA-1)
I have also learnt from colleagues across Africa,
[…] networking among ECDVU partners has also
promoted dissemination of experiences among
dierent countries. (Colleague, Tanzania, SSA-1)
Seventy-ve percent of participants reported that prior
to the ECDVU programme, they engaged in very little
ECD networking and felt considerable isolation. The
2011 ECDVU evaluation asked participants to estimate
the number of contacts, partnerships, and networks
they had developed or engaged with since graduation.
Eighty-seven percent of graduates developed new
contacts in African countries through the ECDVU
programme.
Work on other key ECD themes. The ECDVU
programme was initiated during the second decade
of the Education for All (EFA) initiative, 2000 to 2010.
The rst goal in the EFA Framework for Action calls
for “expanding and improving comprehensive early
childhood care and education, especially for the most
vulnerable and disadvantaged children” (UNESCO,
2000). This line became a rallying call for progress
in ECD in sub-Saharan Africa and generated much
discussion in the ECDVU programme. The 2011
evaluation asked graduates about their involvement
in EFA-related activities. Nearly 84% of graduates had
participated in at least one EFA activity following
graduation.
The Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRS) in each African
country provide a major opportunity to promote ECD
services – many PRS indicators include indicators often
used in ECD policies and strategic plans. Most ECDVU
graduates (77.9%) said they had participated in some
PRS activity.
The ECDVU is a compelling case story of how a
relatively small-scale (around 30 participants per
cohort, x5 cohorts – with 95% completion rates),
low cost (particularly compared to “pull-out/out-
of-country” a-contextualized programs), can have
a signicant impact at individual, institutional,
community, national, and an SSA-regional level
through replacing: knowledge transfer with
knowledge generation; outsider-driven priorities
with insider leadership and ownership; top-down
instructional classes with communities of learners
and leaders; and narrow sectoral targeting with
multisectoral, multi-organizational approaches.
Countries that gained the most:
lessons learned, ways forward
The evaluations, both external and internal, provided
valuable information regarding ECD capacity
promotion at a multitude of levels, from individual
to country and SSA. Perhaps most central to that
enhancement was the strong sense of being part of a
broadly based, community of learners and leaders – a
caring community where leaders (including faculty
and sta) learned, and all learners were in a position
to lead. The learners from each country had been
selected by their country, based on their strategic role in
being able to help their country meet ECD goals and
objectives established by a knowledgeable, in-country
committee – and they remained accountable to
that committee and to their country throughout the
programme (and beyond).
The learners remained in-country and in their own
professional positions. As such they were able to
become transmitters of the knowledge they acquired
with their work colleagues and with others in-country
– a cascading or ripple approach to capacity
development. The learners understood that being in
the ECDVU was not fundamentally about themselves,
but about ECD in their countries and what they could
do to advance it.
Within the ECDVU family, participants met and worked
with other leaders from many dierent countries in
both similar and dierent positions from their own.
Collectively, they supported their ECDVU colleagues
who were taking the lead in mounting the 2002, 2005,
and 2009 ECD African International Conferences (see
Chapter 5). They helped identify local presenters for
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the conferences, they themselves made presentations,
chaired sessions, and helped in a multitude of ways for
the conferences to be successful.
Many also played important roles in advancing the key
ECD network in Africa at that time, the ADEA Working
Group on ECD (WGECD), serving in key sta positions
and also as key links with many of the SSA countries.
ECDVU participants also connected across borders
to advance other sh
ared goals through consulting,
providing data, connecting contacts, presenting at
country conferences, and many more.
As one reects across the various cohorts, several
points became clear.
One, selection mattered – the ECDVU was a capacity
development programme that appreciated the
importance of high-level leadership for ECD, seeking
individuals who were respected and who were already
in a position in their home country to advance policies,
programmes, education/training, and more. Through
ripple and cascading processes these leaders would
help ensure that front-line care providers, service
programme developers, educational institutions, and
local advocates received the kinds of support they
needed to do their work.
Two, successive cohort participation mattered – some
countries had up to 14 participants over four cohorts
allowing those countries to reach an ever-larger
number of ministries, post-secondary institutions,
NGOs, districts, and broad position responsibilities,
growing an ever larger and more diverse network of
knowledgeable, similarly informed and committed
ECD leaders in-country. A number of the countries
developed their ongoing ECD networks through the
ECDVU process.
Three, relationship building mattered – from the
very rst face-to-face seminar (2001) held mid-term
during the rst six-month course, the “social side” of
the programme mattered, and it included: bringing
and sharing music; demonstrating, then taking part
in dances and other cultural activities; becoming
“colleagues” with professors; eld trips and visiting
noteworthy ECD programmes in each seminar/
country location; hearing from key ECD individuals
in each seminar location; and sharing ongoing
interests and communication during the deliveries
on more-than-courses topics, including their families”
welfare and children.
One of the delivery changes that allowed more
individuals, over time, to experience the ECDVU was
a shift after the SSA-1 cohort from an initial two-
and-a-half-year master’s programme to a one-year
grad diploma programme. The master’s programme
allowed for a larger set of courses, but the challenges of
constituting master’s theses” committees and defences
at such a distance proved daunting, and evidence
from the rst one-year grad diploma programme were
“encouraging and beyond expectations” based on
ongoing internal evaluations. With a shift from a two-
and-a-half-year delivery period to a twelve-to-thirteen-
month delivery, many more cohorts were possible. A
decision was made following SSA-1 to adopt a grad
diploma approach and to push harder for ECDVU-
articulated master’s level completion ECD programmes
in African universities – for example, see the University
of Ibadan story below, which also addresses the
challenge of “scaling” a successful programme.
Institutional partnering in Africa
With the results of the rst external and internal
evaluations in hand, indicating the kinds of direct and
indirect (ripple) successes that were possible through
an ECDVU approach to ECD leadership-focused
capacity development in Africa, the programme was in
a position to partner with interested African universities
that wished to create a similar programme.
The First Nations Partnerships (FNPP—noted earlier
in regard to preparing the University of Victoria for
“other than normal” approaches to post-secondary
education) had on several occasions transitioned the
FNPP programme to “local” post-secondary institutions
(colleges). The following account provided by an
alumnus of the ECDVU programme, Prof. Esther
Oduolowu at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria,
provides critically important insights regarding the
range of benets, as well as challenges, that can arise in
undertaking such an international adaptation.
Background information
Nigeria, like many other countries in Africa, has long
realized the need to develop pre-primary services
for young children. In 2007, the federal government
approved a policy that supported the provision of
pre-primary education within each primary school
across the country. While the policy was lauded by ECD
advocates, the ability to actually provide such services
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was limited by nances and by the lack of appropriate
education and training for pre-primary teachers and for
care-providers in other early childhood care settings.
Without such training, and without further policy
development and regulation, concerns for quality were
high on Nigerian ECD leaders” list of “required next
steps.”
The need to create an ECDVU-type leadership and
capacity development programme in Nigeria was not
in doubt. Therefore, the University of Ibadan leveraged
these needs to collaborate with the University of
Victoria, Canada, and adapted the ECDVU programme
at a postgraduate level in the University of Ibadan to
help address the challenges of ECD human resource
capacity development at both grassroots (using a
cascading Training of Trainers approach) and at more
administrative and governmental levels.
The process of transition
The genesis of the adaptation of the ECDVU started
with Prof. Esther Oduolowu being a member of
ECDVU’s fourth African cohort (SSA-4). She perceived
the need for such a distance education programme
to ll the gaps of ECD leadership in Nigeria and the
possibility of a partnership between the University
of Ibadan and the ECDVU programme at UVic. What
follows is an account by Prof. Oduolowu of the phases
involved in the development of a University of Ibadan
led graduate-level ECD leadership programme.
As part of her ECDVU coursework, Prof. Oduolowu
began to contextualize the programme to meet
Nigerian needs. With the basics of a proposal in hand,
Oduolowu proposed to senior administration at U.
Ibadan to meet with herself and Prof. Alan Pence to
discuss a UVic and U. Ibadan cooperative delivery. In
June 2011, Pence and Oduolowu were able to meet
with the Vice-Chancellor of the University, both the
Deputy Vice Chancellors, and other key University
ocials. The meeting yielded positive results as
the University indicated its desire to partner with
UVic for a cooperative delivery of the programme.
Oduolowu, with support now apparent at the highest
levels, steered a more fully developed proposal and
curriculum through the necessary levels, resulting in
approval by the U. Ibadan Senate.
With institutional approvals moving into place, Prof.
Oduolowu (then Head of the Early Childhood Unit) and
Prof. Pence proceeded to Abuja for further discussion
with the Universal Basic Education Commission
(UBEC) Executive Secretary and the World Bank
Nigeria representative, Dr Tunde Adekola. The purpose
of meeting with the chief executives of these two
important bodies was to maintain momentum for
the programme to be led by the University of Ibadan,
patronize it by nominating participants, and provide
funding support for it.
Those present in the discussions accepted that there
was an absolutely critical need to supply ECD classes
in Nigeria with well-trained, competent professionals
and knowledgeable ECD specialists at leadership levels
in the education and secular sectors in Nigeria in order
to meet the psychosocial and stimulation needs of
the youngest citizens and their families in Nigeria. The
University of Ibadan had been graduating master’s
and Ph.D. holders for many years, but those were
almost totally through on-campus programmes. The
ECDVU approach oered the university an important
opportunity to explore and develop web-based
learning (which subsequently became a more common
option at U. Ibadan). In addition to the University
becoming more familiar with a new delivery procedure,
the program’s part-time nature allowed participants
to continue with their current work and also to share
their learning with colleagues and others active in their
context (see ECDVU evaluations noted earlier in the
chapter).
The rst Ibadan-based delivery
UBEC advised the State Universal Basic Education
Boards (SUBEBs) to send a list of their nominees to the
University. A total of 28participants constituted the
proposed cohort from Nigeria. Seven other African
nationals joined the group through non-Nigerian
funding sources: Zimbabwe (one), Rwanda (two)
Lesotho (two), and Tanzania (two). The Nigerian
participants were: ECD Desk ocers from UBEC, SUBEB
employees, and a teacher from a college of education,
while the non-Nigerians held a variety of positions
within their home countries.
The Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC)
sponsored the rst cohort of participants for the
programme. The University of Ibadan hosted this
cohort in collaboration with the University of Victoria.
The facilitators were a mix of international scholars,
including Prof. Alan Pence (Canada), Prof. Jophus
Anamuah Mensa (Ghana), Prof. Bame Nsamenang
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
(Cameroon), and Prof. Esther Oduolowu (Nigeria), with
support from Ms. Deborah Blakely (Canada), and Dr
Dara Abimbade (Nigeria). The orientation
programme
and the rst face-to-face seminar were held at the
University of Ibadan while the second segment was
held at the Bolton Hotel, Abuja.
Some of the challenges encountered
Some of the nominees for the programme from
SUBEBs did not possess one of the requirements for
postgraduate studies at the hosting University. The
University of Ibadan requires a credit pass in English
language at ordinary level. After much internal
discussion, this condition was however waived for the
participants in light of their satisfactory submission of
written papers and because the department housing
the programme pleaded for a waiver.
The cost for the programme sky-rocketed before the
end of the programme due to economic instability
in Nigeria and the rapid devaluation of the Naira.
This was compounded by the federal government’s
foreign currency policies. These economic challenges
prevented the participants from having one face-to-
face seminar set outside Nigeria, as had been planned.
Nigeria’s nancial problems also made it very dicult
to pay the non-UVic international scholars their
honorarium. Ultimately, the University resolved the
problem by an alternative means of raising dollars.
In addition, most of the textbooks for the programme
were published outside of Africa and it became very
expensive to import the books. Ibadan’s UVic partners
backstopped this need and helped cover the cost of
shipping some of the books.
Even though the programme was intended to be
fully completed in 18 months (included three months
prep and three months post), a national strike by the
Academic Sta Union of the University (ASUU) and
other related problems, meant the ocial convocation
for the 2016/2017 session could not take place until
2018.
Evaluation
Despite the numerous challenges experienced,
feedback from the sponsors (UBEC and the World
Bank) indicated that the programme had been
eective, particularly in regard to leadership
enhancement regarding policies and practices
development as well as impacts at the grassroots
level. The participants had become more active and
eective in performing their responsibilities because
of the knowledge and skills they acquired through
the programme. With positive outcomes, despite the
considerable challenges, the World Bank and Nigerian
federal agencies were prepared to support a second, U.
Ibadan “stand-alone” delivery.
The second cohort of the programme:
2017/2018 session
The focal participants for this cohort were lecturers
from colleges of education who were teaching early
childhood education but did not have the professional
and pedagogical knowledge to do so eectively. The
nominees were from ve colleges of education. A
total of 27 participants registered for the programme.
Three of the facilitators were graduates of the ECDVU
program: Prof. Esther Oduolowu (Nigeria), Dr Hannah
Ajayi (Nigeria), and Ms. Ruth Addison (Ghana).
For this second cohort, the orientation took place in
Ibadan while the rst face-to-face seminar was held in
Abuja. The rst seminar oered the opportunity for the
representatives of the sponsor to meet and engage
with the participants. Those attending were: Dr Tunde
Adekola for the World Bank-Nigeria, Mr. Joseph Achede
from Federal Ministry of Education, Prof. J. O. Ajiboye,
the Registrar of Teacher Registration Council of Nigeria,
Mr. Mayowa Aleshin from UBEC, and Dr Mahammad
Wadati Hakimi, Provost of Shehu Shagari College of
Education (one of the participating colleges).
The second face-to-face seminar was brought back
to Ibadan. It was held from 24 April to 3 May 2019 at
His Grace Hotel. In addition to the academic work, this
segment was spiced with visits to ECD centres and the
zoological garden in Ibadan.
Challenges
One of the major challenges faced by this cohort was
the high cost for accommodations, travel tickets and
meals. In addition, it was not possible for participants
to travel out of Nigeria for international exposure, and
it was also not possible for other African nationals to
be part of the programme.
This second U. Ibadan based delivery also found that
the books and materials for the programme needed
updating, but there were no funds available to source
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new materials. It believed that with the expansion o
f
Open Access, Open Educational Resources and some
increases in African authorship, issues of cost, context
and updates could be, at least in part, addressed.
Further challenges arose at the University of Ibadan
as all of the procedures and processes governing the
programme were embedded in the postgraduate
college. Although the programme is more professional
than academic, there were no alternative means to
address, for example, professionally focused admissions
criteria. Little measure of operational autonomy was
given to the responsible department, and in general
a complicated bureaucratic structure took valuable
time and energy from those leading the initiative. In
addition, the programme, although oered online,
was not spared the strike actions of the Academic Sta
University Union (which occur on a regular basis).
And last, but not least, the 2020-ongoing COVID-19
pandemic has impacted post-secondary institutions
worldwide. Despite the post-graduate degree’s
successes and prescient use of web-based learning
(with many institutions globally shifting to such
delivery systems), the consequences of COVID-19
related economic challenges in the future are serious
considerations for future ECD Leadership postgraduate
programmes in Nigeria. The emerging preference for
such a programme is for a full master’s degree, such as
the very rst ECDVU cohort in 2001-2004. In addition,
a more administratively facilitative environment,
particularly for innovations of value to the university
more broadly (which appears to be the case at the
University of Victoria) are much needed to help ensure
success for future initiatives.
Conclusion: reections on ECD
capacity promotion
The approach to ECD capacity promotion undertaken
by the ECDVU remains unusual in the world of post-
secondary education broadly – and even as part of
development-focused education more specically.
The unusual ECDVU approach, considered as Sankofa
relevant, included: country identied educational
objectives; country identied, multisectoral participants
in a position to achieve objectives; programme costs
not incurred by participants; globally-based faculty
selection focused on relevant professional experience
as well as academic expertise; “in-situ” education with
cascading activities required and concomitant local
benets; primarily online but with face-to-face at key
points; face-to-face seminar sites chosen for exposure
to exemplary programmes as well as to outstanding,
“local” professional or academic leaders; culturally and
contextually attuned generative curriculum; critical,
reective and situational perspectives throughout;
post-colonial understandings throughout; systems
foci throughout; a focus on the development of an
ongoing community of learners/leaders; eectiveness
measured not only by individual but by country level
changes as well; and more.
The evidence of the ECDVU’s eectiveness is captured
in its two World Bank external evaluations (Vargas-
Barón, 2005; Vargas-Barón and Joseph, 2011) and an
internal evaluation (Schaefer et al., 2005), and the scope
of the evaluations, including country-level and regional
impacts, are themselves unusual. But such evidence,
and the critiques of “normal post-secondary education”
and the innovations that lie behind it, should not be
unusual – particularly at a time when calls to “build
forward better” in a post-COVID-19 period are heard
globally.
However, the challenge of transitioning a successful,
evidence-based programme to other sites, in this case
to an African university, can be considerable, and that
too is captured in the preceding pages. Some of that
challenge was due to unforeseen economic challenges
– an economic “meltdown” in Nigeria – but there were
also institutional challenges that limited the authority
of those closest to and most knowledgeable about the
programme to make timely and eective decisions.
Many processes were unnecessarily bureaucratic,
time-consuming, and questionable on various grounds.
There are also challenges within the very nature of
post-secondary education globally as it has evolved (or
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
failed to evolve) from certain European roots designed
to reinforce and maintain class, culture, and socio-
economic inequalities.
Such challenges expose weaknesses in development
arguments calling for “scaling” – as though programmes
that have evolved in certain contexts are readily
transferable to other contexts. Yes, one can (and
should) learn from others” experiences, and ideas taken
from one place may well save development time in
other places and open up new possibilities. However,
that being said, context, and culture do
matter and
evaluations that highlight both the upsides and the
downsides of programmes and their transitions are
important to hear and to learn from.
As noted in the opening pages of this chapter, early
work on the ECDVU graduate-level approach to
leadership capacity development benetted greatly
from a predecessor programme at the University of
Victoria, the First Nations Partnerships (www.fnpp.
org). Much was learned through listening to those
Indigenous communities and their Elders and then
working within the university itself to create the basis
and the avenues for a true partnership – a partnership
of equals.
Much was also learned through successful transitions
of the FNPP programmes to other institutions in
Canada, just as learning about what works and what
does not was made possible through the transition
of the ECDVU-type programme to the U. Ibadan. One
cannot learn new things without trying new things.
Both the University of Victoria and the University of
Ibadan tried new things – and both learned. But both
also sought, rst, to learn from what had come before,
to look back as well as forward before taking those
next steps – in other words, to proceed in a Sankofa
fashion.
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Action.pdf
SECTION 4
Seeing Africa through
African lenses
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Introduction
Hasina Banu Ebrahim
Deepening local ECD initiatives in Africa
This section is a departure from Sections 2 and3,
both of which showed strong time-bound
trajectories. Specically, it addresses selected issues
for engagement with the purpose of deepening
insights into local initiatives of ECD in Africa. The
issues of African scholar initiatives, measurement,
professionalization, and ECD at the margins all
show how the hegemonic historical knowledge
and practices relegated the need for local bodies
of thought to inform culturally responsive actions.
As shown in this book thus far, Africa is a place of
abundance with multiple dierences. Theorising
ECD in context has its own local mediations. The
shifts, contrasts, perceived decits, assets at the
margins and the arrival of the global pandemic all
present possibilities for acting otherwise. Prior to the
presentation of the chapter summaries, it is imperative
to highlight some contextual eorts that allowed
local ECD knowledge to gain traction in Africa.
Shifting the focus in ECD
The analysis of the landscape in Africa shows that
there have been several developments that allowed
for local thrusts in ECD to gain visibility. Continued
critiques of avenues that downplayed the assets
for culturally responsive ECD was helpful in moving
ECD in Africa forward. Over time the shortcomings
of looking at ECD through imperialistic eyes and
dominant practices has been the focus of several
authors in the reconceptualist movement outside
Africa (Cannella, 1997; Viruru, 2001; Smith, 2005) and
critical scholarship inside Africa (Nsamenang, 2008;
Pence and Marfo, 2008; Ebrahim, 2012). Concerns
were raised about how universalized knowledge
systems with strong Euro-American bases resulted in
authoritative representations of Indigenous people
and their practices through the framing of the “Other.”
This conceptualization was productive, as it shaped
narratives of universalized truths which minimized
the narratives of the “Other.” Such practices drew their
legitimacy from the way they served the priorities
of those in power (e.g., researchers, funders, political
groupings from the Minority World). The eects have
been quite telling. Okwany and Ebrahim (2015; 2019),
for example, as part of the African scholar activist
community show how the normative codes of truth
in ECD in Africa led to the devaluing of caregivers
and children as knowing and speaking subjects.
The attention to epistemic polarities, top-down
practices in ECD and the call for social justice in ECD is
resulting in change. There is a shift from “learning from
Africa” for Minority World agendas to more “learning
about Africa” from local perspectives. This adjustment
in lenses is a fragile project. The fragility is captured in
the palimpsest metaphor (Davies, 1993, p. 11) which
draws attention to the multiple layers of complexity
that characterize ECD in Africa. The term captures the
way in which new messages are grafted over original
messages. This results in both the new and the existing
messages having a presence that can be subjected to
disruptions. When applied to foregrounding the local
thrust to ECD knowledge and practice, the dominant
ways of knowing and doing do not simply go away.
Both the hegemonic and the marginalized aspects in
ECD interrupt each other and exist in parallel ways.
They create tensions and can undermine each other.
Ebrahim (2016) in her exploration of early education
of Muslim children in two provinces in South
Africa show how dualistic knowledge systems in
a secular perspective of preschool education sits
uncomfortably with the Islamic education perspective.
This is particularly the case if explicit eorts are not
made for thematic integrations to support early
learning. Okwany, Ngutuku and Muhangi (2011)
provide another example. They argue that there is a
wealth of community capital in the form of dynamic
practices, rituals, and relationships in Africa. However,
this community wealth does not substantially
inuence national policy and ECD delivery systems.
The cultural mixing, mosaics, and hybridities from
the frontline gets little re-interpretation for their
value in shaping culturally responsive ECD.
Despite some promising moves to contextualize
ECD, much work needs to be done in this direction.
In the principle of acting in the best interest of all
children in Africa, continued eorts need to be
invested in leveraging the rich resources available
for early care and education in the many childhoods
experienced in Africa. Complementary to this
process, key State attention needs to be given to
the vulnerabilities and structural inequalities which
place young children and their families at risk.
The development sensibilities for robust ECD cannot
be driven by top-down approaches. These approaches
have strongly been the modus operandi of national
governments, large funding houses, and powerful
actors with signicant footprints in ECD in Africa.
Africa has seen many failures due to the command-
and-control top-down decision-making in ECD. When
input is sought for ECD, a few tokenistic actions are
put in place in the name of consultation. Individuals
that are aligned to the dominant framework for
action are part of the consultative stakeholder
group. The deterministic direction in top-down
approaches seek easy implementation routes which
has many compromises. ECD in Africa is a political
and contested space. As such, any interventions
in ECD must allow for multiple voices to be heard.
Participatory action approaches are vital to unpack
the complexities. The learning exchanges must allow
for questioning, dialogue, and feedback as important
processes for co-construction of ECD in context.
A bottom-up approach is favourable for advancing
ECD as a fundamental right. Those at the frontline
have signicant knowledge, insights, and experience
to provide solutions that decision-makers seek. The
participatory mode of working with the frontline
is becoming more visible through platforms like
intersectoral forums where ECD government
ocials meet with a range of ECD stakeholders
from civil society to share information and to
co-construct policies and programmes. Diverse
perspectives and experiences become available as
resources for locally generated solutions for ECD.
For example, South Africa and Ghana have active
intersectoral forums that have allowed for local
evidence and knowledge building to shape ECD.
The OMEP President, Mercedes Mayol Lassalle, at the
launch of the UNESCO Global Partnership Strategy
on 6 December 2021 reminded the ECD sector
about the renement of the “compass for action”
in ECD in current and future times. It is important,
however, to ask the following: whose compass
are we rening?; who benets from the rened
action?; and who is placed at the margins? What
is the eect of the renement on young children
and their families in compounded crisis times?
The answers to these questions must tumble out
of collaborative endeavours and co-constructed
experiences with a variety of stakeholders.
Journeys of ECD explorations
The chapters in Section 4 takes the reader through
the complex journeys of specic issues that make
demands for critical thought, reection, and
dialogue as ECD moves into post-pandemic times.
The opening chapter draws attention to ECD scholars
and initiatives to build capacity for knowledge
production in Africa. Ejuu in Chapter 8 engages
with loaded messages that had a bearing on
African scholarship. ECD scholars have traditionally
been positioned as adages to agenda setting
for knowledge production by the Global North.
This state of aairs provided minimalist roles for
ECD scholars, e.g., eldworkers. The devaluing of
knowledge production from the periphery and the
struggles for recognition are captured by Ejuu in a
powerful way. Through resistance and agency, greater
opportunities are coming to the fore to help ECD
scholars in Africa to ourish. Ejuu forms part of the
emerging African scholar community. He highlights
progress in mobilizing knowledge capital and building
perspectives for context responsiveness. Despite these
developments, there is a need for a more consolidated
ECD scholar response at regional and national levels.
A fertile environment for African scholars is imperative
to produce local knowledge for local solutions and
for the expansion of global literature on ECD.
Serpell in Chapter 9 troubles the measurement
approach to understanding child development,
especially in its quest to seek precision in the
prediction and control of behaviour. He shows how
psychometric assessment of human functioning is
grounded in evidence of standardization, reliability,
and validity. This limited practice is widely accepted
in industrialized societies for “objective” measurement
of socially valued traits. However, such measurement
practices, Serpell argues, have been misused to
rationalize discriminatory practices. They are exported
to low- and middle-income countries with insucient
attention to the local context. Distinctive features of
African childhoods documented by Indigenous African
autobiographies and anthropological ethnographies
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have typically been ignored in quantitative research.
Twentieth century studies attempting measurement
of African children’s development were often marred
by ethnocentric bias, confounded biological age
with years of schooling, and revealed cultural limits
on the eectiveness of pictorial representation.
Serpell notes that African children’s responses to
the unfamiliarity of Western tests have generated
signicant elaboration of developmental theory to
emphasize the cultural context. Pragmatic responses
include systematic development of assessment
instruments directly attuned to African conditions,
generating demographically corrected norms for
exogenous tests, or cross-cultural construct validation
of psychometric instruments. These responses to
measurement of contexts inuencing children’s
development have benetted from statistical
methods for exploring patterns of multivariate
causation. However, Serpell is quick to point out
that evaluations of ECD interventions are often
grounded in a hegemonic rationale that assumes
Western forms of education are essential for
progressive social change in Africa, positing school
readiness as a criterion of impact, and implicitly
construing Indigenous family socialization practices
as decient. The professionalization of psychology
has converged with scientization in international
organizations to overemphasize quantitative
research evidence. Interpretation of research
must interrogate the theoretical and ideological
premises for culturally responsive actions in Africa.
The theme of professionalization is then carried
forward by multiple authors from dierent countries in
Africa. Ebrahim, Sebatane, Bakuza, Banda, Ndeto, and
Pillay in Chapter 10 team up to unravel the context
of professionalizing ECD in Africa. Using the framing
of professionalization as historical, institutional, and
collective processes impacting on the ECD workforce,
the authors bring to the fore the power narratives.
The historical discussion shows the seductions of
knowledge transfer and its eect for advancing
ECD. The institutional and collective perspectives
are illuminated through the discussion on local
eorts to shift towards ECD as an early emerging
profession. The issues of a majority women labour
force composition, compensation and training and
qualications draws on examples from the African
context to show similarities and dierences. The
authors draw attention to how the Indigenous assets
are featuring in curriculum, standards generation, and
linguistic choices for ECD workforce development.
The impact of the pandemic in ECD is highlighted
together with examples of how resistance from the
ECD sector show promise for new pathways for action.
The quest to push beyond dominant knowledge
systems and practices continues in Chapter 11
by Okwany and Ngutuku. Like other authors in
this section, they position themselves as scholar
activists seeking epistemic justice for advancing
policy, practice, and research in ECD in Africa.
The concept of “leveraging” is aptly used to invite
action for accessing knowledge and resources for
ECD from marginalized and dynamic caregiving
space. The authors powerfully show how vulnerable
contexts have agents who are resilient to the shocks in
childcare systems despite HIV/AIDs and the pandemic.
Examples of infusing of local knowledge and practice
in ECD interventions are used to foreground power
from the margins. This is done through a reality check
on the barriers created by a decit lens on the value
of what the margins can oer. In the context of the
pandemic, the authors make a call for understanding
lived experiences of children and their caregivers.
For children, they argue for engagement with the
situational realities and postures of listening better
and listening well to the voices of children. Attention
is also drawn to the importance of working in a
community resilience framework for action. This
framework allows for micro-level experiences to
inform actions at the macro-levels. Hope in resilience
is presented as a force for new beginnings in ECD.
In summary, all authors in this section are vocal
about their discomfort with the erasure of ECD
knowledge and experience from the periphery. They
illuminate the side-lining of rich resources in local
contexts and provide examples of its value for ECD
in Africa to be something dierent in challenging
times. In many ways, dierence serves as a third
space for more bottom-up explorations. The journey
ahead will require careful co-construction of robust
ECD that pays attention to situated realities.
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References
Cannella, G. S. 1997.Deconstructing Early Childhood
Education: Social Justice and Revolution. Rethinking
Childhood, Vol. 2. Bern, Switzerland, Peter Lang
Publishing.
Davies, B. 1993. Shards of glass. Crows Nest, Australia, Allen
and Unwin.
Ebrahim, H. 2012. Tensions in incorporating global
childhood with early childhood programs: The
case of South Africa.Australasian Journal of Early
Childhood,Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 80-86.
—. 2016.Early childhood education for Muslim children:
Rationales and practices in South Africa. Milton Park,
UK, Routledge.
Muhangi, A. and Ngutuku, E. 2011. Action Research on
the Integrated Area Based Approach and Child Labour
Monitoring Systems in Rakai District.Geneva/Kampala,
Uganda, ILO/IPEC Uganda.
Nsamenang, A. B. 2008. (Mis) Understanding ECD in Africa:
The force of local and global motives. M. Garcia,
A. Pence, and J. Evans (Eds.), Africa’s future, Africa’s
challenge. Washington D.C., The World Bank, p. 135-
150. Available at: https://elibrary.worldbank.org/doi/
abs/10.1596/978-0-8213-6886-2.
Okwany, A., Ngutuku E., and Muhangi, A. 2011. The role
of local knowledge and culture in childcare in Africa.
Lewiston, NY., Edwin Mellen Press.
Okwany, A. and Ebrahim, H. 2015. Rethinking
epistemology and methodology in early childhood
research in Africa. A. Farrell, S. L. Kagan, E. Kay, and M.
Tisdall (Eds.), Handbook of early childhood research.
London, SAGE Publications, pp. 432-448.
Okwany, A. and Ebrahim, H. B. 2019. Creating visibility
for birth to 3 in Africa: a push from the margins.
H. B. Ebrahim, A. Okwany, and O. Barry (Eds.), Early
childhood care and education at the margins. Milton
Park, UK, Routledge, pp. 1-15.
Pence, A. and Marfo, K. 2008. Early childhood
development in Africa: Interrogating constraints of
prevailing knowledge bases.International Journal of
Psychology,Vol. 43, No. 2, pp. 78-87.
Smith, L. T. 2005. Building a research agenda
for indigenous epistemologies and
education.Anthropology and Education Quarterly,Vol.
36, No. 1, pp. 93-95.
Viruru, R. 2001. Early childhood education: Postcolonial
perspectives from India. London, SAGE Publications.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Chapter 8
African ECD scholars
– Challenges and
prospects
Godfrey Ejuu
Introduction
An analysis of the psychological research literature
published by Arnett (2008) highlighted the great
discrepancy between where that literature originates
(in the West) and where the great majority of
humankind lives (in the non-Western world). More
specically, Arnett agged that while only 5% of the
world population lives in the U.S. (the single greatest
source of that literature), 95% of the world fails to
appear in the research, despite assumptions that those
ndings are universal in nature. Arnett went on to note:
“I argue that research on the whole of humanity is
necessary for creating a science that truly represents
the whole of humanity” (p. 602). Henrich, Heine and
Norenzayan (2010), building on that critique, opened
an abstract for their article titled “The weirdest
people in the world?” with the following: “Behavioural
scientists routinely publish broad claims about human
psychology and behaviour in the world’s top journals
based on samples drawn entirely from Western,
Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD)
societies” (p. 61). The authors then go on to note:
“Overall, these empirical patterns suggest that we need
to be less cavalier in addressing questions of human
nature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly
thin and rather unusual slice of humanity” (p. 61).
This chapter suggests that these noteworthy studies
provide not only reinforcement for positions long
taken by African child development (CD) and early
childhood education, care and development (ECD)
researchers and specialists, but opportunities for such
scholars, and future generations of African scholars,
to contribute not only to the African ECD and CD
literature but to make signicant contributions to the
global literature in those elds. The aim of this chapter
is to encourage African scholars, especially those in
the ECD sphere, to claim the scholarly space and
advance their eorts in knowledge production. Being
a mid-career scholar in ECD myself, I am convinced
that circumstances have brought the opportunity
for Africa to be heard. As Africans, we can be proud
that we have valuable and untapped Indigenous
capital at our disposal (Ntuli, 1999). We need to
know now that it is clear that there is no one “best
practice,” but rather many best practices that have
their relevance in a given context. That means that the
international ECD literature can now have multiple
perspectives and multi-localities (Ebrahim et al.,
2018), with African scholars contributing contextually
responsive practices that are best in African contexts.
Some of the modest initiatives that aim at opening
opportunities for nurturing African scholars are
described further in this chapter. These include: an
appreciation of Sankofa (what has come before);
diverse African scholarly initiatives including
development of publication possibilities; an
appreciation of lessons learned through individual
African scholarly struggles; scholarship incubation
possibilities; regional initiatives; and various other
ways forward, both considered and pursued.
These are discussed under various headings,
starting with “The struggle to keep aoat.”
The struggle to keep aoat
In our increasingly multicultural world, recognizing
the need for multiple centres helps us recognize,
reduce, and eliminate biases (Wang, 2016), while at
the same time understanding child development in
dierent contexts. For a long time, Western literature
has dominated the ECD eld to an extent that it
became the normative baseline for interventions
in other parts of the world that have very dierent
cultural orientations. We have already learnt from
cross-cultural studies that the dominant universalism
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
models of Western psychology based on WEIRD
samples as the “baseline” (Henrich et al., 2010)
impede the fuller understanding of psychological
experiences (Markus, 2008). If that is the case, we
need to start decentralizing dominance so that
researchers who seek to study a psychological
construct outside a Western cultural context are
not faulted as drawing false conclusions (Sternberg,
2004), but supported for contributing to the
broader understanding of ECD issues that are
unique to some cultures, as is the case in Africa.
Africa has long been described by the Western
World as a dark continent (Miller et al., 2013). The
initial reason for the use of such a description was
ignorance of the continent’s interior, as in the case of
the explorer Henry Morton Stanley’s book, Through
the Dark Continent (1889), and Joseph Conrad’s book
Heart of Darkness (1990). A second reason, stemming
in part from the rst, was ignorance of African culture.
For example, deep into the twentieth century,
there was virtually no literature written by Africans
themselves about African culture in the mainstream
media, save for a few like Kenyatta, Nyerere, and a
number of other leaders whose early careers included
authorship. Their literature, however, focused more
on political struggles than on African culture (Landis
and Wasilweski, 1999; Miller, 2005; Shuter, 1997). A
third critical reason, particularly related to the ECD
focus for this chapter, is the absence of contributions
from African scholars to science in the international
scene (Glänzel, 2001; Inonu, 2003; Mouton, 2010).
Despite very notable exceptions, what we have too
often seen in ECD and CD is Western-led research
that sees child development from a Western
perspective and believes that African communities
should emulate the West (Penn, 2005). To emphasize
this point, NGOs coming from the Western world
continue to support child development initiatives
in Africa that push for Western-based ready-made
conceptualizations which are often counterproductive
to local evidence building (Penn, 2002).
We note that even after the exploration of virtually
every part of the African continent, even after
colonization, religious domination, negative reporting
from international media and economic exploitation
that is too often disguised as foreign aid (Amin, 2003),
Africa continues to be a dark continent (Miller et al.,
2013). Forces that continue to keep Africa as a dark
continent include the systematic and consistent
parallel ideological devaluation of African cultures
(Miller et al., 2013), the systematic side-lining of
African scholarship by Western academic publishing
houses that want to maintain dominance through
the impact factor strategy (Tausch, 2010), and an
over-reliance on Western-based peer reviewers
(Alperin, 2011), who remain critical of African literature
either due to little interest in African research or
limited understanding of the African context.
Another dynamic that disables the work of African
researchers is the way in which publishing houses
evaluate research. There is the belief that research
ndings from Africa are not rigorous enough to meet
Western standards, even when it is known that such
studies come from a dierent perspective that thrives
on the lived experiences of African populations. In this
case, Western ndings are predominantly used in ECD,
while those of Africans are marginalized (Nsamenang,
2008), even when the subject is African in nature. For
example, while there are many studies conducted
in Africa that show rich and diverse childrearing
practices for holistic child development (Serpell,
1976), the West has consistently promoted the idea
of “ECD best practices” and knowledge transfer over
locally supportive knowledge generation (Pence et
al., 1993), disregarding the fact that African children
seem better socialized as they are assigned social
responsibilities early in life (Serpell and Adamson-
Holley, 2016). Disregarding these points contributes
to the continued side-lining of African scholars
as their research contributions are devalued.
In the event that African literature is accepted,
usually there are either prohibitive fees charged for
publication or for subscriptions to access databases
in the West (Ngulube, 2007). When scholars tried to
work together to create journals to publish their work
from a perspective that is dierent from the West, they
typically met resistance in terms of their journals being
referred to as predatory because they do not follow
mainstream journal standards (Tarkang and Bain, 2019).
At the institutional level, African scholars have also
faced the challenge of being unable to build a strong
community of practice to enable evidence building.
For example, the colonial educational structures in
many institutions of higher learning prefer Western-
oriented thinking styles that are foreign to African
Indigenous societies (Kaya and Seleti, 2013). When
new research ideas are proposed by innovative
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
African scholars in such universities, they are quick
to nd a foreign sponsor for it instead of nurturing
it as a home-grown initiative. The research process
then has to be done in a foreign language to give
it credence (Hountondji, 1995), while undermining
local conceptual understandings (Kaya and Seleti,
2013). This process is, in itself, narrow, as it tries to
explain the wider African context from a limited
point of view. The eect of this is a systematic
constriction of African scholars who nd it dicult
to advance their ideas in a context-responsive
manner that they understand and appreciate.
If a scholar was resilient and managed to develop
research despite the above challenges, they would
typically only be able to undertake small studies.
Going for big projects is challenging, as few could
gain access to signicant levels of research funding
(Tijssen, 2007). In this respect, even the graduates
produced from these projects learn that they must
serve the interests of foreign funders to survive, a
situation that makes them less inclined to solve
local challenges (Muya, 2007), further reducing the
signicant role of African scholars in solving African
challenges and grooming next-generation scholars.
The above trends have a long history, with many
African scholars bleeding silently, as the persons they
would want to turn to are often the accomplices of
their suppressors. However, the period 2019-2020
came with its own sad moments and silver linings for
African scholars. The arrival of COVID-19 to the scene
has particularly taught us that we are all the same
despite the articial barriers of superiority, wealth and
inuence that had previously divided us. Now, we all
know that we need each other and need to know
more about each other in order to survive. Now, we
know that if other people around you are not safe,
then you are also not safe, no matter how you try
to protect yourself. The COVID-19 situation signies
that the time has nally come for those outside
Africa to start either on their own or as a matter
of circumstances to want to know about Africa.
A well-known statement in international Indigenous
research, “nothing about us without us,” (Funnell et
al., 2020), captures a key element of why and how
African scholars are needed for ECD research in
Africa. The time has also nally come for Africans to
read more about Africa written by African authors
who understand the African context instead of
relying solely on non-African authors who have
for too long misrepresented African contexts in
their writing (Tarkang and Bain, 2019). We must,
however, make it very clear that this stance does
not amount to rejecting Western perspectives on
child development. We believe in many of them and
would not want to reinvent the theoretical wheel.
What we are not comfortable with is dominance to
the extent of side-lining African views on ECD that
are built on rich contextually relevant views outside
the mainstream narratives. African views need
not be viewed as noise in the system, but rather
as authentic realities that have a bearing on what
happens to young children in their daily lives in Africa.
More voices are being raised to object to the
continued dominance of research literature by one
perspective (Broadfoot and Munshi, 2007). This is
partly due to the fact that there is now a general
understanding that research literature by the whole
of humanity is needed in order to create a science
that represents the whole of humanity (Arnett,
2008). From this perspective, it is now being argued
that if we want the whole of humanity to include
Africans, research, especially on early childhood
development from Africa, must be made to emerge
into the global scene to complete the wholeness
of humanity. We want expanded research informed
by African scholars about African realities as an
integral part of global knowledge about ECD.
The three-year period around 1990 has been noted
as an important milestone for the visibility of ECD
in Africa, and in other parts of the world. Pence and
Ashton (2015) noted that several ECD handbooks
came out at that time that helped support African
ECD visibility. It is important to note that while ECD
in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) became more visible
to the outside world at that time, within Africa the
literature and research was always there. There were
only dierences in the modes of transmission. Africans,
who live in nested communities, did research at the
community and academic level. However, publication
and dissemination has been oral, within communities
where such information was contextually relevant.
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Africa focused scholars” incubation
initiatives
The emergence of African scholars into the
international scene has been in part a result of
some well-calculated incubation processes and
activities. While some initiatives were started within
Africa, others have come from outside of Africa with
typical emphasis on either professional or scholarly
development. An early starting point for such
initiatives was the establishment of the Association of
African Universities (AAU). The AAU currently has 350
member institutions located in 46 African countries.
It was founded on the 12 November 1967 as a Centre
of Excellence for the analysis of topical issues in
African higher education with an intent to provide a
wide dissemination of ndings to governments and
other key stakeholders regarding policy directions
(AAU, 2016). The AAU has been credited with eorts
towards strengthening Indigenous educational
systems and institutions for generating and applying
knowledge (Sawyerr, 2004). It is guided by seven
Key Result Areas (KRA), with areas two and three
focusing on improving capacity for knowledge
production and management and supporting eorts
for research development to respond to local and
regional needs respectively (AAU, 2016). While this
eort has led to many research projects that have
given the opportunity for African scholars to thrive
and publish their Africa-focused work, most of them
are not principally child development focused, as
ECD has not been identied as a key area of focus.
It is also important to note that while the AAU
is supposed to be a body that works for African
interests, its meetings usually have a large number
of Western donors, academic bodies, and countries
(AAU, 2016) that inuence decisions towards
Western interests. If we are to promote truly African
innovations, African governments need to stop
relying on donors to fund innovations, but rather
invest locally generated public funds into universities
so that they are in control of a research agenda that
focuses on local and national challenges. More can
be still done through strengthening cycle studies,
improving research management, identifying,
and targeting strong areas, and sharing resources
with other African institutions (Sawyerr, 2004).
Strengthening African institutions was just one way
of supporting African scholars. However, strong
institutions needed strong individuals to move them
to the next level. AAU by then seemed to have missed
the part of building strong scholarly institutions,
giving space for the emergence of the Council for
the Development of Social Science Research in Africa
(CODESRIA) in 1973. CODESRIA, whose headquarters
are in Dakar, Senegal, was established to promote
multidisciplinary research by African scholars to solve
African development challenges (CODESRIA, 2003).
From its establishment, CODESRIA has provided
avenues for growth of African scholars by providing
resource persons who have published extensively to
deliver lectures that oer laureates an opportunity
to advance their reections on their own research
topics in selected thematic areas. It also provides
small grants to support thesis writing for graduate
scholars working on their research. CODESRIA also
oer a one-year funded fellowship for young scholars
to carry out advanced research on any aspect of
the African social reality (CODESRIA, 2003). While
CODESRIA has supported many young scholars to
nd their way in publication, of late it is more focused
on gendered political economy (Mamdani, 2021).
The International Society for the Study of Behavioural
Development (ISSBD), which grew in large part out
of child development studies that had their origins
in Europe and North America, was rst mooted in
1957 at the XV International Congress of Psychology
held in Brussels. With a focus on promoting scientic
research on human development throughout the
life span, it did not take o ocially until May 1969
(Hartup, 1996). Since 1971, the ISSBD has held
25biennial meetings on six continents: twelve in
Europe, six in North America, three in Asia, two in
Australia, one in South America, and one in Africa.
The growing voices from African scholars who wanted
to share their human development perspective
from Africa was particularly championed by Bame
Nsamenang from Cameroon. This pressure helped
the ISSBD to initiate the Africa regional biennial
workshops, starting in Yaounde, Cameroon, in 1992,
organized by Nsamenang. Since then, eleven others
have been organized in dierent regions in Africa
(ISSBD, 2020). A strength of the Africa Regional ISSBD
was its ability to initiate a network of African scholars
to stimulate an African presence in the arena of
international developmental science (Nsamenang,
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
1993). The workshops have been inuential in
promoting learning opportunities for African
early career scholars who come to share research
methodology lessons and present their research
ndings in the form of posters evaluated by senior
scholars in attendance (Serpell et al., 2017). Since
then, the regional workshops accomplished a lot,
particularly by mentoring African early career scholars
in the area of child development. Other components
like professional development and graduate fellow
mentorships have been initiated to support early-
career scholars to oer their African child development
perspectives to the global scholarly realm.
Another important push for African scholars” and
other ECD professionals” development came in 2000
with the launch of the Early Childhood Development
Virtual University (ECDVU) at the University of Victoria,
Canada, with funding from the World Bank and
the Norwegian Educational Trust Fund (Pence and
Nsamenang, 2008). ECDVU’s main goal was to promote
broadly-based African leadership capacity as a key
strategy to support child, family, and community well-
being and broader social and economic development
(Vargas-Barón, 2005). The actual implementation of
the programme started in 2001, with the delivery of
a three-year online MA programme that accepted
30 country-nominated ECD leaders from 11 African
countries (Pence, 2007). The ECDVU approach worked
as a vehicle for the professional development of
child development early career scholars through
leadership development, capacity-building and
enhanced networking (Pence, 2007). The rst ve
ECDVU deliveries targeted mid to high-level early
career ECD specialists coming from across Africa
(17 countries total following the fth delivery), with
a focus on tertiary education specialists in Nigeria
for the sixth – a co-delivery with the University of
Ibadan. This approach has been praised for delivering
a more cost-eective model for scholarly and
professional development than other international,
ECD graduate-level programmes while avoiding brain
drain (only 1 of 138 graduates had left Africa following
programme completion) (Vargas-Barón, 2005).
ECDVU was also able to transition its graduate diploma
to the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. However, a
proposal to expand the programme to the University
of Education Winneba, Ghana, and Chancellor
College, University of Malawi, was not successful in
receiving funding from a Canadian source. Through
collaborating with the then-African ECD network,
the Working Group on ECD (WGECD, then with a
Secretariat at UNESCO BREDA in Dakar, Senegal),
ECDVU was able to provide a short ECD news/
journal series led by African scholars. It also worked
with other agencies like the Eastern and Southern
Africa Regional Oce (ESARO) for UNICEF and the
Open Society Institute for Southern Africa (OSISA)
to support a scholar’s workshop in Johannesburg,
South Africa, followed by six other workshops, with
other donors, in the 2008-2018 period. While ECDVU
created a blueprint for e-learning for ECD scholars, its
reliance on donor goodwill as opposed to deliberate
government support from African countries for its own
sta capacity-building has made its sustainability a
challenge (Nigeria being an exception, for its support
of the U. Ibadan leadership program). However, that
being said, the number of universities in Africa with
ECD and CD departments particularly in anglophone
Africa increased considerably in the 2000s.
Other fellowship programs
ISSBD developing country fellowships
The programme was started in 2009 and recruits
fellows every two years from developing countries,
including from Africa. The aim is to encourage
sustainable development of activities congruent
with the aims of ISSBD in developing countries
and assist the professional development of early-
career scholars in such countries (Smith, 2021). Each
fellow is provided with free conference attendance
at ISSBD, an air ticket to the conference venue, a
support grant for the duration of the fellowship, and
support from one or two mentors (Smith, 2021).
ISSBD, working with the Jacobs Foundation and key
groups in Côte d’Ivoire, have initiated a new Ph.D.
programme that aims at supporting young researchers
to advance their knowledge on early childhood
development (Jacobs Foundation, 2020). Specically,
the programme is expected to equip the scholars with
expertise in the design, implementation, evaluation
and dissemination of research results and interventions
aimed at improving early childhood development
and the quality of education in Côte d’Ivoire.
194
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
In the same way, ISSBD, with support from the
Jacobs Foundation, is implementing a professional
development training and mentorship programme
for 10 African scholars from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania,
Ghana, Ethiopia, and Cameroon. The programme
includes training sessions on research writing and
ISSBD biannual and regional workshops, among
others. These initiatives have promoted the quality
of research to be developed by African early
career scholars to allow their publications to be
more widely accepted in mainstream journals.
New York University Junior African Scholars
NYU Global TIES for Children was established in
2014 as an international research centre embedded
within NYU’s Institute of Human Development
and Social Change (IHDSC) and supported by the
NYU Abu Dhabi Research Institute and NYU New
York. Its main focus is to lead eorts in generating
rigorous evidence to support the best and most
eective humanitarian and development aid in
low-income and crisis-aected contexts. The project
has been able to support early career scholars in
the area of child development in dierent parts of
the world including those in sub-Saharan Africa
including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana,
Malawi, South Africa, and Uganda (NYU, 2021).
World Bank African Scholars
The World Bank Group’s Early Learning Partnership
(ELP) launched the Africa Early Years Fellowships
programme in 2017 to recruit a cadre of young African
professionals to support governments and World
Bank teams to scale up investments in the early years
(World Bank, 2016). Each year the fellows are selected
and hired as short-term, one-year consultants and
receive ongoing training and work experience across
relevant sectors, including education, health, nutrition,
and social protection (World Bank, 2016). The young
professionals, who are from the priority countries of
Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya,
Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger,
Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and
Tanzania are expected to work in their home countries
to build capacity to ensure children reach their full
potential (World Bank, 2016). The programme has now
trained 45scholars, 20 and 25 in the rst and second
cohorts respectively (Kelly and Currimjee, 2021).
Another World Bank programme that targets early-
career African scholars is the WBG Africa Fellowship
Programme. This programme targets Ph.D. students
from sub-Saharan Africa who are interested in starting
careers with the World Bank Group. World Bank Group-
Africa fellows spend six months getting hands-on
experience at World Bank Group headquarters in
Washington D.C. or at country oces, where they work
on research, economic policy, technical assistance,
and lending operations that contribute to the
World Bank Group’s goal of eliminating poverty and
increasing shared prosperity (World Bank, 2021).
However, as specied in the aim of the fellowships,
support is based on activities that are congruent
with the aims of funding agencies that are
based in the West, which could be dierent from
African cultural contextual aims. If that is the
case, the danger becomes that pro-Western as
opposed to pro-African research will be done.
Africa regional initiatives
The initiatives noted above for ECD scholar
development have their origins in Europe or North
America, with specic goals to support African scholars
for some limited time as part of an eort to advance
a more inclusive science of child development
(Marfo et al., 2011). Within Africa, we are starting
to witness local regional initiatives whose focus is
specic to the development of African ECD scholars.
AfriChild and AfECN
One such initiative is the AfriChild Centre in
Uganda. The AfriChild Centre was established in
January 2013 by a consortium of institutions that
include ChildFund International, Uganda Oce; the
Ministry of Gender Labour and Social Development,
Makerere University, Transcultural Psychosocial
Organization (TPO) Uganda, United Nations
Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and Columbia University.
AfriChild promotes an Inter-University research
capacity development programme that aims at
strengthening inter-university collaboration and
training in child-focused research skills (AfriChild,
2020). Through the programme, mid-level child-
focused researchers from seven universities in Uganda
are equipped with skills in child-focused research
methods, grant acquisition, and publication. The
195
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
training started in 2018 with a cohort of 30 early career
researchers and the second cohort of 50 researchers
started in 2021 (AfriChild, 2020). This initiative is
helping to build a new breed of child-focused
interdisciplinary researchers who will showcase
African knowledge in the international scene.
What needs to be noted here is that much of the
funding for this initiative is still coming from Europe,
rather than from African governments. AfriChild,
however, brings on board an aspect of partnering
with African governments. In the partnership,
AfriChild provides child-focused research evidence
that policymakers use for policy formulation.
Through learning partnerships from AfriChild, and
from earlier ECD networks, another child-focused
organization called the Africa Early Childhood
Network (AfECN) was established in Kenya in 2015
(AfECN, 2020). The AfECN is a network made up of
civil society organizations, academia, government,
and the private section that aims to serve as a
platform to champion excellence and collaboration
in protecting children’s rights, inuence policy
and practice, strengthen partnerships, and share
experiences and knowledge in ECD on the African
continent (AfECN, 2020). While the overall focus of
AfECN is ECD policy development and implementation
throughout Africa, it also has a strong presence
in promoting African scholars in the same area.
Since 2017, AfECN has supported three capacity-
building cohorts of research fellowships for early- to
mid-career African ECD scholars. The rst cohort had
13 fellows, the second cohort had seven fellows,
while the third had four fellows supported by a
Regional Research Technical Team (RRTT) comprised
of accomplished ECD scholars and researchers in
the continent (AfECN, 2020). The aim of the support
is to develop capacity in the region for culturally
and contextually relevant research that will produce
high-quality early childhood outcomes. The support
includes fully-funded face-to-face meetings, work
placement, seed grant, conference attendance,
connection of early researchers to research funding,
and networking opportunities (AfCEN, 2020).
The scholars, after being trained with and around
dierent scholars, are now starting to venture onto the
international scene to show their skills. This, however,
is not yet very pronounced as they are challenged
by limited funding. The scholars are, however,
starting to get allies in the West as they venture into
attending international and regional conferences.
CODESRIA book project on birth to 3 years
One of the eects of the lack of African scholar
visibility is the persistent lack of diverse knowledge
perspectives on the critical phases of child
development. There are also initiatives in Africa that
rely on special conferences to bring out publications
on agreed perspectives that are dear to Africa. One
of these is the CODESRIA book project on birth
to the age of 3 years. The publication is in part a
reaction to the dominant Eurocentric framing of early
childhood research and related theories (Ebrahim
et al., 2019). The CODESRIA publication titled Early
Childhood Care and Education at the Margins, authored
by a group of African scholars representing both
anglophone and francophone Africa, provides
contextual accounts of ECCE in Africa in order
to build multiple perspectives and to promote
responsive thought and action (Ebrahim et al., 2019).
International conferences
International child development conferences hosted
in Africa have become another channel through
which African early-career scholars have been
identied and brought into the international scene.
A series of African international ECD conferences
emerged out of a concern that African voices and
perspectives were not being adequately heard
either within Africa or in international forums,
even when such conferences were taking place in
Africa (Pence and Nsamenang, 2008). Despite such
conferences with a more Afrocentric perspective, other
international conferences continue to emphasize
Western approaches and understandings leading
to a one-size-ts-all narrative for child development
science (Shalima, 2017). Those pushing back against
such perceived dominance are partly motivated by
various French philosophers including Foucault and
Deleuze (Olsson, 2009). In rethinking, such scholars
are questioning the tendency to reduce philosophical
issues of value to purely technical and managerial
issues of expert knowledge and measurement in child
development resulting in a reconceptualization of early
childhood education and care (Dahlberg et al., 1999).
196
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
One of the most notable allies who found support
in Africa is the Reconceptualizing Early Childhood
Education International (RECE) movement,
dedicated to facilitating exchanges about work
that challenge mainstream ideas regarding how
young children learn and grow (Bloch, 2013). The
reconceptualizing movement began in the late
1980s with informal conversations among scholars,
especially those opposed to the promotion of
universal prescriptions for best practice. The rst
Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education
conference was initiated in 1991 in Madison, USA,
while its 21st (out of a total of 28 conferences), was
the rst and only conference to be held in Africa.
That 2013 Nairobi, Kenya conference focused on
Indigenous communities and the decolonization
of research (Bloch, 2013). Through this conference,
African scholars who ordinarily would not be able
to aord both the opportunity and expenses were
among those who were given support to participate.
Some early-career African child development
scholars are gaining insights from these international
conferences that are breaking philosophical norms,
and they are nding some allies who can help them
bring to life the notion of the rhizome (Deleuze and
Guattari, 1987), undertake philosophical and micro-
political action (Dahlberg et al., 1999), and advance
the decolonization of research, ideas, and Western
knowledge as a regime of truth (Bloch, 2013).
Regional conferences
Lessons being learnt from international conferences
hosted in Africa are also helping local universities
come together to start hosting joint regional
conferences. Previously, it would be easier to organize
collaborations between a European-based university
and an African university, but not a collaboration
of African universities even when they are in the
same country. This issue is now being addressed,
especially after the COVID-19 lockdowns that made
African scholars start to rethink their strategies.
Regional conferences are often able to include
child development sub-themes, as many are
multidisciplinary in nature. One example is the
Inter-University consortium comprising Kyambogo
University in Uganda, the University of Eldoret
and Mount Kenya in Kenya, and Chukwuemeka
Odumegwu Ojukwu University in Nigeria, all three
of which collaborate to hold annual conferences in
capacity development for their sta and graduate
students who are all early-career scholars. The annual
conferences are hosted by each partner university on
a rotation basis. With COVID-19, the 2021 conference
will be held virtually in Kyambogo University, Uganda.
Those scholars who may not be working in universities
are also starting to hold annual symposia to showcase
their research outputs and as a means to develop
partnerships with other academics in universities. The
symposia can be organized either by government
departments, ministries or autonomous agencies. All
these initiatives are helping to expose early career
scholars who are now getting bolder in presenting
their child development research to the world.
Conclusions: lessons learnt and the
implications of a rapidly changing context
If we are to avoid repeating past mistakes, we must
start reecting on our past and use that information
to initiate a clear discourse on African research and
knowledge. This knowledge should be put out into
the international arena to give a true picture of Africa’s
contributions to the world of research based on a
mutual and respectful understanding that it is part
of the piece that brings wholeness to the totality
of humanity. The ght towards that mutual respect
of African research started in 1992 when Bame
Nsamenang introduced the Africentric version of
child-focused research in Africa (Nsamenang, 1992).
Nsamenang’s Africentric perspective preferred the
use of Indigenous African scholars, who lived and
understood African ontology, to be better placed
to write about it. In a true Sankofa way, we look
at the past, the present, and then the future.
The past
While the past has been, and remains, painful for
many early to mid-career scholars, we stand strong to
say we learnt our lessons from it. Just like COVID-19
has taught us that we need each other and that no
one is safe till we are all safe, we have also learnt
that all persons matter, no matter their status. In that
case, we should not look at people from the West
with animosity and try to reinvent the wheel. What
we need to do is to utilize their available knowledge
to make our case while contextualizing our own
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
strengths. If we are to bargain, we must bring
something to the table. African scholars need to put
their scholarly products on the table, which can be an
alternative, or an addition, to what is already there.
The present
To the present, we now know where we are.
We are strengthening our regional groups that
are instrumental in holding the hands of young
scholars through mentorship programmes. We
need to continue along these lines so that we
are able to build a critical mass of scholars to
publish for us to be heard. At present, African
scholarly voices are still too easily unheard, lost in
the deafening sound of Western scholarship.
The future
African and broader Majority World scholarship
will be enhanced by strong and authentic journal
regulatory standards that are not intertwined with
economic, socio-historical, and political tenets. Once
those tenets have been lessened and resolved, then
we shall have a thriving ecosystem of local journals
that are not classied as predatory journals. We must
also, however, understand that the issue of predatory
journals in Africa is a double-edged sword. Trying to
stop them means removing the small opportunity
that African scholars were starting to gain to publish
their work after being rejected by the Western journals
for writing local content, while at the same time
giving more credibility to Western-based journals
for rightly or otherwise rejecting African researchers.
Similarly, allowing more predatory journals to operate
will give rise to unprecedented commercialization
of publishing as opposed to scholarliness, which in
turn is destructive for African scholars. In this case,
moderation is needed, particularly in two areas.
First, knowing that Beall’s list and description
of predatory journals are based on a Western
perspective of authorship, it will always nd more
African-based journals predatory in favour of
Western international journals. In this case, there
is a need to create an alternative list of predatory
journals in the African context, with guidance
from a trusted committee of African editors
(Tarkang and Bain, 2019) to direct African scholars
on which journals to work with in Africa and also
how to be competitive with Western authors.
Secondly, the vast body of unrecorded African
research literature that is meant for local audiences
in Africa should be published in African journals
for the African audience. If Africans start to learn
that useful African research aims at solving their
contextual challenges, more will start using African
journals, thus raising the impact factor of African
journals so as to compete with other international
peer-reviewed journals (Tarkang and Bain, 2019).
African scholars should also start to learn,
given the context of COVID-19 restrictions on
gatherings, that the time for an oral repository of
research has passed. African scholars now need
to stand up to the challenge, learn, adapt, and
use contemporary online or e-based research
communication, dissemination and publishing
platforms while abiding by regional or continental
publication standards for better recognition.
As African scholars try to gain their rightful place,
ECD scholars, in particular, need to start bringing ECD
issues to the agenda at every opportunity. Currently,
much literature focuses on policy and programmatic
areas of ECD that speak more to politicians and
Western agencies. Less focus is being put on parents
and local communities who help to sustain such
initiatives. Research that proposes ECD as important
for family and community development needs to
be engaged with from a community perspective.
Another area of focus should be on the ecacy of
dierent western-based ECD models being promoted
as best practices for Africans, yet they privilege
western ideals of childrearing (Ebrahim, 2012) as a
means of promoting African heritage. African ideals
need to be utilized to promote African heritage.
In this case, we need to avoid applying scholarly
resources to the disadvantage of our children, which
make them fail to benet from either modern or
traditional aspects of education (Raymond, 2011).
Scholars also need to focus their research on
contemporary ECD pedagogy that is built on African
Indigenous knowledge banks but with adaptive
lessons from current contexts that recognize the
principles of freedom and democracy (Matike, 2008).
More publications from Africans will, over time, help
shed more light on the rich wealth of knowledge
found in Africa. If this happens, then we are
already moving towards that time when we shall
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
nd it easy to bargain with the other continental
scholars to accept the existence of another
perspective on ECD: the African perspective.
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Chapter 9
Measurement in Early
Childhood Development
in Africa
Robert Serpell
Introduction: why measure child
development?
Children depend on adults for protection and care
in their early years, as part of the design of the
human species. Every society acknowledges this
challenge, but the ways in which we care for our
young vary across cultures over space and time.
Practices considered normal in one culture (such as
leaving an infant to cry herself to sleep or punishing
misbehaviour with a smack) are often perceived as
perverse by standard-bearers of another culture. Many
researchers have documented such cross-cultural
variation, sought to explain it, and oered suggestions
for action to promote desirable outcomes over the
course of life-span development. Responsibility for
the care and education of a young child generally
resides with her biological parents. Hence, in
order to be eective, action recommendations by
researchers need to connect with those adults”
understanding of child development. One way
of making a case for practical action is to marshal
evidence of what works. This chapter is about how
measurement can best contribute to that process,
with a particular focus on experiences in Africa.
A powerful theme of systematic research that
emerged in the wake of the European industrial
revolution was that the human and social sciences
should seek to replicate the successful application
of the natural sciences to problem-solving through
technology. A guiding principle of such technological
application of science was measurement: the
process of associating numbers with phenomena.
Behaviourist psychologists invoked the goal of
“prediction and control of behaviour” (Skinner, 1953,
p. 7) to frame a movement that dominated Western
psychological research through the early twentieth
century (Broadbent, 1961), until it was fundamentally
challenged in the 1960s by the so-called “cognitive
revolution” (Miller, 2003). One strand of that revolution
gave rise to the eld of cognitive neuropsychology,
which continued to place heavy emphasis on
measurement, but applied it to implicit processes
intervening between stimulus and response. Another
strand of the cognitive revolution took a “narrative
turn” (Olson, 2010), that privileges qualitative analysis.
Measurement has been applied in systematic
research on many dierent issues in early childhood
development, care, and education. Research
questions that have been conceptualized in terms
of dimensions that can be measured include:
● What aspects of children’s minds
develop over time?
● What factors inuence that development in Africa?
Quantitative research addressed to such questions
draws on theoretical reasoning to propose testable
hypotheses and species particular aspects of child
development in terms of dimensions to be measured.
The same mathematical principles apply to
measurement in behavioural research as in other
branches of science. The discipline of statistics
stipulates dierent mathematical properties for ordinal,
interval, and ratio scales, and ways of representing
how scores on a scale are distributed within a
sample relative to the population it represents.
Drawing on those descriptive principles allows a
researcher to make a disciplined estimate of the
extent to which her observations could have been
inuenced by chance alone. Such a quantitative
approach aords a certain kind of precision in
the interpretation of dierences between groups
of observations and relations between variables.
Beyond those fundamental principles, advanced
statistical methods such as factor analysis, multiple
regression (MRC), latent class analysis, and structural
equation modelling oer systematic ways of
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representing the relations among multiple variables,
including the patterning of changes over time, and
of the proportion of variability in a given set of data
accounted for by one among several relations (“eect
size”). A powerful resource for implementing such
quantitative analyses has been modern information
technology that can perform calculations at a speed
well beyond the capabilities of the human mind.
A highly inuential application of measurement to
the assessment of child development has come
to be known as psychometrics or psychological
testing. Its canonical principles are standardization,
reliability, and validity. A reliable test must generate
similar scores for the same individual irrespective of
the person administering the test, so long as they
faithfully adhere to a prescribed set of procedures. A
test manual provides guidelines for interpretation of
individual scores, based on statistical norms collected
with a representative sample of a clearly specied
population. Validity of the test may be attested with
reference to the correlation between scores on the test
and scores on relevant external indicators, and/or by
appealing to theoretical analysis of the psychological
construct that the test purports to measure.
Some psychological tests have become widely
accepted in industrialized societies as objective
measures of socially valued traits such as intelligence
(Serpell and Haynes, 2004). However, such tests
have been misused both in the countries where
they were developed to rationalize discriminatory
practices (Gould, 1981) and by transporting them
to other societies without restandardization
(Greeneld, 1997). Scientic and social policy
debates around the range of valid applicability of
standardized psychological tests have continued
to rage in the twenty-rst century. A number
of corrective strategies have been proposed to
reduce or eliminate cultural bias from them, and a
number of studies conducted in Africa have been
invoked to guide and/or evaluate such proposals.
Qualitative studies of children’s lives,
childrearing practices and insider beliefs
in African communities
Psychological accounts of child development in the
rst half of the twentieth century were constrained
in three inter-related ways (Serpell, 1994): their
database was dominated by studies of children in
Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic
(WEIRD) societies (Henrich et al., 2010), they were
conducted by researchers who had received their
primary socialization in such societies (Thalmayer
et al., 2021), and they were addressed to audiences
that shared the cultural preoccupations of those
societies (Serpell, 1994). Who better to inform us
about the nature of African childhood than Africans
who grew up in an African community? Cultural
insiders who have written with the authority of
ownership on a system of meanings shared among
members of a given, Indigenous African culture
include the internationally acclaimed literary giants
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Wole Soyinka and the African
nationalist Jomo Kenyatta. Their writings are rich
with insights into the quality of early childhood life
in their community of origin, its cultural values, and
practices. Each of them went on to acquire formal
university education and an outstanding command
of the English language, in which they expressed an
Africanist interpretation of Indigenous childrearing
practices grounded in personal experience. Their
various accounts of early encounters with bearers
of Western culture were of an alien people whose
ways of life were both mysterious and fascinating,
contrasting in signicant ways with the Indigenous
system of meanings they had appropriated from
their family and local community in early childhood.
Jomo Kenyatta (1938), who grew up in a rural
subsistence Gikuyu community in southern Kenya in
the 1900s, published a state-of-the-art ethnography
of his community of origin while enrolled at the
University of London and a graduate seminar
chaired by the internationally acclaimed Professor of
Anthropology, Bronisław Malinowski. Also of Gikuyu
descent, the prolic novelist and literary critic Ngũgĩ
wa Thiong’o rst came to fame with his debut novel
Weep not Child (1964) based on his own childhood in
a rural, polygynous family. Wole Soyinka, who grew
up in the household of a Yoruba school headmaster
in south-western Nigeria in the 1930s, wrote an
imaginative memoir about his childhood, Ake (1981),
part of the opus for which he was awarded the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1986. The South African storyteller
and poet, Sindiwe Magona (1990) grew up in the
Xhosa-speaking township of Gugulethu on the fringe
of Cape Town in the apartheid years. Writing in the
year that Nelson Mandela’s release from prison paved
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the way to a more-than-just-political dispensation, her
autobiographical letter To my children’s children (1990)
seeks to help the next generation of Indigenous South
Africans understand the disenfranchized context in
which she grew up and made her way to adulthood.
Each of these markedly dierent, powerful
African personalities has traced in their adult
life a confrontational interaction with Western
culture. In their narrative accounts of their early
childhood, independent of direct Western
inuence, they celebrate a profound connection
with nature and enduring interdependent
relationships with siblings and peers.
Some cultural outsiders have oered ethnographic
interpretations of African childhood grounded in
extended periods of immersion in an African society
with participant observation of children and the adults
caring for them. Fortes (1938) combined psychological
and anthropological methods in his classic study
of child development in a rural Tale settlement of
pre-independence, northern Ghana. His account of
the social psychological characteristics of traditional
education in Taleland includes nuanced interpretations
of the vocabulary of local discourse. For instance:
Tallensi often use the concept of yam when discussing
social behaviour. It corresponds to our [i.e., the English]
notion of “sense” when we refer to “a sensible man,”
or sound “common sense.” As the Tallensi use their
term it suggests the quality of “insight.” Its range
of usage is wide […] used to refer both to qualities
of personality and to attributes of behaviour. It is
applied also in a genetic sense to describe the social
development of the child. (Fortes, 1938, p. 14-15)
Rabain (1979) described child development in a
rural Wolof community in Senegal and detailed
how the principles of sharing and reciprocity are
promoted in early childhood by encouraging the
child through teasing and other forms of social
pressure to share food and other resources. This
socialization practice was independently reported
by the ethnomusicologist and popular theatre
animator Mtonga (2012), who grew up among
the Chewa and Tumbuka peoples of Zambia,
where such interactions of adults with toddlers are
interpreted as cultivating generosity and preventing
the development of greediness or selshness.
The present author conducted a multi-method,
longitudinal study of the life-journeys of a cohort of
boys and girls born into a rural Chewa community
of eastern Zambia soon after the nation attained
political independence (Serpell, 1993). A key concept
in my account of the Chewa perspective on child
development and intelligence is nzelu, which
according to my informants represented a highly
valued trait that includes both cognitive alacrity
(ku-chenjela) and social responsibility (ku-tumikila).
Similar Indigenous conceptualizations of socially
responsible intelligence have been reported by
collaborative research teams among the Baoule in
Côte d’Ivoire (Dasen et al., 1985) and among the
Luo in Kenya (Grigorenko et al., 2001). Ethnographic
studies of childhood in various Indigenous cultures
of South Africa have also been conducted by cultural
outsiders (Schwartzman, 1980), and Lancy (2014) has
compiled an integrative review of anthropological
studies of childhood across many non-Western
cultures, including the Kpelle of Liberia, where he
conducted original eldwork in the 1960s. One of
Lancy’s most controversial themes has been that
mothering is interpreted variably across dierent
societies and that the emphasis placed by most
Western theories of child socialization on establishing
an intimate and exclusive, personal bond of
“attachment” between a mother and her infant
child is not consistent with the data collected by
anthropologists in most sub-Saharan African societies.
A recurrent theme in discussions of ethnography
is that it serves to make the strange familiar and
concurrently to make the familiar strange (Spiro,
1990). The validity of interpretations by cultural
insiders as representations of Indigenous cultural
beliefs has been challenged on various grounds, the
main one being summarized by the proverb that a
sh is the last to discover water. But international travel
aords many opportunities for detecting contrasts
between once taken-for-granted phenomena and
the eco-cultural niche of children in other societies,
and once their curiosity has been piqued, Indigenous
researchers have privileged access to insider views
of their culture of origin (Serpell, 1984). Indeed, Frijda
and Jahoda (1966) identied as a crucial limitation of
cross-cultural studies of psychology in the 1960s the
absence of “fully-edged researchers within the various
cultures, able to conduct a complete project from the
planning stage onwards.” Some critics have pointed
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to the lack of clear methodological guidelines to
prevent rhetorical distortion of facts on the ground by
qualitative researchers. One quality assurance strategy
advocated by anthropologists is for the researcher to
declare in his or her report any possible sources of bias.
With the expansion of higher education opportunities
for Indigenous Africans both within the African
continent and beyond, domination of the African
child development eld by foreign visitors has been
reduced (Marfo, 2011; Serpell, 2018). A new generation
of psychological experts and researchers has emerged,
who are Indigenous members of societies and
cultures neglected by Western science (Enriquez,
1982; Azuma, 1984; Sinha, 1997). A pioneering African
representative of this constituency, Bame Nsamenang
(2009, p. 100), has observed that “parenting of
African children occurs within a distinctly African
way of visualizing children and their development”
and that Indigenous perspective has been under-
represented in the scientic research literature.
Nsamenang’s inuence on the current generation
of Indigenous African researchers on African early
childhood is illustrated in a special issue of the Journal
of Psychology in Africa (2019) dedicated to his legacy.
Despite the powerful international impact of African
music, Indigenous African dances, songs and games
represent a neglected fund of knowledge for enriching
the quality of Early Childhood Education (ECE)
programming (Serpell and Nsamenang, 2015). Ejuu
(2019), responded to this challenge by documenting
Indigenous games in central and eastern Uganda,
articulating their aordances for psychomotor,
cognitive, and socioemotional learning, and their
constitutive rules, adherence to which is mediated
by consensus among participants. And Mukela
(2013) explored the cognitive, social, and moral
developmental aordances of Indigenous Lozi play-
songs in Zambia’s Western Province. Ng’asike (2014)
analysed the everyday cultural knowledge of young
children in the Turkana pastoralist community of
northern Kenya, including ne dierentiation of the
hoof-prints for tracking lost cattle and knowledge of
the seasons encoded in the Indigenous calendar, and
explained how these local funds of knowledge could
be leveraged in a locally responsive ECE curriculum.
Pre-2000 research on measurement of
child development in Africa by cultural
outsiders
In the second half of the twentieth century, much
of the systematic research on child development in
Africa ignored the existing testimonies by Indigenous
Africans and embedded anthropologists described
above, on the grounds that they were unscientic,
preferring instead to construe Indigenous parents
as data collection resources while exploring the
application of a Western social scientic toolkit.
Swadener and Mutua (2007) have critically analysed
the politically exploitative connotations of framing
“eld” research in this way, likening it to harvesting
from “data plantations.” Maistriaux (1955), working
in the then Belgian colony of Congo (now the
Democratic Republic of the Congo) found that
the average scores obtained on Western tests of
pattern reproduction such as the Block Design Test
were signicantly lower than the normal pattern of
scores by European adults, and interpreted this as
evidence of “la sous-evolution des noirs d’Afrique.”
This kind of racist terminology, rooted in a nineteenth
century ideological construal of African peoples as
less advanced than European peoples on a scale of
evolutionary progress, was often invoked in attempts
to justify oppressive political relations between
European states and the African populations they
colonized. Its use was also not uncommon by Western
researchers of their observations in Africa, in technical
reports that purported to be scientic. Jahoda (1999)
has documented that pattern of pseudoscientic
writing in a critical historical analysis entitled Images
of Savages: Ancient Roots of Modern Prejudice in
Western Culture. In the USA this kind of scientic
racism played into widespread application of the
technology of standardized testing to immigration
control (Gould, 1981). And in South Africa, as Seedat
and McKenzie (2008) explain, it converged with the
growth of professionalism to distort psychological
test development throughout the apartheid years.
The legacy of that period carried into contemporary
research and professional practices in the post-1994
Republic of South Africa and elsewhere on the
continent has come under critical examination from
several angles. Commenting on a set of reections by
senior psychologists from around the world on the
impact of psychology on “Third World” development,
I highlighted the socio-political hazards of uncritical
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importation of “software buried within” Western
technological hardware (Cherns, 1984), and argued
that the kind of validation studies cited by Durojaiye
(1984) as justication for using imported tests for
educational selection in Africa “provide little more
than conrmation of the internal consistency of a
school system through which a minority of Africans
are socialized into the skills and aptitudes demanded
by Western forms of industry and bureaucracy”
(Serpell, 1984, p. 186-187). The recent resurgence of
anti-racist activism around the world has stimulated
a growing awareness of ways in which the (mis)
use of quantitative methods has served to veil
and legitimize socially biased agendas across the
social sciences (Bang, 2017; Lee et al., 2020).
Much earlier in his career, Jahoda (1956) explored the
applicability of Western tests of pattern reproduction
in Africa. Unlike Maistriaux, he interpreted the low
scores by his Ghanaian testees as reecting lack of
familiarity with the whole process of psychological
testing and supported this with data showing that
they typically scored signicantly higher when the
same tests were administered a few weeks later.
This “practice eect” was much larger than had
been observed when the test was administered on
successive occasions to Western populations. Given
the popularity of the Block Design Test in Western
clinical and educational assessment, a series of
experimental studies were conducted in the 1970s
and 1980s to clarify the nature and origins of the
diculties experienced by Africans with the test.
In Zambia, Serpell (1971) documented consistent
preferences for specic orientations of abstract shapes
among Lusaka schoolchildren similar to those by
adult Americans (Ghent, 1961), and advanced an
explanation of their common rotation errors on the
Block Design Test in terms of “a sequential analysis
of the steps through which a model or drawing
is built up” and lack of adherence to the cultural
convention of Western literacy that “every rectangular
page has a top and a bottom” (Serpell, 1982, p.
409, 416). Deregowski (1972) and Jahoda (1976)
explored these matters further in Malawi and Ghana.
Surveying these and other micro-analytic studies
in the region, Jahoda concluded that “the ndings
contradict the view that Africans have a general
disability in the handling of spatial relations. After all,
sculpture and pottery ourish in Africa, both of them
involving considerable spatial skills” (1979, p. 362).
The (still) common practice of applying non-verbal
tests standardized on another population to assess the
competencies of children in Africa is often misleading.
Wober (1969, p. 488) identied a crucial strategic aw:
Western investigators have too often framed their
research questions in terms of “how well can they do
our tricks?” when a more productive question would be
“how well can they do their tricks?” By likening tests to
tricks, Wober highlighted the arbitrary nature of many
Western test formats and their latent assumption of
familiarity to testees in Western sociocultural settings.
In 1971-72, I conducted a cross-cultural experiment
designed to compare the performance of children
from two eco-cultural niches on various dierent
forms of a pattern reproduction task. Both samples
were drawn from the public-school population of
low-income urban neighbourhoods, one in Lusaka,
Zambia, the other in Manchester, U.K. Three versions of
a pattern-reproduction task similar to the Block Design
Test were presented in dierent media: paper-and-
pencil, wire-modelling, and clay-modelling (Serpell,
1979). The medium of wire-modelling was chosen
because it is a widely practiced play activity among
boys in southern Africa, more popular than drawing
with pencils on paper. Clay-modelling, on the other
hand, was chosen as a popular play activity among
both girls and boys in the region, with a comparable
level of familiarity for European children. As predicted
from analysis of their contrasting eco-cultural settings,
the Zambian children performed much better on
the wire-modelling task, English children performed
much better on the drawing task, and there was
no group dierence on the clay-modelling task.
Zambian boys performed better than girls in the
media of drawing and wire-modelling, but there was
no gender dierence on the clay-modelling task.
Several other quantitative experimental studies in
the 1970s demonstrated strong eects of familiarity
on test performance by African testees (Cole et
al., 1971; Okonji, 1971; Irwin et al., 1974). Small
adjustments, notably to remove the feature of
pictorial representation, typically generated signicant
improvements in test performance (e.g., Deregowski
and Serpell, 1971). Yet despite these various
demonstrations of how unfamiliarity of the standard
test format generates large variations in scores, the
Block Design Test continued to be deployed by many
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Western researchers in Africa and even some African
researchers as though it were a reliable measure of
a universally equivalent psychological construct.
The various challenges revealed by the
twentieth century research on psychological
measurement in Africa reviewed in this
section centred around three themes:
● ethnocentric bias
● limits on eectiveness of pictorial representation
● confounding of age with years of schooling
Strategic responses to those challenges have
emerged along several dierent lines.
Ad hoc (procedural) adaptations. Some applied
psychologists addressed the problem of unfamiliarity
with what I will call “procedural adaptations.” For
instance, a number of practitioners in Africa have
reported using practice runs or explicit training to
orient the testee to various “extrinsic” task demands
of the standard format before starting on the
actual test. While they are successful in raising
scores on imported tests, ad hoc adaptations can
be challenged as disrespecting the fundamental
principle of standardization that underpins some of
the psychometric properties of the original tests.
Further elaboration of theory. Rogo (1981)
systematically analysed the implications for cross-
cultural research of the interaction between age and
years of schooling. Cole and associates (Cole and LCHC,
1981) proposed a “cultural practice orientation […that]
emphasizes that in several important ways, transfer [of
skills] is arranged by the social and cultural environment”
(p. 341). And Serpell and Deregowski (1980)
proposed a theoretical framework for understanding
perceptual skills in their functional context,
construing “pictorial perception as a functionally
specialized skill whose pervasive importance in
modern education derives from the proliferation
of pictorial materials in Western culture” (p. 145).
Other approaches. Several teams of investigators in
Africa have attempted to respond constructively to
the challenges outlined in this section, building on
the strengths of measurement for generating precise
and reliable accounts of children’s psychological
functioning, while avoiding the shortcomings of
over-reliance on foreign or small local samples in
the standardization of the assessment instruments.
In the next section I describe the development
of three such instruments: the Panga Munthu
Test (PMT), the McArthur-Bates Communicative
Development Inventory (MBCDI), and the Zambia
Child Assessment Tool (ZAMCAT), and briey
discuss with examples some other strategies
adopted within the psychometric tradition.
Ways forward: systematic development
of assessment methods and measurement
instruments
PMT
The Panga Munthu Test has quite a long history.
The purpose for which it was rst conceived was
systematic assessment of a personal, developmental
characteristic valued in Indigenous African culture
and in prevailing African social practices. My study
conducted in the 1970s and 1980s was designed
to explore how intelligence was conceptualized in
a rural African community, how it was related to
success in formal schooling, and the intersection of
those two issues with adaptation of individuals and
communities to the demands of rapid social change
(Serpell, 1982; 1993). In order to systematically assess
children’s current level of cognitive functioning on
an eco-culturally relevant task, I selected modelling
the human body in the medium of clay, a task on
which, in my earlier study (Serpell, 1979), older urban
Zambian schoolchildren had performed better than
younger children, but no signicant dierences had
been found between performance by boys and
girls. The task was framed for the children in our
rural Zambian sample as “make a person” – panga
munthu in the local language (Chi-Chewa). As
expected, the older children in my rural Chewa sample
performed better on this Panga Munthu Test (PMT)
than younger children. However, PMT scores were
not signicantly correlated with ratings by familiar
adults of which child they would select to perform
a locally relevant emergency task (Serpell, 1977).
Noting the conceptual similarity between the PMT and
the widely used Western Draw-a-person Test (Harris,
1963), Ezeilo (1978) decided to explore further the
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degree to which it served to represent competence
in a medium more familiar to African children than
drawing. Instead of presenting the child with a model
to copy, she simply asked the child to make the best
possible model of a person, and she extended the
scoring system from our crude 10-point scheme
to a more elaborate 20-point scale that paid more
attention to detail. In search of evidence of external
validity, Ezeilo examined variation in scores across age-
groups among children of normal age for their grade
at three urban schools, and between those children
and a sample drawn from a special school for children
with severe intellectual disability (1978). As expected,
older school children scored higher on the test and
children with SID scored signicantly lower. However,
the test scores did not dierentiate among school
children rated by their teachers as very bright, average,
or very dull, nor did they correlate with children’s
scores on teacher-made tests of academic attainment.
Building on Ezeilo’s recommendations, Kathuria further
extended the scoring key, and set out to generate
reference norms with a large, nationwide sample of
children attending public primary schools in rural
and urban areas. The hope was that establishing
a norm-based standardized scoring system would
make the instrument “a valuable resource for a
number of socially signicant activities in the
contemporary world,” including clinical diagnosis
of mental retardation, educational guidance within
schools, and research on the causes of streetism and
on the impact of malnutrition on children’s cognitive
functioning (Kathuria and Serpell, 1998, p 229).
Multifactorial analysis of the scores revealed that age
and grade were highly, but not perfectly, correlated.
We therefore decided to publish two separate sets
of norms, one based on Grade (1, 3 and 5), the other
based on two-year age-bands (7-8, 9-10, 11-12).
Given the absence of data for intermediate grades
we recommended users of the test to exercise
caution in the interpretation of an individual’s score
Subsequent exploration of the test’s psychometric
properties (Alcock et al., 2008; Ngenda 2011;
Serpell and Jere-Folotiya, 2008; Stemler et al.,
2009) has established that the PMT is quite
reliable. Matafwali and Serpell found that:
“It taps into a cognitive domain that develops
equally well in boys and girls in rural and urban
populations between the ages of 4 and 12. Its
relation with other measures of cognitive functioning
suggests that it draws on knowledge about the
structure of the human body and visuomotor
manipulative skill in the medium of clay, as well
as the cognitive function of representation. How
this range of competencies relates to measures of
academic achievement varies according to how
schools teach their students basic subjects such as
mathematics and literacy and how the outcomes
of that teaching are assessed.” (2014, p. 88)
MBCDI
The emergence of communicative competence is
a universally cherished milestone of children’s entry
into society. Early development in this domain is
notoriously dicult to assess reliably. One reason
for this is the tradition of focusing on measuring
competence in a particular standardized form of a
single language: children often adopt a unique version
of an element of language and deploy it eectively
for communication long before they are exposed to
regulation by adult authorities. Another challenge
is that successful communication is highly sensitive
to context: what a child is able to understand varies
across the settings privileged by dierent sociocultural
practices of childcare (Sperry et al., 2019). In Africa,
the prevalence of multilingualism has been widely
acknowledged, often as a challenge to national
cohesion, but also, for some close observers, as a
potential advantage for human resource development
(Prah and Brock-Utne, 2009). Sociolinguistic studies
around the world have documented a pattern
known as diglossia, whereby several speech varieties
used in a given society have unequal social status
(Ferguson, 1959). And in colonized states the language
introduced by the colonial power tends to occupy
a dominant status that endures even after the
formal end of colonial occupation (Fishman, 1967).
As children grow up in such a society, they learn to
dierentiate among the speech varieties at play in
their environment, and to deploy them in accordance
with local social conventions (Serpell, 2014).
Researchers wishing to assign a quantitative measure
to the development of communicative competencies
in early childhood typically rely on a child’s primary
caregiver to report the actual words a given child has
been observed to utter or to understand. Building on
a decade of research by Bates, an American research
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team developed the MacArthur-Bates Communicative
Inventory (Fenson et al., 1994), which has since been
applied to a wide variety of languages. Prado et al.
(2017) used adaptations of the MBCDI in prospective
cohorts of young children in Ghana, Malawi, and
Burkina Faso: “Language development was assessed
using a 100-word vocabulary checklist by maternal
interview.” They found that “vocabulary scores showed
high inter-rater agreement and moderate to high
test-retest reliability in all trials” (p. 1267). The current
language practices of a given community were
sampled and systematically applied to construction
of a standard list of target words, for each of which a
primary caregiver was asked whether the child has
been heard to say the word (to score two points) or
has shown evidence of understanding it (one point).
Applying this approach in a multilingual setting raises
the question of how to count words “belonging” to
dierent languages. However, this may reect a bias
towards monolingual conceptualizations of individual
plurilingualism (Banda, 2020). Rather than asking “how
many words does the child know in each language?” a
more important question to address with the MBCDI
may be “how much of the uid multilingual repertoire
of this speech community has the child mastered’?
ZAMC AT
The Zambia Child Assessment Tool (ZAMCAT) was
developed within a project that sought to determine
the eect of early childhood environment, health,
and education on children’s development before and
through their schooling careers (Fink et al., 2012).
Two major goals were set for the development of an
assessment tool for this purpose: that it be “sensitive
to the local culture and context,” and that it be
“comparable with other international instruments”
(Matafwali and Serpell, 2014, p. 88). A battery was
constructed to cover a broad range of developmental
domains – language, motor skills, attention and
executive functions, nonverbal cognitive skills, and
physical growth – identied by a technical committee
of local Zambian experts with extensive knowledge in
child development, special education, and psychology
in consultation with a visiting researcher from the USA.
The development and validation of measures for each
domain applied a combination of three approaches
delineated by Holding, Abubakar, and Kitsao-Wekulo
(2008): adoption, adaptation, and assembly.
“Adoption refers to the literal translation of measures
from one culture to another” (Abubakar and Van de
Vijver, 2017, p. 197). During pilot testing, a sub-test
adopted from the Kaufman Assessment Battery for
Children (KABC) (Kaufman and Kaufman, 2004) elicited
very low scores reminiscent of the performance on
the Block Design Test discussed above. This task was
designed to assess the child’s capacity for reasoning
by extrapolating from a simple pattern (e.g., XOXO or
ABCAB) to its extension (XOXOXO or ABCABCABC).
In the original test, the elements of each pattern
were presented as two-dimensional abstract shapes,
a medium that several investigators had found to
be dicult for young Zambian children due to its
unfamiliarity in their regular home environment. In
light of its apparent cultural bias, the research team
adapted it to generate a new test of Tactile Pattern
Reasoning that “retained the same psychometric
construct as Kaufman Pattern Reasoning, but, instead
of two-dimensional graphic shapes, the stimulus
patterns were constructed from locally familiar
materials such as toothpicks, bottle tops, stones, and
beads, all of which were distinguishable through
both the visual and the tactile modality” (p. 89). This
substitution of familiar, solid objects for the abstract
pictorial stimuli of the original test gave rise to a large
and signicant increase in the number of correct
responses (Zuilkowski et al., 2015). It has therefore
been retained in subsequent revisions of the ZAMCAT.
Two other approaches to adaptation have been
grounded in technical features of the psychometric
tradition: population sampling and factor analysis.
Demographically corrected norms
for exogenous tests
A sophisticated method for rening the adoption
strategy focuses on establishing demographically
corrected norms for a test imported from abroad.
Based on research showing that certain demographic
groups score lower on the test, an algorithm is created
to transform an individual’s raw score to an adjusted
“scaled” score to compensate for his or her presumed
disadvantage due to demographic status. Heaton and
colleagues applied this approach of “demographically
corrected normative standards” to neuropsychological
assessment of African Americans (Heaton et al., 2003,
p.181) as well as to exploratory research in China
and Cameroon. A Zambian study sampled adults in
selected urban and rural areas, with conrmed HIV
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seronegative status, at least ve years of schooling, and
an ability to speak and understand English. Seventeen
minimally adapted Western measures of verbal uency,
attention/working memory, processing speed, verbal
episodic memory, visual episodic memory, executive
function, and motor skills were administered in English.
The investigators concluded that “tests developed
in the United States may be used in Zambia, but
development and use of local cultural norms remains
very important and is a must” (Hestad et al., 2015, p.
8). Zambian norms for a Zambia Neurobehavioural
Test Battery (ZNTB) are thus available with corrections
for age, gender, rural vs. urban residence and years
of schooling completed. An alternative model
includes an adjustment for scores on a test of
reading level, since that was found to be a stronger
predictor of scores that reported years of schooling.
Kabuba et al. (2016) found preliminary evidence of
the ZNTB’s psychometric validity in a study of adults
with conrmed HIV seropositive status. Their scores
were signicantly lower than the norms established
with the earlier sample of healthy Zambian adults.
Statistical analysis showed that this was a medium
eect size, and the authors concluded that the test
battery “is appropriate for use in Zambia and can serve
as a viable HIV and AIDS management tool” (p. 1717).
However, its applicability is restricted to testees
competent in English. Further elaboration will be
needed for valid neurocognitive assessment of
elderly persons in rural areas using an Indigenous
local language (Ndhlovu et al., 2013).
Cross-cultural construct validation of
psychometric instruments
The statistical method of factor analysis has been
applied by some psychometric specialists to examine
whether the pattern of inter-correlations among
various components of a test, known as its factorial
structure, is the same or similar (“invariant”) in data
collected at dierent points in time or from dierent
groups. Early studies using this approach in Africa
were focused on instruments to be used for selection
among candidates for selective admission to higher
levels of formal education (Vernon, 1967; Irvine,
1969). A recent study by Kariuki et al. (2016) among
preschool age children in coastal Kenya used the
factor analytic approach to validate an adapted
Western instrument: the Child Behaviour Checklist
(CBCL) originally designed in the USA by Achenbach
and Edelbrock (1984). The Checklist comprises a
list of simple questions about the child’s behaviour
addressed to a primary caregiver. Based on factor
analysis, scores on individual items are aggregated
into seven factors representing dierent behaviour
problem syndromes: emotionally reactive, anxiously
depressed, somatic complaints, withdrawn, sleep
problems, attention problems, and aggressive
behaviour. Each item has a factor loading on each
of those syndromes, and these are used to compute
an individual’s score on each of the subscales.
Kariuki et al. translated the tool into the locally
predominant language Ki-Swahili and “adapted
the items to make them culturally appropriate and
contextually relevant” (2016, p. 1). The scores were
derived from oral administration of the checklist
to a sample of parents with low levels of literacy.
The project found that “most of the items could be
adequately translated and easily understood by the
participants” (p.1). The inter-informant agreement
for CBCL scores was excellent between the mothers
and other caretakers and fathers. Other psychometric
indices (test-retest reliability, scale internal consistency,
and t indices for the factorial structure) led to the
conclusion that “the CBCL has good psychometric
properties and the seven-syndrome structure
ts well with the Kenyan preschool children,
suggesting it can be used to assess behavioural/
emotional problems in this rural area” (p.1).
Qualitative analysis of Indigenous concepts
to specify what to measure
The most crucial hazard of the adoption strategy
described above is that it may completely overlook
one or more psychological constructs that feature
in the Indigenous meaning-system. A research team
in South Africa and the Netherlands, led by Meiring
and van de Vijver (Fetvadjiev et al., 2015) sought to
avoid this hazard by working from the bottom-up
in the development of the South African Personality
Inventory (SAPI). Items were initially generated
through interviews to obtain personality descriptors
from Indigenous speakers of each of the 11 ocial
language groupings in South Africa. Factor analysis
of these descriptors resulted in nine personality
clusters. Analysis of responses to the scale yielded
two broad and distinct clusters in the instrument:
one representing agentic or personal-growth
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elements (conscientiousness, extraversion, intellect,
openness, emotional stability, and integrity), the other
a communal or social-relational cluster (facilitating,
relationship harmony and soft-heartedness). This
instrument was designed for the assessment of
personality in adults. A recent study in southern
Tanzania adopted a similar strategy, starting with
qualitative exploration of Indigenous understandings
and applying advanced psychometric methods
to build a scale for assessing “community-dened
social-emotional competencies” among children
growing up in a rural African community (Jukes et
al., 2021). Open-ended interviews and focus group
discussions with parents and teachers “helped identify
several constructs that were not included in existing
frameworks” for assessment of socioemotional
learning by children in WEIRD societies, “and dierent
conceptualizations of existing constructs” (Jukes et
al., 2021, p. 12). The study found that teachers tended
to rate the characteristic of curiosity more highly
than rural parents, and that the relative value placed
by parents on the childhood traits of curiosity and
obedience was correlated with their own education,
socioeconomic status, and rural vs. urban residence.
Measuring context and Early Childhood
Education and Care interventions
The growing emphasis on social and cultural context
in theories of early childhood development gave
rise to systemic formulations, the most prominent of
which was Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) account of the
ecology of human development. According to such
theories the interaction between the organism and
context is construed as a process of socialization,
whose developmental outcome is some form of
integration into the social system. “The structure
of the context comprises sociocultural “routines,”
“practices,” and “institutions,” which are organized in
a series of nested layers comprising microsystems
of social relationships within mesosystems (such
as families, schools, and neighbourhoods), which
in turn are circumscribed by macrosystemic factors
(such as administrative bureaucracies, governmental
policies, and cultural ideologies)” (Serpell, 1999,
p. 47). Research on ECD in Africa has involved
measurement, not only of children’s behaviour,
experience, and development, but also of contexts,
practices and interventions that inuence children’s
quality of life and development. Statistical methods
for partitioning variance have been attractive to
researchers seeking to explore patterns of multivariate
causation. Much of this research has been addressed
to evaluation of interventions designed to enhance
children’s opportunities for healthy or progressive
development. Plans for such interventions are often
accompanied by a logical model or “log frame” or a
simplied “theory of change,” spelling out the authors”
theoretically grounded expectations of how various
aspects of the system will inuence one another.
The philosophical rationale for interventions to
promote “optimal child development” is often
more or less explicitly hegemonic, justifying the
introduction of Western forms of education in Africa
as essential for the process of progressive social
change towards a civilized and economically viable
society. As a result, the goals and methods of many
early childhood educational interventions invoke
the concept of school readiness, and implicitly
construe Indigenous family socialization practices
as decient. Serpell and Nsamenang (2015, p. 234)
argued that the inuential series of publications in
the Lancet by the International Child Development
Steering Group (ICDSG) “tends to exaggerate the
degree of consensus within the scientic community
in order to convince funding agencies that science
has come up with a denitive solution,” ignoring the
growing evidence that the patterns documented
by Western researchers in WEIRD societies are not
always replicated in Africa and that their theoretical
interpretations as a basis for application in those
societies may not convincingly be applicable in
African societies. Those concerns have been forcefully
echoed by Morelli et al. (2018), and by Scheidecker
et al. (2021), with emphasis on the ethical hazards of
intervening with a Western package in the prevailing
cultural socialization systems of non-Western societies.
Nevertheless, based on the continuing series of Lancet
reports by the ICDSG, the international organizations
WHO and UNICEF have continued to promote a
Nurturing Care Framework (2020), complete with
a very detailed Toolkit for its implementation. The
popularity of the framework is linked to a model of
research borrowed from the eld of medicine, in
which an experimental form of treatment, such as
a new drug developed in the laboratory, is tested
for ecacy in the real world. The research design
favoured for such eld-testing is the Randomized
Control Trial (RCT) in which the outcomes of treatment
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are compared with those of a placebo administered
to a random subset of the trial participants. The
following internationally funded RCTs in Africa
on the impact of ECE on school enrolment and
literacy draw on the Nurturing Care Framework.
McCoy et al. (2017) evaluated the impact of
ECCE enrolment in Zambia on a large, nationally
representative sample, using the locally rened
ZAMCAT (described in section D) to measure
cognitive competence outcomes. They found a
small to medium positive eect on several cognitive
indicators of school readiness but noted that
such programmes are unevenly accessible and
unaordable for many families, and that they vary
in quality. Parents” motivation for enrolling children
rests on a belief that it will give them a head start
in public primary schooling. But in one study of
low-income urban children, “preschool even had a
negative eect on reading and writing at the end
of rst grade,” probably because, unlike the public
schools, most ECCE centres in Zambia continued to
teach initial literacy in English (Mwanza-Kabaghe et
al., 2015). That policy anomaly is being addressed,
but the use of Indigenous languages for initial
literacy instruction continues to encounter resistance
from many families and teachers, both in Zambia
and elsewhere on the continent (Trudell, 2012).
One dimension of the Nurturing Care Framework is
focused on promotion of language development in
early childhood and its inuence on the acquisition of
literacy. One of the tried and tested interventions for
promoting early childhood literacy development in
the Western countries with high levels of adult literacy
is the practice of a literate caregiver engaging in joint
storybook reading with the child. Knauer et al. (2020)
reported on an ongoing project designed to replicate
the method with two 7-year-old children in western
Kenya. Drawing on the open-access online collection
of Indigenous language stories for children recently
established by the African Storybook Project (http://
www.africanstorybook.org), a set of child-friendly
storybooks were developed in the dominant local
language Luo and the national language Swahili and
provided to parents in the small town of Kisumu.
Some of the parents were trained in the practice of
dialogic reading that Western studies have found to be
especially eective in promoting children’s emergent
literacy. The project found that parent training paired
with the provision of culturally appropriate children’s
books increased reading frequency and improved
the quality of caregiver-child reading interactions,
leading to improved storybook-specic expressive
vocabulary. The theoretical grounding and local
language adaptation in this study were exceptionally
thorough. Implementation was conned to a single,
three-hour group session, delivered to parents by
Indigenous trainers uent in both languages who
had received thorough orientation to the theory and
practice of dialogic reading. The measured impact
on young children’s language development was
limited. A two-year follow-up study is planned to
examine the longer-term eects of the intervention
on children’s pre-literacy skills and school readiness.
Studies that take seriously the challenge of engaging
families in behavioural change to participate in
the nurturance of young children’s psychological
development need to recognize that low-income,
low-literacy communities have their own standards
for what constitutes optimal child development
and for what kinds of care and education should be
provided by professionals (Ejuu and Apolot, 2021).
The kind of evidence generated by quantitative
studies of the kind reviewed in this chapter is dicult
to interpret by such audiences. Yet, since parents
are generally held responsible for the primary
socialization of young children, eorts to develop
nuanced forms of cooperative communication
between professionals and families at the community
level are ethically essential (Serpell, 2021).
Conclusion
Moving beyond the inspiring, but also sometimes
confusing rhetoric grounded in qualitative analysis,
many researchers have turned to quantication
as a source of precision, for detection of change,
for identication of the relations among variables
(partitioning variance, detecting paths, etc.), and for
communicating with economists in terms that are
easily operationalized for purposes of planning and
monitoring intervention. But elevating measurement
to the status of an essential component of research
comes with a danger of reductionism and of
increasing the marginalization of low-income, low-
literacy stakeholders. Some of the motivation to
measure rather than just describe emanates from
the preoccupation of early Behaviourist psychology
with achieving reliable prediction and control over
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human behaviour equivalent to the natural sciences
achievements of control over physical, chemical, and
biological processes. But the popularity of science
as a source of evidence for decision-making is also
grounded in social issues of power. Just as the
professionalization of psychology originates from
the progressive agenda of “casting discipline specic
expertise as central to the resolution of priority social
problems and the overall advancement of human
welfare” (Seedat and MacKenzie, 2007, p. 62), so
scientization in international organizations such as
UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank can be “justied
by its resolve to solve real societal challenges and
needs” (Bekele, 2021, p. 19). But the competitive
spirit that infuses the activities of professional
guilds and the collaborative partnerships between
policymakers and scientists has the potential to
divert their energies into protecting their turf.
While some have hailed the RCT as a “gold standard”
for empirical research evidence to support policy,
others have warned against over-emphasis on a
single research paradigm (Davies et al., 2008). The
bottom line is that numbers are only as good as
the indicators counted. No matter how elaborate
the statistical analysis, a quantitative study is only
as valid as the accuracy with which its measures
represent the phenomena under investigation.
Understandably, many representatives of the
profession of psychology in Africa are keen to respond
systematically to the felt needs of families seeking
assessment of their child. Abubakar and Van de
Vijver (2017) approach the topic of test development
from the premise that measurement is essential for
doing so responsibly, and correctly arm that: “Africa,
like many developing regions of the world, suers
an acute shortage of adequately standardized and
culturally appropriate measures of child development”
(p. 197). Laher and Cockcroft (2017) conclude their
pragmatic article on “Moving from culturally biased
to culturally responsive assessment practices”:
The best assessment practice for multiculturally
diverse contexts is the development of emic (culturally
and linguistically specic to a particular context)
measures, rather than relying on adaptations of
existing tests developed for other contexts and
communities. However, test development is time-
consuming, expensive, and requires specialist
psychometric skills that are not widely available in
low-resource communities. Assessment practitioners
working in such contexts require concrete and
tangible practices that can be used within the
frameworks of what is currently available. (p. 3-4)
But the hard truth is that a scale based on one
or more irrelevant indicators does not accurately
represent the underlying construct it is designed
to measure. Moreover, the relations among
measured variables specied in the logic of an RCT
reect ideological as well as theoretical premises.
Those need to be made explicit, especially when
the ndings of such studies are interpreted for
non-technical stakeholders (Serpell, 2021).
Postscript: author’s personal statement
In my personal estimation, while quantication may
be a useful method for gathering evidence to decide
on the best ways of promoting physical survival
and material production, it is less helpful in guiding
research to address some other desirable societal
goals. “Peaceful coexistence and cooperation, honesty
and trust in interpersonal relations are social goods
which do not lend themselves to quantication,
nor arguably does the central educational goal of
promoting optimal personal development” (Serpell,
1993, p. 256). Research addressing such issues has
generally been more successful when guided by a
qualitative approach, drawing on the humanistic
disciplines of literature and anthropology. At its
best, measurement can be a powerful tool for
clarifying ideas, but it is not a universally reliable
way of addressing every kind of problem. My own
research endeavours over the years have combined
both qualitative and quantitative methods, and
I seek in this chapter to highlight some of their
complementary strengths and weaknesses. Looking
back on my own life-journey, I realise that the
division in Western academic discourse between
the traditions of the humanities and the sciences
has been a source of tension both in my own
set of beliefs and in the deployment of expertise
for understanding child development in African
societies. I hope that this nuanced account of how
contemporary “best practices” of Early Childhood
Education achieved legitimacy over the course of
history will benet planning in contemporary African
nations for health, educational and social services to
support African children and their families to thrive
in the face of natural and human-made adversities.
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Chapter 10
Professionalization
of Early Childhood
Development in Africa
Hasina Banu Ebrahim,
Edith Sebatane, Fortidas
Bakuza, Mando Banda, Janet
Ndeto, and Patsy Pillay
Introduction
Caring for and educating young children is a
fundamental need for all societies. It is through
the vehicle of Early Childhood Development (ECD)
that societies build and rebuild communities, enact
generational transmission, and eect educational
change (Woodhead, 2006). Over time, the complex
changes in societies across the globe has resulted in
the shift of care and education of young children from
families to institutions like early childhood centres. In
Africa, in the last two decades there has been a greater
focus by governments on ECD as public service, with
attention to access and a growing concern about
quality of provision. This mobilization can be attributed
to research evidence (predominantly from the Global
North) on the importance of ECD to build foundations
for optimal child development and lifelong learning.
The push from global agendas, international
frameworks, and priorities for dealing with multiple
vulnerabilities (e.g., poverty, HIV/AIDs, infant mortality)
has also created a need to look at dierent facets
impacting on children’s growth, development,
and learning. As hope for the future, ECD must be
resourced with robust policies, resilient systems,
appropriate programmes, and a well-supported
workforce to give young children a good start in life.
In out-of-home-care there are key issues that
continue to complexify the ECD landscape in Africa.
What was once solely the practices of parents
and other primary caregivers in families, is now
specialized work of women in the labour force – day
mothers, early childhood practitioners, home visitors,
play group facilitators and others in support and
supervisory roles. There are contestations related to
the knowledge that shapes ECD work, the systems
and policies that accommodate these workers and
the gender bias in the labour practices. The work
that women in ECD do suers from a lack of prestige,
power, and special rights that workers in established
professions enjoy. This is concerning given that they
are contributing to the goals of reaching economic
prosperity which is desired by African governments.
Historically, the ECD workforce has moved from
volunteerism to stipend work with low status and
poor pay with some changes. Hence, ECD in African
countries with high contextual dierences can best
be described as an early emerging profession.
Given the above context, professionalization of ECD
in Africa is more about the historical, institutional,
and collective processes (Horn, 2016) contributing
to moving ECD forward towards a fully-edged
profession. This is particularly important given
some key predictions. Between 2015 and 2030, the
number of children under 18 in Africa will rise from
496 million to 661 million. By 2026 Africa will have
the greatest number of children below the age of
18 (UNICEF, 2015). By 2055 Africa will have 1 billion
children – the largest child population in the world
(UNICEF and African Union, 2019). Young children
in the hands of a well-trained, well-qualied, well-
compensated workforce motivated to do their
work is critical for reaching goals for prosperous
African societies. The onset of the global pandemic
demands this type of action as a matter of urgency.
The aim of this chapter is to take a critical look at some
of the building blocks implicated in professionalizing
ECD in the African context. It does not seek to present
the professionalization issues in every country in Africa,
rather it provides examples that shed light on the
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salient issues that characterizes professionalization.
The structure of the chapter makes salient the issues
in the past, the evolving issues, and those in current
times of COVID-19. The discussion shows that ECD
is trapped in a double bind – knowledge transfer
with a colonizing intent and then local knowledge
and realities shaping action. The chapter begin with
showing how colonization and exports to Africa tell
a narrative of power and hierarchies. Women’s labour
force participation forms an integral part of the
discussion. This is followed by a closer exploration of
local eorts in Africa for professionalization of ECD.
Specically, the issues of workforce composition,
compensation and training are explored. This then
leads to a discussion on the Indigenous responses
to professionalization of ECD. Closer to current
times, the chapter ends with a discussion of
COVID-19 and its impact on the ECD workforce.
Colonization and dabbling
in the cargo cult
The knowledge transfer debates and critiques
impacting on professionalization of ECD gained
their strength from the work of the reconceptualist
scholars in ECD in the United States (Bloch, 1987;
Kessler and Swadener, 1992; Leavitt, 1994; Silin,
1995; Cannella, 1997; Cannella and Viruru, 1999). As
a collective of critical voices, they showed the fault
lines of using universal framings in early childhood
education. To destabilize a one-size-ts-all approach
they used critical, multicultural, and post-colonial
perspectives to engage with complexity and diversity
in ECD. Viruru (in Cannella, 2000), drawing on her
work on preschools in India and other eorts to
make the postcolonial lens visible in early education,
had the following to say about colonization:
Colonization is not just about nations gaining
power over other nations; it is about systems of
knowledge that have gained power over other
systems. Thus, the post-colonial condition is
situated not only in countries that were formerly
Western colonies but, in all elds, where Western
imperialist discourses have gained ascendance
over other forms of knowledge. (p. 217-218)
A powerful system of knowledge that shaped ways
of knowing and doing in preschool education was
Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP). This
specic system of knowledge was critiqued for its
“imperialist discourses.” The contents in the Guidelines
for DAP by the National Association for the Education
of the Young Child (NAEYC) (Bredekamp, 1987) was
considered highly problematic. The guideline was
developed with two purposes in mind, namely,
accreditation of centre-based provision and ensuring
that ECD practitioners were refraining from using a
push-down formal didactic approach characteristic
of schooling. The DAP guideline took on the status
of “best practice” that practitioners could rely on.
For quality practice, they needed to show that their
programmes had “developmentally appropriate
activities, materials and expectations” (Bredekamp,
1987, p. v). Compliance meant rewards and incentives.
Ayers (2017) noted that both the authoritative tone
and exclusionary eects of DAP were problematic.
DAP was developed with a bias towards a white
middle-class perspective of ECD. This meant
that the children that were most likely to benet
from DAP were from privileged backgrounds.
Children from poor backgrounds are normally
compromised in their development, knowledge,
skills, and dispositions. Using DAP in a universal
way would have been a barrier to these children
reaching their developmental potential. In practice
this meant that practitioners would side-line any
pedagogy that needed cultural responsiveness, for
fear of deviation from the mainstream normative
expectations of DAP. Despite its shortcomings and
subsequent revisions, older versions of DAP continue
to inltrate ECD in implicit or explicit ways. Typical
ages, stages, and milestones are used to categorize
children and make decisions on their development
and learning based on normative expectations.
The metaphor of the “cargo cult” is also helpful to
consider for its naturalizing eect of exports and
imperialism in ECD. The denition below shows
hierarchies and domination which is counter-
productive to those receiving and using the “cargo”:
Cargo cults develop when primitive societies
are exposed to the overpowering material
wealth of the outside industrialized world. Not
knowing where the foreigners” plentiful supplies
come from, the natives believe they were sent
from the spirit world. (Lindstrom, 1993, p. 1)
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The metaphor of the “cargo cult” in early childhood
education was coined by Johnson (2000) in his
critical analysis of how individuals were undertaking a
journey to learn about the Reggio Emilia approach for
adaptation in the United States of America. He likens
the journey to a pilgrimage and its eects to a “cargo
cult” – something that unfolds when less developed
nations gain exposure to the advancements of
industrialized nations. This exposure, Johnson argues, is
constitutive. It gives power to ideas and practices that
appear natural without considering the contextual
histories that shaped actions for particular choices.
In Africa, Nsamenang (2008) is known for his critiques
on the likes of a “cargo cult” in ECD. He argued
that when imported ideas in ECD made their way
into the continent, then uncritical borrowings and
unquestioning attitudes led to received wisdom
being perceived as a given rather than something
that was socially constructed. This he noted led to
the (mis)understandings of ECD in Africa and the
side-lining of ECD assets in childrearing and child
development that existed for generations. Pence
(2011, p. 112) challenged “the spectre of the universal
child as part of a globalization process, considering
the dark side of good work and questioning who
denes desirable and how it is measured.” In the
main, the “cargo cult” is an enabler that gives power
to ideas and practices that appear universal without
considering the contextual histories that shape
actions for choices. It makes things appear natural
as “power reaches into the very grain of individuals
[…] inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their
discourses, learning processes and everyday lives”
(Foucault, 1980, p. 39). For example, ECD practitioners
who have decontextualized understandings of young
children will deny their cultural capital and cast them
as ignorant – too young to know and side-line their
capacity as agents in their lives (Ebrahim, 2010; 2011).
This means that anything outside the normative
framings will be the object of replacement rather than
enhancement. Another example is the exportation
of English with its economic power in Africa. This
linguistic cargo has been powerful in side-lining the
full development of African languages for learning
and teaching in preschools. In South Africa, Ebrahim
(2007) shows how African children in preschools were
asked to speak English as part of school readiness
and security of entrance into good English-speaking
preschools. Parental expectations were powerful
in shaping this. In Kenya, English is favoured in
preschools due to dominance of NGOs and churches
in the management of ECD services (Ng’asike, 2014).
Acting in the funder’ gaze
Foreign funding to support ECD service provision
has been a common feature in the African continent.
Historically, this can be attributed to the idea that
ECD service provision is a private responsibility
of parents (Webber, 1978) and government
intervention was unnecessary. Competing priorities
for governments also resulted in their absence
in ECD. Under-investment by governments saw
a ourishing NGO sector that supported ECD
practitioners with training and skills development
courses through donor funding. The foreign donor
funding brings with them knowledge, models,
and practices that are more workable in the Global
North. Nsamenang (2008) concurs with this idea. He
notes that what is exported from the Global North is
presented as the correct ways of action for children’s
development and learning. In the same vein, Penn
(2011) argues that major donor agencies, through
travelling policies and buzzwords, develop their
guidelines in denitive ways for ECD in the Third
World Countries. This has repercussions for how
ECD practitioners and other development workers
are trained, and how their practices are evaluated.
Another important aspect to consider is the way
in which ECD policies and guidelines, impacting
on the workforce, have been developed in African
countries. Nsamenang (2006) draws attention to how
the lack of experts in African countries means that
they seek the help of international consultants. This is
problematic especially if they lack understanding of
the context and are dismissive of any local inuences
that have a bearing on how ECD is practiced and
understood. Even where attempts are made for
culturally responsive programmes by local individuals,
Aubrey and Dahl (2008) argue that the reliance of
their work on broad advocacy documents means
that they can gravitate towards global arguments
for what needs to be done with children and
what it means to be a good ECD “professional.”
Taken together, the imported notions of ECD and
acting in the funder’s gaze lays bare the practice of
settling too quickly for ready-made solutions rather
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
than asking questions that are responsive to contextual
circumstances (Ginzburg, 1998) of young children,
their families, and the workforce in Africa. The historical
quick xes of “what works” informed by research
from the Global North and practical application by
outside experts and specialists made it irrelevant
to engage with multiple assets for ECD in Africa.
Women’s labour participation in ECD
Over time the workforce in ECD has been dominated
by women, who have not derived major benets
from gender equity initiatives such as targeted
female employment and women’s economic
empowerment. This is due to ECD work being
located in the informal economy. Workers in this
economy normally earn poor salaries, and have
questionable work conditions with little job security
(Horwood et al., 2019). These workers do not enjoy
the benets of workers in a formal economy,
namely, leave, unemployment benets and salaries
are mostly below basic conditions of employment
guidelines. Additionally, those that participate in the
informal economy are normally poor and vulnerable.
The informal economy is also disproportionately
represented by women (Alfers, 2016). They juggle
unpaid childcare and work responsibilities. Where
female labour force participation rates are high
(e.g., Ghana, Guinea, Rwanda, and Uganda)
there is still a gender gap in education.
Women have high workloads and receive little
money. A study on women ECD practitioners in family
support programmes in South Africa, showed that
they visited families, connected them to ECD services,
facilitated support networks and participated in
advocacy programmes. The high workload with poor
pay led to frustrations and practitioners were ready
to leave for greener pastures in the reception year in
schooling (Ebrahim et al., 2011). The low status of ECD
also makes it unattractive and aects the stability of
the workforce. Besides the poor recognition of ECD
work, many in disadvantaged contexts have not been
exposed to preschool education in their childhood
and hence do not always value its contribution
in young children’s lives (Swift et al., 2008).
Women’s entry into the labour market is complex
and has repercussions for their children. In Kenya,
Lokshin, Glinkskaya and Gracia (2004) researched
mothers” participation in the market work. Their
ndings showed that in households with children
from 3 to 7 years, the high cost of childcare had a
negative impact on using formal childcare facilities
and on mother’s participation in out-of-home work.
The mother’s salaries also aected the decisions to
enrol older children in school. When choices had to
be made between boys and girls for enrolment, boys
were favoured due to perceptions of their future
role as breadwinners and protectors of the family.
Gender parity work is undertaken by institutions like
the United Nations and the World Bank (Ganguli et
al., 2014). From a knowledge transfer perspective,
women’s participation in the labour force suers from
the same concerns about global inuences and the
lack of attention to the contextual dynamics. Perez
(2017) laments the fact that Black feminist thought is
marginalized in early childhood studies. This framing
is helpful to make sense of the many barriers faced
by women in Africa. Black women’s lived experiences,
which includes exposure to patriarchal power from
African perspectives, does not always get the attention
it deserves. For example, traditionally in the Basotho
society there were clearly dened roles for men and
women. Men provided livelihood for their families,
security and protection for their communities, while
women remained at home to look after the family
(Matŝela, 1979). This cultural structure in Lesotho
meant that childcare was always the responsibility
of women. Ideas from Black feminist thoughts are
helpful to unpack the rigid gender roles, the power
dynamics, and cultural costs of boundary crossing.
Although childcare work is more acceptable to
women, there are factors that determine their ease
of entry into the labour force. When childcare work is
paid, it is still dependent on the household conditions
and whether the job they hold is stigmatized by their
spouses and extended families. Jobs must be socially
acceptable to women in the family and community.
Religious norms where rigid gender boundaries are
aected, also impact on women’s labour participation.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Local eorts for ECD professionalization
in Africa
Workforce composition
As noted previously, the workforce composition is
largely female. In Lesotho, a study undertaken by
Sebatane and Lefoka (2011) with 39 teachers showed
that two were male and 37 were female. In Zambia, the
National Education Bulletin indicated that 67% of the
teachers in the country were female, as were 87% of
ECD practitioners. Banda (2018) found that all nannies
taking care of infants were female. The National
ECD Audit (Department of Social Development and
Economic Policy Research Unit, 2013) in South Africa
explored the theme of demographic composition
of the workforce. There were 16,806 centres that
participated in the study with at least one sta
member. The sta proles were completed by 60,572
personnel. The ndings showed that 90% of sta
were Black African women and these women were
mostly in unregistered centres. A study by Mukuna
and Mutsotso (2011) conrmed that ECD was a
feminized profession in the Kenyan context. Their
study showed how the cultural practices favoured
ECD as women’s work. Men were showing interest in
ECD work, but this was more related to administrative
duties rather than facilitating teaching and learning.
So, what keeps men out of ECD work in Africa?
Petersen (2014) makes explicit the cultural bias
against male teachers where ideas of feminized
childrearing and the authoritarian views of males
limit their participation. These social practices devalue
having men as role models for children, especially
for those that who come from homes where males/
fathers are physically absent. The importance of
male professionals through a fatherly connection is
lost (Khewu and Adu, 2016) when the work of males
is thought of in narrow ways. Mashiya et al. (2015)
investigated why males are reluctant to choose
early childhood education as a teaching career
option. Their study showed that a complex mix of
factors aected choices. The childrearing beliefs
from African perspectives, stakeholder attitudes
and perceptions of existing male students in the
profession inuenced choices. The ideas of hegemonic
masculinity where the standards for being a “real”
man and its oppressive attitudes and practices make
it dicult to do nurturing and care work with young
children. Moosa and Bhana’s (2018) study showed
that childcare duties are perceived as low-status work
which women occupy. It is not surprising that when
males enter the female-dominated occupational
space they experience shame and embarrassment.
Compensation
Compensation of the ECD workforce in Africa shows
that their work in the informal economy does them
a disservice and impacts negatively on their ability
to work with young children and families. Despite
being involved in complex labour practice with
questionable working conditions, ECD workers do
not experience nancial security (Ebrahim et al.,
2011). Whilst recognition of the importance of ECD
programmes for school readiness and economic
prosperity dominates the government rhetoric
in Africa, they are less forthcoming in terms of
adequate funding for a quality ECD workforce.
Programmes receive funding from parent fees, local
NGOs, international charitable agencies, and private
funders. Trade-os and compromises are made.
An analysis of compensation conrms the poor pay
status of the ECD workforce. In Kenya, Wangila (2017)
identied poor remuneration of ECD practitioners as
one of the aspects aecting teacher capacity-building
eorts. It was noted that there is an absence of a
Scheme of Service for ECD practitioners. The salaries
range from KES 500 to 18,000 per month. There is also
an urban and rural divide. Private owners of preschools
in built-up urban areas with certicate or diplomas can
earn up to an average of 10,000 per month. In rural
and slum-based communities, practitioners get salaries
that range from 500 to 3,500 per month. In Lesotho
the teachers rely on the fees paid by parents. The
lowest paid in poor communities is about R100 per
month but in well-paid private centres they are paid
between R300 – R5,000 per month. The fees are paid
by parents, and these are used to pay teacher salaries.
Poor pay is also a feature in Zambia. The housemaids
(childcare workers in homes) and those working in
childcare facilities are either paid in kind or US$40
to $50 per month, which is below the government’s
minimum wage. The ECD practitioners on government
payrolls get a Kwacha equivalent of between $260 and
$800 depending on the obtained qualications. If they
are working in homes, then the parents or guardians
of the child pays them. Those outside government
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
payrolls are compensated by their employers in
community based ECD centres, centres run by the
church or individuals or NGOs running the programme.
In Tanzania, the variations in remuneration were also
noteworthy. Received pay depended very much
on the employers in dierent settings oering ECD
work. It was perceived that early childhood does not
require skilled individuals. Women were expected to
transfer their nurturance into labour. Work with young
children is not highly valued. Untrained individuals
tend to be paid less and the pay was not predictable
in the community ECD settings. This was due to erratic
funding. In pre-primary education settings located in
public primary schools, parents were encouraged to
contribute fees. Some of this was used for porridge
for breakfast and the remaining money was used
to pay sta salaries. On the upside, a pre-primary
trained teacher in Tanzania is paid equal to a primary
education teacher if they have the same grade
level qualications. They also have equal benets.
Training and qualications
Research has shown that when practitioners receive
training that specializes in ECD and if they have higher
education then it makes possible more arming
pedagogical practices with children and their families
(Wall et al., 2015). The workforce in ECD in Africa lack
qualications. In South Africa, the National ECD Audit
(Department of Social Development and Economic
Policy Research Unit, 2013) showed that of 60,572
personnel that participated in the study, many lacked
qualications. It was noted that 35% of principals
and 40% of practitioners did not complete Grade 12,
which is the school leaving certicate. Specializations
in ECD tended to be more a feature of supervisory
sta than practitioners. Only 43% of principals and
30% of practitioners had ECD certicates of any level.
It was rare to nd ECD personnel with diplomas and
degrees. Also of concern was the fact that 37% of
principals had no ECD specialization while 55% of
practitioners have no formal qualications in ECD.
Training for ECD is delivered by many dierent types
of providers that range from NGOs, Technical and
Vocational Colleges, government departments,
universities, and private training institutions in Africa. In
Zambia women are trained by the organizations that
sponsor the programme they work in, for example,
Child Fund, Save the Children, World Vision, and
Children Sentinel Trust. They run short courses for
their practitioners. There are programmes that are
run by local and international NGOs. They organize
workshops in hotels and lodges within the districts
they operate from. The Zambia Community Schools
and Reformed Community Schools use their own
centres for training. In South Africa, a fragmentary
training system is operational. Certicates and to a
limited extent diplomas for the 0 to 4 age bracket
are oered by NGOs. Diplomas and degrees for 5
to 9 years are oered by some universities. There
is currently preparation by the universities to oer
diplomas and degree for the 0 to 4 age bracket. There
are dierent quality assurance bodies, and these
do not necessarily speak to each other. This results
in variation in the content and structure of ECD
teacher training programmes (Ebrahim et al., 2021).
There is limited nancial support for training of ECD
practitioners. In Ghana the cost of training is borne
by the practitioners even if it is held by government
departments (Ghana National Education Coalition and
The Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights, 2014). This raises the issue of aordability
considering the poor pay that the practitioners earn.
In Lesotho, the Ministry of Education and Training
often receives low budget allocations (0.03%) – a
gure far below the expected education budget
sector levels of 10% to 14% (Ministry of Education
and Training, 2013). This has resulted in the heavy
reliance on the NGOs and partners to provide
funds for training the workforce. In Tanzania, the
opportunities available for teachers depend very
much on the availability of the budget for training
from the employer (mainly the government), the
employers” priorities, and opportunities for specialized
training. On the ip side, the limited opportunities
for professional development tend to create access
issues for practitioners that are in more rural settings.
Generating local knowledge and solutions
There have been some positive moves towards
creating professional development curricula that takes
the local context into account. In the absence of large-
scale funding in this direction, pockets of culturally
relevant curricula and resources are developed
mainly by the NGO sector (Mitter and Putcha, 2018).
For example, The Aga Khan Foundation Madrasa
Resource Centres in Kenya, Uganda, and Zanzibar use
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
the location of their resource centres to inform both
the curriculum for teacher education and for early
childhood centres. The teachers are trained to use
the local context with its language and childrearing
resources to enhance their teaching. Another asset-
based approach to the design, is the way in which
stakeholders, the government ministries and the
experts come together for a responsive approach that
meets the needs of the workforce and the community.
As the standards and competency movement gains
strength in ECD teacher education in the African
context, there are warnings that the process of
professionalization “could be used as a means of
control and provide increased domination to those
in power” (Osgood, 2006, p.5). This means that there
could be demands for compliance to a map that
has not been informed by the contextual realities
experienced by the ECD sector. In South Africa,
the Project for Inclusive Early Childhood Care and
Education (PIECCE) from 2017-2020 brought a range
of stakeholders from the universities, the Technical
Vocational Colleges, the ECD NGOs and the ministries
to meetings and knowledge building seminars
for contributing towards knowledge and practice
standards to unify a fragmentary teacher education
sector (Ebrahim, 2021a). This helped to design the
diploma and degree in ECD, with greater shared
understanding of what ECD practitioners should know
and be able to do. Additionally, the platform created
discussions on issues such as recognition of prior
learning for those that do not have university entrance
qualications and Indigenous knowledge perspectives
for building content for ECD teacher training.
One of the issues that continues to attract debate is
the use of the language of learning and teaching in
ECD programmes in Africa. There have been some
positive policy developments in aording ECD
students the opportunity to build their competence
in African languages – e.g. The South African Policy
on Minimum Requirements for Programmes Leading
to Qualications in Higher Education for Early
Childhood Development Educators (Department
of Higher Education, 2017). The policy requires ECD
practitioners to be procient in at least one South
African language, and partially procient in another
South African language. All students that are not
procient in an Indigenous African language and
must take this at a conversational competence
level. This is endorsed in the qualication. There are
also other developments that are leading to study
materials being developed in African languages and
examination papers being made available in dierent
African languages. This increases the choice for the
language of learning in ECD teacher education.
The impact of COVID-19 on the ECD
workforce in Africa
Every sector across the globe has experienced the
shocks of COVID-19. As part of the informal economy,
the ECD sector became particularly vulnerable to the
uncertainties brought about by the global pandemic.
A rapid survey outlining the plight of ECD personnel
(teachers and managers) in the Asia-Pacic (AP) and
sub-Saharan African (SSA) regions was quite telling
about the stark realities they faced (Rothman et al.,
2020). There were 2,040 responses from 34 countries
in AP and 1,480 responses from 31 countries in SSA
which showed that both teachers and managers
were concerned about their job security amidst
adjusting to the new demands on their teaching
responsibilities. One of the key challenges related
to the transition to remote learning. Only 22% of
teachers in SSA had training in this mode of delivery.
About 18% of managers in SSA received training
in crisis management. Respondents used dierent
methods to communicate with parents – mobile
messengers, social media, and other applications.
This was, however, problematic in SSA, where 60%
of respondents did not have any strategies to keep
learning going. There were challenges related to data,
equipment, training, and the location of ECD centres.
Studies from South Africa shed light on the plight
of ECD practitioners. In April 2020, 3,952 ECD
operators participated in a rapid survey during the
hard lockdown. It was noted that 99% of the ECD
operators were nding it dicult to sustain their
service. They operated in geographical locations that
catered for poor children. The job losses resulted in
the inability to pay fees. This had a knock-on eect
on paying salaries to sta and having the nance
to re-open centres. Additionally, since ECD is in the
informal sector, practitioners were not registered to
access the social relief grants (Bridge et al., 2020a). In
August 2020, 4,500 providers participated in a second
survey (Bridge et al., 2020b). The ndings showed
that 68% found it dicult to re-open their centres.
They could not aord the new health and hygiene
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
equipment due to the lack of nancial reserves
and parent fees especially in the disadvantaged
context. The inequities in service provision negates
quality early learning for poor children (Martin et
al., 2022) and the labour participation of already
marginalized women (Ebrahim et al., 2021).
In Kenya, the devastating eect of the pandemic on
child development and learning has been recorded
by Shumba et al. (2020). It was noted that closure
of the pre-primary and the day care centres that
cater for children from birth to four years of age
negatively impacted on children’s access to early
learning. The children were missing out on the
facilitation of play-based learning, immunization,
food, and psychosocial support. There are also
concerns that the gains made to advocate for
children’s right to holistic development were being
skewed towards a predominantly health focus.
In Cameroon, Fenmachi (2022) conducted a study
on the role of teachers in keeping learning going
with children and families in private ECD provision.
The ndings showed that the teachers were able
to continue oering learning support as they had
professional development on remote learning.
They received funding for Internet access and were
able to use email, text messages, phone calls, and
WhatsApp messages to connect with families. This
was, however, aected by power surges. During
online sessions, teachers also noted that some
children were sharing devices, and this aected their
attendance. The sessions were tiring for children,
and they were distracted easily. This aected their
on-task behaviour. While parents were happy with
the learning continuity eorts, they found it dicult
to dedicate time to assist their children due to
their own work pressures. Printing out worksheets
also created an added cost burden to parents.
The pandemic has also led to ECD practitioners
positioning themselves as advocates for change
(Ebrahim, 2021b). In South Africa, the ECD NGO sector
took the government to court because of lack of
consistency for the reopening procedures for ECD
centres. On 6 July 2020 it was a victory for the sector
as all ECD centres could open if they met the health
protocols. A stimulus package that was granted to the
sector made provision for salaries for a limited number
of practitioners. This changed to support being oered
to all practitioners after protest action. The NGO sector
has also been participating in key forums to nd
solutions to dealing with unregistered sites, developing
a relevant quality assurance system, and providing
technical support and expertise for nancing ECD.
Concluding remarks
This brief landscaping of professionalization of ECD
in Africa shows that ECD has vestiges of an early
emerging profession. It still has a considerable journey
to undertake before it enjoys the power, prestige
and special recognition given to other professions.
In this chapter, professionalization, was approached
in terms of historical, institutional, and collective
processes that unveiled issues of signicance as we
head towards a post-pandemic era in ECD. Any eorts
to build back better ECD professional development
systems must take this into consideration. The
concerns with imported knowledge systems with
their constitutive power to marginalize local ways of
knowing and doing ECD did pave the way for local
action that is gaining traction, although not at the
desired pace. Of signicance is the way in which
women’s labour participation has been approached
in the professionalization space. This is an arena
for strong advocacy for gender equitable practices
among other things. Systems building and policy
development need to pay attention to the building
blocks of professionalizing the ECD sector. This must
be informed by how local realities point to local
solutions for responsive actions. Where this is strong,
the buy-in for change could be greater. In all of this,
the activism of those in the ECD sector (as advocates
for change) should never be under-estimated.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
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Chapter 11
22
This marginalization constitutes what Miranda Fricker terms epistemic injustice and which she denes as the overlooking and discrediting
of certain groups as knowers and thus excluding them from knowledge production (Fricker, 2007).
Leveraging Early
Childhood Education,
care, and development
at the margins
Auma Okwany and
Elizabeth Ngutuku
Introduction
The last decade has seen increased global, regional,
and national attention paid to ECD, with notable
gains made in policy and practice in many countries.
These gains are cast against the context of the African
region which evinces the highest global proportion
of children who remain vulnerable to multiple
intersecting risks and shocks. Structural constraints in
access to and quality of social services persist, and the
ECD sector remains underfunded and fragmented,
lacking state-led integrated approaches to address
the interwoven and mutually reinforcing needs of
young children. The proliferation of ECD interventions,
which are often run by non-state actors, target
vulnerable communities and children on a project
and pilot basis. Not only do they lack the capacity to
address the structural issues in the care environment,
but most externally funded interventions are
decontextualized. In such a context, the Euro American
models of ECD are the norm, and often promote
models of childhood, caregiving, early education, and
development that are not rooted in local contexts.
Indeed, as noted by Penn (2017) and Pence (2013)
these “salvation” interventions are based on an
image of deciency rooted in a Western “civilizing”
imperative from both colonial and neoliberal forces.
These narratives also invisibilize the embedded and
embodied voices of communities and researchers at
the margins. We see the margins as both a physical
space removed from the centre, but also as a
symbolic space that represents knowledge, resources,
experience, perspectives, and contextual narratives
that have been undermined.22 Despite the vibrancy of
the margins, there still remains a discrepancy between
the vision and the reality in ECCE implementation,
resulting in ongoing tensions of quality and equity
that may not meet the holistic, long-term needs of
young children in an equitable or sustainable manner.
As long-term scholar activists engaged in decolonizing
ECD in Africa, in this chapter, we draw from our work
to demonstrate how we have continued to push
the limits of the dominant knowledge around ECD.
Our eorts have been geared towards addressing
epistemic injustice in ECD policy, practice, and research
in Africa. These eorts also build on work by other
researchers, practitioners and knowledge activists who
have decried and continue to engage the tendency
of the dominant paradigm to homogenize, mask, and
gloss over the diversity of situated ECD epistemologies
at the margins (Ebrahim, 2010; Ebrahim, 2017; Ebrahim
et al., 2018; Ngutuku, 2020; Nsamenang, 2008; Odora
Hopper, 2010; Okwany, 2016; Okwany and Ebrahim,
2015; Okwany et al., 2011; Penn, 2017; Pence and
Nsamenang, 2008; Serpell and Nsamenang, 2015). In
pointing to the need to delink ECD from the dominant
narratives, we argue that children, caregivers, and
researchers at the margins should be seen as speaking
subjects in ECD knowledge production and uptake.
We present the margins as spaces of dissenting
thought and practice and as loci of conviviality and
not deciency (Okwany and Ebrahim, 2018) and argue
that the vitality of the margins should be harnessed
in ensuring quality ECD. We argue that even during
times of compromised care environment occasioned
by challenges and shocks like HIV/AIDS and the
current COVID-19 pandemic, communities and local
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organizations are resilient, and caregivers draw from
endogenous resources and knowledge to rework
care out of the ruins (Ngutuku, 2020; Okwany, 2016;
Okwany et al., 2011; Okwany and Ngutuku, 2009). We
call for a need to “remember” (bring to memory and
bring together) these ways of knowing and doing
in childcare that have been “dismembered,” whilst
highlighting the dynamism of community capital of
care at the margins (Okwany et al., 2011, p. 75). This
remembering as noted by Nyamnjoh (2012) entails
conviviality between the dominant epistemology
and other dynamic, nuanced local knowledges.
Conceptually, in disavowing the totalizing tendencies
of the dominant ECD knowledge, our arguments draw
from Africa’s philosophy of knowledge (Achebe, 2000;
Nsamenang, 2008; Nyamnjoh, 2012; Odora Hopper,
2010). We see Indigenous knowledge as “the wealth
of internal resources that have been developed over
time and regenerated, appropriated, and incorporated
into hybrid coping strategies, social networks, and
community resources” (Okwany et al., 2011, p. 28).
Such knowledge, we argue, is useful in strengthening
the care environment and particularly in times of
crisis of childcare as we are witnessing now. Such
collective action and organizing draw from the ubuntu
spirit and supports its key tenet and argument by
Archbishop Tutu: in Africa, “a person is a person only
through other persons” (Tutu and Tutu, 2010, p. 15).
From the context of our work in East Africa, the ubuntu
ethos is also embedded in Harambee, the self-help
national motto in Kenya of mobilizing resources for
the common good, while among the Baganda of
Uganda, Bulungi-bwansi (the good of the community),
is the communal rallying call for collaboration toward
community development. In calling for the valorizing
of local knowledge in childcare, we also rally around
Okot P’Bitek’s metaphor of a pumpkin among the
Acholi people, a trope in defence of traditional
epistemology and its embeddedness. P’Bitek (1972,
p. 58) exhorts us that, “the pumpkin that grows
in the old homestead must not be uprooted.” We
concur with the assertion by Fashina (2008, p. 71)
that the pumpkin is itself not just a people’s history
but is also part of their cultural epistemology and
an icon of their power that also reveals a presence.
In the rst part of the chapter, we provide a non-liner
account of some of the key issues around the care
environment in the decade, including eorts to
engage with the dominant narrative of ECD. We also
take the stressed caregiving within the context of
HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 as exemplars of how the
margins, though vibrant, continue to be marginalized
in childcare. By locating the discussions within
the perceived eects of COVID-19 and childcare
environment, we reveal the continuities in the strategic
forgetting of the resilience of Africa’s childcare systems.
In the second part of the chapter, we argue for
the need to focus on the margins where children’s
quotidian experiences of early childhood are
located. We therefore explore how diverse research
at the margins have engaged the coloniality of
the dominant ECD knowledge that has relied on
“unthinking” the local ways of doing and working and
imagining Africa’s valued ways of childcare. We draw
our research on leveraging Indigenous knowledge
for ECD in Kenya and Uganda, to argue that such
coloniality frame the margins as decient, broken
spaces, and caregivers and children’s practices are
thus devalued, ignored or pathologized and targeted
for correction or redress. We also provide examples
of eorts to support processes and interventions that
judiciously incorporate local knowledge and practice
into ECD interventions. Such programmes not only
acknowledge the complementarity and synergies
that obtain when we draw from the margins, but
also speak back to the epistemic inequalities and
decit-based lens in ECD funding and programming.
We conclude by moving forward again within the
context of COVID-19 to explore the implications of the
margins for the regenerative resilience of communities
in Africa, making suggestions for what the vitality
of the margins mean for the evolving issues around
ECD within the context of COVID-19 in Africa.
Decolonizing ECD: The need for
conviviality in knowledge production
We have continued to witness specic sensibilities
of “strategic forgetting” of the role of the peripheries
and margins including African families and
communities, who have used local knowledge
and other forms of mutuality to navigate various
crises and to ensure growth and development of
children. Indeed, the contention by Pence and
Nsamenang (2008), that ECD practice in Africa is
based on extrapolated evidence, is still valid.
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The decade has witnessed vibrant debates and
conversations around the need to continue engaging
with the dominant narrative in ECD. A growing
number of African scholars and practitioners have
continued to counter by pushing back on the
discourse of the margins as under-resourced and
as decient (Ebrahim et al., 2018; Ngutuku, 2021;
Nyamnjoh, 2012). For example, there has been
sustained engagement with the fragmentary
ECD system, and with learning programmes for
children over 3 which lack creative stimulation and
play, promoting what researchers have termed
“schoolication” of early education (Choi, 2006;
Moss, 2013), often in the ocial language (e.g.,
“English only” instruction). Such programmes are
narrowly focused on readying children for formal
schooling success via didactic learning methods,
often in fee-paying programmes that also raise equity
concerns (Marfo, 2011; Moss, 2013). Such a narrow
focus means that young children have continued
to be measured against a decit model and a set of
“one size ts all standards of “readiness” (Serpell and
Nsamenang, 2015; Whitebread and Bingham, 2011).
Scholars have argued for a need to shift away
from the constricted notions of learning to more
expansive contextual conceptions at the margins.
These encompass a range of developmental
milestones and stimulation strategies to promote
ne and gross physical motor competencies
incorporating infant body massage as a crucial
starting point. Additionally, they include contextual
measures of intelligence which blend cognitive
alacrity and social responsibility embedded in the
Indigenous everyday curriculum through learning
by doing (Barry and Zeitlin, 2011; Okwany et al.,
2011; Serpell, 2011; Serpell and Mukela, 2019; Serpell
and Nsamenang, 2015). Such conversations were
central at the Fourth African International ECD
Conference that was held in Dakar, Senegal, in 2009,
where 89% of attendees comprised scholars and
practitioners from Africa. In one of the panels, Africa’s
triple ECD heritage of Indigenous, Islamic-Arabic
and Western-Christian was seen as a pathway for
universalizing ECD. Secondly, there was a showcase
of innovative programmes on the role of Indigenous
knowledge in universalizing care (ADEA, 2009). Such
conversations have continued and were also taken
up more recently in 2018 at AfECN’s ECD network
conference on early childhood, where stakeholders
deliberated on ECD in line with aspirations of the
African Union’s agenda 2063 (AfECN, 2018).
Engaging narratives of HIV/AIDS as a
shock in the care environment
We have continued to witness the devastating eects
of HIV/AIDS, termed as one of the most signicant
crises of African childhoods in the twentieth century.
While easier access to antiretroviral drugs is providing
relief from some of the vulnerabilities witnessed
in the last two decades, structural constraints
in social services, including weaker health-care
systems and impacts on the care ecology, are still
evident (Okwany and Ngutuku, 2018). Indeed, our
work and research reveal the continent’s persistent
experience and contestation from early in the
millennium, making the need for critical voices all
the more pressing. This period was marked by a
discourse of Childhood in Crisis, or what Norman
calls a representation of a crisis of generation
(2016, p. 227-228). She argues that with “increasing
globalization and politicization of conceptualizations
of childhood,” the language of children in crisis
that was used in the North as from 1970s became
common in the Global South, inuenced especially
by child development attachment theories within
the context of parental loss (Norman, 2016). Indeed,
we continue to see the vestiges of the discourses
that marginalize alternative conceptualizations of
not only the needs but also capacities of families
to care for children, as well as their quotidian
experiences of childcare. Such discourses are not
innocent, and they have implications for childcare.
Within the context of HIV/AIDS as a shock in the
care ecology, there were two contrasting theses on
childcaregiving: the social rupture and the social
resilience theories. The social rupture theory revolved
around moral panics which held that the traditional
social safety-net system was overstretched, eroded,
and ruptured by the strain of AIDS and thus unable
to cope with the burden of caring for AIDS-aected
children (Chirwa, 2002; Kidman et al., 2007; The Joint
United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS [UNAIDS],
2004). This propelled the promotion of external
interventions, including orphanages bypassing local
knowledge and capacity. The social resilience theory
countered this by asserting that traditional social care
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arrangements are resilient and have broad adaptive
capacities that evolve and nd ways to cope with
the AIDS crisis as they always have in response to
other crises (Abebe, 2010; Abebe and Aase, 2007;
Mathambo and Gibbs, 2009). While a raft of studies
commissioned by international actors used statistics
to justify a sense of urgency in responding to the
crisis, another set of studies under the Joint Learning
Initiative on Children Aected by AIDS (JLICA) in
eastern and southern Africa revealed a dierent story:
despite the considerable external funding targeting
AIDS-aected children, funds bypassed over 90% of
vulnerable children, who were actually protected
in familiar and enriching family and social care
arrangements (JLICA, 2009). It is thus important to
think of the resilience of the safety net and household
capacity as occurring on a continuum, with some
families being able to cope economically and others
socially – the latter lacking the economic wherewithal
to cope materially (Mathambo and Gibbs, 2009).
This highlights the imperative of strengthening
the adaptive capacity of households and the
care system and understanding the contextually
situated nature of these systems. In her research in
western Kenya, Ngutuku (2020) revealed that the
categories of households aected by HIV/AIDS and
other vulnerabilities are not only uid but are also
complex, changing based on the support children
are receiving either from the extended families, the
state, or by the children’s agency in seeking support
from others including schools. She supports the
view about the changes in such families brought
on by non-state social protection programmes with
the evidence that children are increasingly being
placed with distant families in contexts where
programmes are providing support to vulnerable
children. While such shifts can be explained by the
targeting and exceptionalism of the government
and non-state programmes or the ingenuity of the
children, her ndings reveal that for many of these
vulnerable children, this represents a specic agency
at the margins in order to meet legitimate needs,
but not just targeting the largesse of donor funds.
COVID-19 and its impacts on childcare
The crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, arrived
in this troubled world, produced further challenges by
devastating health systems and other eects. While
the story is still evolving, many theorize that part of
the explanation why the African region has been the
least devastated is linked to Africa’s experience with
other pandemics and natural disasters, including
HIV and other related comorbidities (Wyngaard and
Whiteside, 2021). What is becoming clear, however,
is that COVID-19 layered an additional blanket of
challenges and interrelated realities for children
in Africa who have borne the brunt of the eects,
including general loss, loss of caregiver livelihoods,
and a mounting sense of the existential crisis
signicantly compromising the childcare ecology.
The current moment is also a reminder that a
sense of loss has been a characteristic of African
countries. Indeed, Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2020, p. 372),
a South African decolonial scholar, has noted that
what everyone is going through now is what
Africa has been going through for more than 500
years, with Africans seen as having a “head start”
in managing large scale crises like conict, natural
disasters, and pandemics, including HIV/AIDS.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we
continue to witness a similar marginalization of
voices and capacities at the margins. For example,
in reference to the marginalization of voices from
the Global South Lenhardt (2021) argues:
there is a risk of crowding out locally generated
ideas, resourcing, and innovations. Curtailing
local knowledge and experience and meaningful
participation of aected communities in the response
risks a return to old colonial models that have shaped
humanitarian and development practice. (p. 4)
Similarly, Ndlovu-Gatsheni notes that despite the
memory of dealing with the crisis, “there is reluctance
to tap into this history, experience, and knowledge
about responding to the COVID-19 pandemic” (2020, p.
370). He argues for the need to draw from endogenous
knowledge and epistemologies of the global
south. We concur and note that this is particularly
critical for early childhood care and development
where the voice of caregivers and children is often
marginalized. In the second part of the chapter, we
start o by focusing on research at the margins.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
ECD research at the margins
In this section we showcase the importance of
research at the margins by drawing from our research
and other eorts in enhancing ECD research and
capacity in the region. First, we draw from our
year-long research in Kenya and Uganda on the role
of knowledge in childcare in Africa. This research
was part of our eorts in destabilizing the single
narrative of ECD and in engaging the exclusion and
marginalization of the diversity of epistemological
perspectives at the margins by the dominant narrative.
We were inspired by others, like Marfo (2011, p.108),
who propose a need for grounded conceptual
frameworks and multiple methods in ECD research
that enables attention to contextual dierences
and complexities. This includes methodologies of
participation that locate caregivers and children as
speaking subjects to challenge power dynamics
in relation to who produces what knowledge
about whom (Okwany and Ebrahim, 2015).
The study examined the role of local ways of knowing
in early childhood education and care among
several communities in Kenya and Uganda. We
used a generative participatory research approach,
which examined shifts, changes, and the dynamics
of childcare-giving contextually and over time
with three generations of caregivers (Okwany et
al., 2011). By using transformative participatory
methods designed to involve communities in data
collection while simultaneously engaging them in
dialogue, the study went beyond data mining to a
perspective where local communities participated
as users, creators, and contributors of knowledge.
The ndings revealed the uidity and hybridity
of caregiving at the margins, highlighting how
communities draw upon their ways of knowing
and doing to care for their children. These included
socialization strategies and diverse methods
of scaolding children including proverbs,
songs, and games. They also include culturally
responsive conceptions of child rights and child
protection, as well as a resilient social protection
system rooted in reciprocity, mutuality, and social
justice (Okwany et al., 2011). This bolsters the
assertion by Nsamenang (2008) that while African
approaches to ECD are withering, nowhere have
they entirely disappeared; rather, they have shown
unusual resilience in the face of extraordinary
measures to suppress them into extinction.
The absence of children’s voices, especially very
young ones, in research as well as in programmes is
intensied for children who are living in poverty and
other forms of marginalization. Okwany and Ebrahim
(2018) emphasize the need for research that highlights
how young children know their world, how adults
listen to “children’s hundred languages,” and how
their voices are accessed and valued for informing
policy and practice. Ngutuku (2020) responded to
this challenge through her ethnographic study of
children’s lived experience of poverty and vulnerability
in Kenya. She used an innovative methodology
that she called “listening softly” to children’s voices,
where she privileged both caregivers and children
working with older cohorts of children as well as
young children in ECD centres, visiting them at home
to get their perspectives on their lived experience.
Using a variety of methods like go-along interviews,
photo narratives, drawings as well as what she
calls emergent methods, where voice was seen as
developing in subsequent encounters, she engaged
children’s voice as silence, both the absence of
speech as well as whole-body listening including
body language. She argues that when we do not
ask children their perspectives, we tend to rely
on the voices of those in power or those who
control resources. Her research provides important
reexive questions including: what voice, whose
voice, under what conditions was the voice given
and in what ways is it mediated by others?
The physical and symbolic space of the margins
serve as a resource for local knowledge, knowledge
production, and for addressing structural inequalities,
thus providing a strong foundation for anchoring
ECD interventions. However, the weak ECD
research capacity in Africa means that Indigenous
knowledge production will continue to be on the
periphery of the mainstream knowledge economy
(Okwany and Ebrahim, 2015). We have responded
to the constrained research capacity in the region
generally and specically in ECD by supporting the
privileging of epistemic diversity. This has included
building alliances with scholars in the region to
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
nurture and mentor researchers to amplify African
voices and anchor their practice and writing in
contextual realities and situated accounts.
The Council for the Development of Social Science
Research in Africa (CODESRIA) stands out as a
pan-African scholarly network keen on promoting
the production and consumption of knowledge
informed by African perspectives and epistemologies
(Nyamnjoh, 2012, p. 140). In 2015, the rst ever
CODESRIA Child and Youth Institute focusing on
children 0-3 years old in the region was held.23
The institute provided space to 15 scholars from
South, East, West, and Central Africa to interrogate,
investigate, and innovate through reexive and
responsive situated ECD research at the margins.
Through a range of topics, the authors show that
the margins are an ambiguous space of struggle
while also oering perspectives for liberatory
thought and perspectives of young children and
caregivers in diverse spaces in Africa. The outcome
of the institute is the edited volume, Ebrahim et
al. (2018) “Early Childhood Care and Education at
the Margins: African Perspectives on Birth to Three.”
The volume is a testimony to the importance of
building a cadre of scholars in the region who can
engage within and against dominant accounts of
childcare issues and epistemic injustice through
their writing, practice, and knowledge activism.24
Our research collaborations are rooted in and
extend such initiatives, as we concur with the call
by Nyamnjoh (2012, p. 148) of building “a critical
mass of scholars and non-scholars networking
and working together strategically towards
achieving the valorization of marginalized humanity
and the creative diversity of being African.”
Showcasing innovative practice:
leveraging local knowledge for childcare
We have continued to respond to the epistemic
injustice in ECD knowledge production in our work
by foregrounding situated and contextual accounts of
children and caregivers and writing ourselves as key
23 2015 CODESRIA Child and Youth Institute titled – “African Perspectives of Early Childhood Care and Education: Theory, Discourse, Policy and
Practice for Children from Birth to 3 Years.”
24
Publishing the volume as part of the European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA) research monograph series was
intentional on the part of the rst two editors (Hasina Ebrahim and Auma Okwany), who were also the Institute’s co-directors. This location
was their endeavour to create multivocality and dialogue between epistemologies of the North and the South.
actors in childcare knowledge production in Africa
(Ngutuku, 2018; Okwany and Ebrahim, 2015; Okwany
and Ebrahim, 2018), to pilot specic interventions
that engage with the dominant. Here we showcase
two such interventions, the ECD learning community
on Indigenous knowledge in eastern Africa and the
conscientization of village health teams in Uganda,
drawing lessons for successfully working within the
framework of local knowledge in ECD programmes.
The ECD learning community on Indigenous
knowledge in eastern Africa
In 2009-2012, diverse non-state actors in ECD from
Kenya and Uganda came together to form an ECD
learning community, supported by the Bernard
Van Leer foundation. The learning community
was comprised of actors that were working with
communities in Kenya and Uganda to incorporate
local knowledge and practices and at the same time
to acknowledge the complementariness and the
synergies obtained in enhancing childcare. This was
after a successful exchange visit to Durban, South
Africa, in 2008 where dierent partners exchanged
perspectives on working within a framework of
Indigenous knowledge. They started from the
premise that due to HIV/AIDS the care context was
not ruptured and though stretched was adaptive
and resilient. Local resources and knowledge were
the much-needed cushion in such compromised
care environments. This coming together itself
was important because it enabled participants to
showcase their best practice in working with children
and families within the framework of Indigenous
knowledge. From a policy perspective, the learning
community was a space where local interventions
could inuence the development agenda by placing
the power back into the hands of communities.
The actors carried out exchange visits as well as
holding quarterly meetings in both countries to share
perspectives. They also implemented diverse and
integrated services that were grounded in people’s
realities, knowledge, and practices and that recognized
the important role parents and caregivers play in
the care environment. These actions that were very
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
successful in strengthening the care environment were
also showcased at the Fourth African International ECD
Conference in Dakar, Senegal, in 2009 (see Chapter 5).
Some of the innovative actions included enacting
by-laws around child protection, reclaiming and
adapting traditional preservation strategies to
preserve and store food during seasons of plenty.
Some of the community groups would then buy and
sell the food to caregivers at a reduced cost. Other
interventions included using traditional play materials
in ECD centres, as well as Indigenous armbands
for growth monitoring, mobilizing grandmothers
to tell stories at the ECD centres, among others. In
western Kenya, where HIV/AIDS as a shock in the
care context had intensied vulnerabilities, one
organization worked with communities to turn loss
into something positive by refurbishing houses left
vacant after the owners had died and turning them
into community-based ECD centres. The learning
community itself was also a space where dierent
actors engaged grounded and reexive modes of
knowing within communities, for re-centring local
and Indigenous resources that have been ignored in
discussions about the challenges facing communities.
Conscientization of village health teams in
Uganda
Community health workers and other local volunteers
are key in enhancing the childcare environment at
the margins. In a context where the state is limited
in terms of providing healthcare and other services
to children, these grassroot actors play an important
role. Indeed, in Uganda, where healthcare is organized
around administrative units (Rudrum, 2016, p. 253),
Health Centre I (HCI) correspond to the village level
and is composed solely of Village Health Team
(VHT ) members. These are volunteer lay community
members who disseminate basic health information,
liaise with formal health workers to coordinate
outreach, and deliver drugs. VHTs are a critical local
resource embedded in everyday community routines
and thus provide a pathway to both strengthen
avenues for promoting early childhood learning
specically, as well as improving the physical and
social environments in which childcare takes place.
Even though VHTs are based in the community,
our interactions in Uganda revealed that they were
working more as mainstream health workers and were
not tapping into local knowledge in their work around
prevention of violence against children, strengthening
the care environment as well as in enhancing the
quality of early learning. The intervention involved
working to conscientize VHTs in three districts in Kumi,
Apac and Nakapiripirit in Uganda. Some of the VHTs
had been involved in ECD programmes with other
international organizations but each actor had their
own denition of ECD. This highlights the problem of
scripted international programmes where each actor
may have their own way of understanding ECD.
VHT members were conscientized to engage parents/
caregivers and the network of siblings, peers/
friends, and neighbours in a child’s micro-context
in the processes of horizontal asset-based learning
including holding dialogue on childcare from their
own and each other’s experiences. The intervention
encouraged them to work with communities to
not only surface, but also appreciate their tacit
knowledge and resources in early learning and
stimulation while also addressing value systems and
attitudes, challenge received wisdom and create
awareness. We also engaged them on community-
based approaches for addressing violence against
young children and women, holding community
conversations, and other themes co-constructed by
the communities. VHTS also shared knowledge on
community/local based indicators of improved child
welfare and in identifying local resources for childcare.
To ensure quality interface between the conscientized
communities and district level leaders on ECD,
we also held dialogues with district sta in each
district at the sub county and parish levels.
This also enabled the VHTs to continue having
vertical conversations with state leaders.
Takeaways
These two initiatives highlight the need for a focus
on the margins with the interventions registering
positive changes for children and communities.
Caregivers reported increased condence in childcare,
children in ECD centres became more condent
and quality of learning improved. For instance, one
of the community groups in Uganda that had been
reporting cases of child abuse to one of the partners
stopped reporting because they had found ways
of dealing with violence against their children.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Despite the success of such programmes, eorts
to anchor ECD programmes in local knowledge
systems continue to face challenges brought about
by the prevalence of dominant methods used in
measuring what works and what can be taken to
scale (Urban, 2014; Yánez, 2011) and to demonstrate
returns in investments (Penn, 2012). While these are
valid issues, the question becomes who decides what
is seen as working and using whose parameters?
This is consistent with the assertion by Pence and
Nsamenang (2008, p. 4) that: “in the twenty-rst
century the most powerful proponents of ECD are not
parents, care providers/teachers, or child development
specialists but economists.” Indeed, Urban (2014) has
noted that asking “what works?” is a common tool
used in ECD policy governance. He argues that asking
is akin to comparing complex and messy issues of
dierent worlds of dierently located children. This
is worse if what works is for replication because he
notes that not only does this obscure incomparable
knowledge, but also the complexity at the margins is
often seen as a threat to replicable ways of knowing
established through research or interventions which
receive attention and get funded (Urban, 2014).
The validity of replicable frameworks draws from the
assumption that interventions working within the
framework of local knowledge must be validated
and their viability assessed through the lens of
mainstream child development knowledge. Within
such imaginaries, programmes seen as universal are
transported wholesale to another context (Pence and
Nsamenang, 2008, p. 2). Such programmes also rely
on data gathering processes that privilege specic
indicators of progress, often seen as linear change.
They argue that such thinking in child development
is often oblivious of the alternative notions of what is
often seen as progress. Ngutuku (2018; 2020) argues
that the margins themselves are messy, complex, and
idiosyncratic and relying on predetermined maps of
what works in dierent contexts may not help. While
replicating interventions that draw on local knowledge
is possible; we argue that we should be “widely
awake” (Fels, 2012, p. 54) to see how Indigenous
knowledge in specic contexts works dierently.
The vitality of the margins and young
children within the context of COVID-19
In this nal section, we explore what the vitality
of the margins, including the need to listen to
children’s voices, mean for the evolving issues around
COVID-19 and ECD in Africa. This is because the
eects of emergencies are often intensied for the
youngest children. Walsh (2020) argues that young
people are dependent on adults for resilience, and
caregiver stress aects this resilience. Shah (2016)
adds that emergencies aggravate toxic stress and
when children receive care in the form of nurturing
caregivers, access to early learning, nutritious food
and immunizations during emergencies, their
optimal growth and development is enhanced.
COVID-19 aected and continues to aect young
children in various ways, intensifying vulnerabilities
and compromising their wellbeing. A report by
Joining Forces for Africa (2021) carried out in ve
African countries revealed that during the lockdowns,
65% of children in Kenya reported increased physical
violence. Children in all the countries also reported
various forms of emotional violence including
being shouted at, cursed out, and having sexual or
gender-based violence directed at them. School
closures aected children’s routines, especially for
children with disabilities and children in vulnerable
contexts, contributing to an increase in child labour.
We note, however, that there has been a
disproportionate focus on how children were
aected by COVID-19, with an overemphasis on
school closures and on the “crisis of lost learning” and
other survival issues (OECD, 2021). The social and
cultural psychological issues as well as the resilience
of communities and the way the communities at
the margins have leveraged resources in caring
for and protecting their children has received less
attention. The disproportionate focus on health and
mainstream schooling aspects of the pandemic
has also meant that perspectives of children at the
margins, who are located further down the hierarchy
of power, also received less attention, and especially
how the pandemic has aected their health and
overall well-being from their perspectives.
Our research in Tanzania in 2020, even though done
with older children 10-18 years, on young people’s
perception of COVID-19 reveals that there is a need to
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
listen to the voice of children in not only addressing
the pandemic but also in understanding the various
meanings children give to the pandemic, including
the health messages (International Institute of
Social Studies [ISS], 2020; Ngutuku, 2020). There is
also a need to understand how the pandemic has
aected various aspects of well-being, including
their relationships with others and the environment,
which is a key aspect of the childcare environment.
For example, young people talked about the impact
of the pandemic on their well-being as well as
on relationships with their parents and younger
siblings. They noted their daily anxiety early in the
pandemic when suddenly there was no “milk for the
small baby” and when their parent/caregivers could
no longer go to work and provide for them. While
some authors have argued that children’s voices
rarely jump scales and is mostly concerned with
issues in their immediate environment (Ansell, 2009),
children connected their experience to the role of
the political class including relationships between
governments. Some interpreted the closure of the
border between Kenya and Tanzania, which aected
the livelihood of their caregivers who worked at the
border, as selshness by the countries who decided
to close themselves in. One child noted, “my father
used to work across the border, but now he cannot
because Kenya has decided to close itself in. There is
no peace in my home between my parents who can
longer meet our needs” (ISS, 2020; Ngutuku, 2020).
Our research also shows the imperative of going
beyond passing health messages to children, to
locating the pandemic in terms of its eects on the
dierent ways in which young people make sense of
the world. For example, children interpreted the health
messages in dierent ways including connecting
the requirement not to greet each other or visit
their elderly grandmothers as a breakdown in social
relationships which they saw as forms of loss of the
traditional way of life that were passed on during
socialization. Inability to go to church led to feelings of
emptiness and loss of the social fabric, which was built
on the concept of Ujamaa (community). It is therefore
important to locate the health messages not only in
people’s lived ways but also in children’s experience.
In addition to aecting care at home, young people
also noted that they could no longer play in the
open spaces in the villages. Early on during our work
with the same children, in understanding young
people’s perception of health relationships they had
noted that the environment plays a major role in the
ecology of their care as well as in healthy relationships
(ISS, 2019). When the home environment was not
conducive due to violence by caregivers, they would
take solace outside under the trees or in the bush
or in community playgrounds. Since this was not
possible due to the pandemic, they noted that they
could not play because “the disease is everywhere.”
The concept of the disease being everywhere
was not just about the spaces as infected but was
reective of how the pandemic had suused various
aspects of the lives of children at the margins.
While staying at home enabled young people to
learn new skills like cooking, some expressed anxiety
that they were suddenly expected to take care of the
young ones and yet they had not been socialized to
do that by their parents. In their research in Rakai in
Uganda, Kendrick and Kakuru (2012) revealed that
for children orphaned due to HIV/AIDS siblings play
an important role in caring for younger children. This
reveals the need to “responsibilise” children from a very
young age and to listen to their perspectives. Indeed,
our research with young people in Tanzania revealed
that the isolation earlier on during the pandemic
made them more committed in the future to take
good care of their grandparents and to do what they
called being close to one another (Ngutuku, 2020).
A key success strategy embedded in local experience
that emerged from the region as eective in
responding to the pandemic was community
structures as a critical resource at the margins.
Senegal’s success in keeping infection rates low
is attributed to several interrelated actions. These
include drawing on their experience battling other
outbreaks including the 2014 Ebola epidemic
and HIV/AIDS; utilizing eectively the “chain of
solidarity” – a robust community system of active
front-line workers, local leaders, and health workers
(communicating testing and mask mandates,
contact tracing, etc.) who bolstered the public health
response from the bottom up (Leo and Winn, 2020).
In Eritrea, wardens were a key community structure
in identifying those who needed food rations,
passing information as well as other containment
measures. This local governance system called “baito”
is embedded in customary law (Wakiaga, 2020).
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
These successful examples highlight the importance
of a bottom-up approach of evidence-building to
inform action for change pointing to the need to
make visible forms of local knowledge and resources
that that have been invisible, marginalized, ignored.
Conclusion
Advancing into post-pandemic times requires that
we make the margins matter by refocusing on and
mobilizing diverse assets from the margins to address
challenges and strengthen resilient supportive
childcare systems. The starting point is to understand
children’s and caregivers” lived experience of the
pandemic. As our research in Tanzania and other
similar experiences, including emergencies, conict,
and diseases, shows, crises not only aect childcare
environments but also children’s perceptions of
relationships within their local and far-removed
environments. This points to a need to go beyond
messages for containment of the disease to listening
to the substantive voice of children. For example,
the pandemic has opened spaces for us to inculcate
notions of resilience into children but also bring in
new social processes and help redene our boundaries
of inclusion and social identity in ways that inuence
our ability to care for children. The pandemic is an
opportunity to reformulate our relations with children
in terms of listening to their perspectives, but also the
dierent ways in which issues aect and change them.
Additionally, working with communities will require
that we go beyond what is happening on the ground
to ensuring that the innovative practices on the
ground gain traction at the national and international
levels. This requires engaging in deeper reexivity
on what it really means to unsung diverse actors
working to address the childcare challenges at the
margins within the context of the pandemic. In
some contexts, these actors are seen as the last mile
in service provision. However, we argue that where
the role of the state in enhancing the well-being of
children is limited, and as the examples here have
shown, these actors ought to be seen as the rst mile.
The pandemic has also shown us the value of
hope within the context of the unknowns. Walsh
(2020, p.906) argues that hope is key during
times of crisis and hope fuels energies and eorts
to cope and rebuild lives. She notes that a crisis
can be a wake-up call, showing the urgency of
what matters and for whom it matters (Walsh,
2020, p. 907). The crisis shows the urgency of
valorizing the margins to strengthen ECD.
Taking this hope beyond individual children and
families, we see a dierent kind of hope. If indeed we
must name our present moment “a small window
of hope” for our children, as Mbembe (2019, p. 2)
exhorted us, then we must take this hope from the
resilience of Africa in caring for her children. The
world can learn from African cultures that have
endured losses at the hands of colonial and post-
colonial projects and survived extreme experiences
of loss. We should also learn from the margins in
responding to this and similar crises by drawing
on our memory and resources. We must therefore
continue to question the unthinking of African
ways of knowing and caring for her children.
Finally, we must continue to “untell” the dominant
tales of ECD and remember our valued ways
of knowing and working with children and
strengthening childcare environments at the margins.
This remembering will help us not only to create
ssures in the dominant knowledge around ECD
in Africa but will also enable us to deal with the
challenges of our moment in terms of childcare.
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learning_lessons_from_scaling_up
SECTION 5
ECD/EDC in francophone
Africa
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Introduction
Oumar Barry
The countries of French-speaking Black Africa
cover the African countries located south of the
Sahara Desert. These countries are concentrated
more particularly in West Africa, share French as an
ocial language, and are former French colonies,
except the specic cases of Togo and Cameroon,
which were placed under French protectorate at
the end of the First World War. Although these
countries have varying political, economic, and social
development experiences, they face more or less
similar challenges with regard to socioeconomic
issues and human capital development.
The Declaration on Education for All by 2030 adopted
at the Incheon Conference in May 2015 recommended
to all countries of the world that by 2030 all girls and
boys have access to early childhood development and
care activities and quality preschool education that
prepares them for primary education (UNESCO et al.,
2015). The minimum requirement is to oer at least
one year of free and compulsory quality pre-primary
education, provided by well-trained educators.
Sub-Saharan Africa is currently the region of the
world furthest from this ambitious goal. In fact, the
rate of access to early childhood education does
not exceed 10-15% of the children concerned with
a few exceptions – Benin and Cameroon have
made signicant jumps with gross pre-schooling
rates rising from 6% in 2005 to nearly 24% in 2015
in Benin and from 18% in 2005 to 40% in 2015 in
Cameroon (Institute for Statistics, n.d.). In Mali, in
2014, the net preschool rate was 3.95%; for the same
year in Burkina Faso we nd a similar rate of 3.83%;
while in Togo it is 15.04% (Institute for Statistics,
n.d.). In Senegal, this rate today represents 16.3%
(ANPECTP, 2020). These ranges, and the relatively
low levels even in the highest-level countries of
francophone Africa, suggest the need to consider
broadly the quite low uptake of EDC/ECD25 in many
countries as well as conditions that have promoted
higher levels in other countries, which could lead to
25 The acronym for ECD in French is EDC.
advances across the board for francophone Africa. The
following section identies both reasons justifying
the need for EDC/ECD services in francophone
Africa and the challenges facing their realization.
Child development and social
development
The period of infancy is particularly crucial for a
child’s motor, cognitive, and social development.
It constitutes the starting point on which learning
and subsequent stages of life can be built (Marfo,
2011). Traditional African societies oer young
children opportunities for harmonious cognitive
and emotional development, including the
adage “it takes a village to raise a child” which
emphasizes education as a collective responsibility
of the community. Nevertheless, we note that
contemporary African societies have urbanized
rapidly. They experience a more or less accentuated
socioeconomic development process and experience
notable transitions in terms of their values and
family structures which are becoming nuclear,
particularly in urban areas, where the population
is increasing very rapidly (Garcia, et al., 2008).
It is therefore crucial to develop early childhood
education, care, and development (EDC/ECD) in order
to support this irreversible transition. In this regard, it is
important to underline the two central reasons which
encourage the development of the capacity to care
for young children: to promote a vision supportive
of the development of the child and to oer women
opportunities for contemporary socio-economic and
professional integration. Indeed, the evidence supports
that bringing children together in a good quality early
childhood care and education centre is conducive
to the implementation of actions promoting their
diet and health (Dimakos et al., n.d.). Canteens,
vaccination campaigns and parenting education are
all the more necessary when children come from the
most vulnerable groups (Loomis and Akkari, 2012).
Many young mothers aspire to a professional activity
in the formal or informal sectors. Being able to
count on a safe place of reception for their children
is conducive to the realization of this right to work.
Another reason well documented by scientic
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
research is the contribution of early childhood care
and education to successful school and professional
trajectories. African societies aspire to improve the
skills and qualications of young people and adults;
investing in early childhood is a commitment for the
future and for development (Naudeau et al., 2011).
Structural challenges
Societies and governments in francophone Africa
face signicant structural challenges slowing the
desired expansion of early childhood education,
care, and development (EDC/ECD). First, it should be
remembered that planning for care and education is
rst and foremost a prioritization of multiple needs
and priorities between dierent government sectors.
As the public authorities have limited resources, the
EDC/ECD sector still appears to be the poor relation
when it comes to nancing government actions.
Added to this is the institutional vagueness concerning
the supervision of the sector which is often tossed
about between dierent ministries including:
education, social aairs, family, health, and others.
Second, in all the countries of francophone Africa,
we observe a predominance of the private sector
and a strong diversity in the provision of EDC/ECD
services. For example, in 2018 the private sector
represented more than 30% of such services in Niger,
and in Senegal for the same year approximately 50%;
regarding the percentage of children enrolled in a
private pre-primary school, in 2018 for these same
countries one nds 28.6% in Niger and 51% in Senegal
(CONFEMEN, 2018). Such high percentages raise the
question of the capacity of French-speaking African
states to regulate the early childhood sector and to
support its development. As for the public sector, it
is sometimes only public in name since families and
communities are often called upon to pay school fees
and educator salaries for those EDC/ECD services.
Third, in the general context of the degradation
of the professions related to education and
teaching, the early childhood sector rarely oers
initial or continuing training worthy of the name.
However, caring for young children is a demanding
profession in terms of skills and knowledge. The
danger that threatens the expansion of the sector
in francophone Africa is to consider that being an
early childhood educator is within the reach of any
young woman with a few years of schooling.
Fourth, the infrastructure of early childhood centres
in francophone Africa often leaves much to be
desired. Due to the fragility of younger children,
special attention must be paid to the quality of
the environment and infrastructure. Safety and
health standards are rarely observed (Akkari et al.,
2016). Once again, the role of public authorities
is crucial in terms of regulation and control.
Fifth, although it is believed that all services should
be concerned with their adaptation to African
and local cultures, the case of the early childhood
care and education sector is arguably particularly
important in this regard given its foundational
nature. In particular, what is at stake during early
childhood is the encounter between family beliefs,
ancestral cultural practices and the modernity
brought about by the school form. However,
in francophone Africa, the school form is still
sometimes considered as an exogenous institution
inherited from colonization and suers from a lack
of cultural resonance even if the involvement of
parents and communities in certain categories
of structures is increasing (CONFEMEN, 2018).
Forms of EDC/ECD services
Francophone Africa is still looking for ways to
better operationalize the development of early
childhood care and education. What modalities
should be given priority and what types of funding
should be provided? An observer of programmes
welcoming young children in French-speaking
Africa can easily see a multitude of institutions
and forms. While recognizing the existence of a
continuum and hybrid forms, it appears that the
structures welcoming young children in francophone
Africa are divided between two poles: a rst pole
linked to the school form and a second pole
linked to family socialization and community.
The rst pole groups together early childhood
education programmes related to the school form.
This can be seen in the titles of the structures:
preschool, pre-primary, nursery school. The main
objective of the structures belonging to this pole
is to prepare and contribute to primary schooling
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
by promoting school readiness. However, by
emphasizing such early childhood education, these
structures can prevent children from developing at
their own pace and can also constitute a cultural
break with the students” background. Preschool
education as a lead into primary education can also
be seen by some parents as having advantages:
it introduces children whose culture is far from
school to the school’s rules and can thus reduce
the risk of repeating a year. Such programmes may
be interpreted dierently by dierent parents – as
an advantage, or as a disadvantage for their child.
The second pole brings together forms of preschool
education that look to the family, the community,
and the socio-cultural environment of children. These
forms favour the development of children and their
socialization while ensuring a certain continuity
with parental education. Here too, the underlying
educational philosophy is found in the names
employed, such as the Centre for the Awakening
and Development of the Child, Case des Tout-Petits
(toddler’s hut), community centres with diverse
names, and Daara or Madrasa (Koranic school). For
parents, this pole does not represent educational
modernity, but it has the advantage of being
accessible to a great many families and at a reasonable
cost. Advantages of the forms grouped under this
second pole is that they oer a more contextualized
transition between family and primary school and
the mobilization of families is more plausible.
These two poles clearly stand out in terms of
their potential audiences. The rst pole welcomes
children from privileged categories while the second
pole welcomes the most fortunate vulnerable
children because they benet from early childhood
education. We can also see dierent practices in
terms of the languages used. The rst pole is more
inclined to use the ocial language of instruction
(French), which is often dierent from the mother
tongue. Even if we notice in many structures that
the introduction of the language of instruction is
carried out gradually by using the mother tongue
as a medium (as is currently the case in Senegal).
The second pole uses mother tongues, although
the use of Arabic is also increasingly common.
It seems useful not to set the two poles in opposition
but to seek to build on their respective advantages
in order to promote structures for the provision of
early childhood care and education adapted to the
context of francophone Africa. In addition, many
structures integrate religious training into their
programme in order to meet strong parental demand.
Indeed, as is the case in many French-speaking
African countries (Senegal, Mali, Burkina, Cameroon,
Djibouti, etc.), religious education is extremely
valued by society because communities consider it
important to acquire certain values from an early age.
In addition to the two forms, there are possibilities
for hybrid models mobilizing both the community
and the educational resources and institutions of
the State. In such an approach, the community
could rst of all identify an existing need with
regard to the reception of young children and then
mobilize itself to nd a partner willing to support
the project (creation of infrastructure, care and
educational material, support for compensation of
sta). The land on which the infrastructure is built
that could then be ceded by the community, with
the State having a supervisory and support role in
terms of continuing education for educational sta.
This model combines care and the acquisition of
school readiness skills aimed at preparing for entry
into primary school while ensuring respect for
the stages specic to the development of young
children. It provides a framework for socialization
while ensuring continuity with parental education.
Today, some countries are integrating a rst year of
pre-primary education in schools, which makes it a
strategic option (in the case of Djibouti, for example),
in line with the Incheon Declaration. The objective is
to legitimize this educational stage with parents and
to prepare children for entry into primary school. It
sounds like a good initiative, but it is crucial that this
education is truly free. This way more parents will seek
preschool for their children because they will not
be discouraged by costs that are too heavy for their
household. However, integrating a preschool class
into a primary school does raise certain questions.
For example, if the preschool class has a play area
that is in common with the older children, there
are certain risks, leaving scheduling, or fencing, as
options to consider. A similar question may arise
from shared toileting facilities (Akkari et al., 2016).
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Expand access to EDC/ECD without
sacricing quality
It is essential that early childhood policies promote
equity and accessibility to care and preschool
education for all, while at the same time addressing
issues of quality and culture (Pence and Marfo,
2008). Only then can the benets attributed
to early childhood care and education be truly
realized. What should be avoided at all costs is
trading access at the expense of quality. In other
words, to give oneself the illusion of achieving
international quantitative goals while sacricing
quality. This is why it is important to ensure the
following four conditions (CONFEMEN, 2018):
1. Adopt a holistic approach to the child through
including food, protection, health, and education.
2. Build from local cultural practices of EDC/ECD.
3. Diversify forms of early childhood education.
4. Regulate and control early childhood institutions,
infrastructure, and educational sta.
It is from the perspective of promoting a rapid
scale-up strategy that the relevance of the experiences
supported by the World Bank in several French-
speaking countries in Africa should be considered.
Developed as part of accompanying measures for
social safety net programmes, these programmes
included a strong EDC/ECD component that
included a parental education approach with a
periodic package of services to children. Covering
the French-speaking area of the continent in the
west (Niger, Burkina, Guinea, Mauritania), in the
centre (Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo,
Central African Republic, Chad), and in the south-
east (Madagascar, Djibouti), these programmes
have the merit of being able to reach the children
of the poorest and most vulnerable populations in
very signicant proportions (Gentilini et al., 2014).
The lessons learned from the implementation and
the results of various evaluations reveal two main
challenges that the programme now aims to address.
The rst is a systemic challenge: how to ensure
the quality of the implementation of parental
training provided through a national system of
safety nets. In the two widely tested service models
(intensive sensitization of families in villages
and Mobile Crèche in labour-intensive sites)
through NGOs, a critical problem concerns the
eectiveness of supervision of the implementation
and establishment of clear feedback loops to
enforce performance-based contracts.
Social safety net projects, in countries that included
Niger and Madagascar, have now embarked on the
implementation of ECD support measures through
dedicated state institutions as the Investment Fund
for Development (IFD) in Madagascar, or at its sta at
the commune or local government level, for example
in Niger (Barry et al., 2017). This approach can help
address some of the quality issues that have arisen
when implementation is contracted out. At the same
time, new quality assurance protocols will be needed,
possibly including outside audits or regular process
evaluations. A series of studies and evaluations have
been incorporated into the programme to draw
lessons from the establishment and extension of
measures to support behaviour change for EDC/ECD.
The second challenge relates to eective intersectoral
coordination. Behaviour change measures are needed
that focus on providing information to parents, in a
household-based approach, that does not seek to be a
substitute for the institutions responsible for delivering
services in the health, nutrition, education, and water
and sanitation sectors. Strengthening the intersectoral
linkages with technical ministries and making them
fully eective at the national, regional, and local level
is a rst-order priority for which eorts are underway.
African francophone countries are still researching
how to better operationalize EDC/ECD promotion,
including which modalities should be prioritized
and which policy types should be privileged. This
introduction to Section 5, and aspects of the chapters
within the Section, reect ongoing assessments of the
situation of EDC/ECD systems, multisectorality, and
EDC/ECD policies in French-speaking Black Africa.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
The Three Chapters in Section 5
In Chapter 12 the authors address the question of
the co-existence of EDC/ECD systems in Africa by
focusing on the dynamics of reciprocal integrations
and hybridizations which could help address the
preservation of various sources and resources for
EDC/ECD. At present, early childhood policies and
programmes in francophone Africa are heavily based
on Western early childhood care understandings.
This one-sided approach to EDC/ECD does not give
African Indigenous cultures a suciently prominent
role in services implemented for African children.
This approach also neglects to give voice to Arab/
Muslim traditions that have a longstanding inuence
on childcare in Africa. Considering this situation,
the authors discuss the importance and the ways
in which the co-existence of early childhood care
systems derived from native African cultures, Arab-
Muslim and Western cultures can lead to a more
cohesive early childhood care system in Africa.
Chapter 13 focuses on problems associated with the
cross-sector nature of EDC/ECD with francophone
countries in SSA that have been struggling with
institutional leadership issues regarding the eld over
the past two decades. The author notes that cross-
sector collaboration is often described as essential
to ensure a nurturing care continuum for children.
This collaboration is critical in low-income countries,
wherein limited resources do not allow one sector to
reach all children. Despite the cross-sector nature of
interventions needed for child survival and thriving,
stakeholders have been deprived of practical tools
to carry out eective coordination dialogues. The
intersectoral dialogue has improved recently at the
central level mainly for two reasons. First, simple and
practical cross-sector interventions tools for ECD have
been developed in some countries like Senegal and
Niger. Second, since the nurturing care framework
has been adopted by many SSA francophone
countries in 2018, it is no longer about “who should
lead?”, as the framework makes it obvious that each
sector is not only a starting point for intervention
but more importantly is needed as part of a for-
all-coordination-structure. This new approach is
reinforced at the policy level as all key documents call
for a strong collaboration at all levels among sectors.
Chapter 14 describes the implementation processes
of EDC/ECD policy using a participatory approach.
The author considers national EDC/ECD policies to be
important and useful for countries that misunderstand
such principles and approaches, give low priority to
vulnerable children from the prenatal stage up to the
age of 8 in sectoral and national policies; and show
the limited cross-sector approach to coordination
on issues that are matters of concern to children and
women. It is in this sense that the author argues that
a policy not only provides a vision of the best interests
of all young children, but also indicates the modalities
that make it possible to turn this vision into reality.
The focus for this work has been on the development
of multidisciplinary and multi-sector social policies
that are strategically developed to prioritize the
well-being of toddlers and their families and to
position EDC/ECD nationally in regard to communities
and to society in general. The author considers
that approaches to formulating and developing
national EDC/ECD promotion strategies should
involve consultation with all groups and institutions
concerned with EDC/ECD. Their active participation
in the political development process helps to build
consensus on key points and fundamental concepts,
which allows the best interests of the child to be
placed above specic groups or sectoral interests.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
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UNESCO, UN Development Programme, UN Population
Fund, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UN
Children’s Fund, UN Entity for Gender Equality and
the Empowerment of Women, and World Bank
Group. 2015. Education 2030, Incheon Declaration:
Towards inclusive and equitable quality education and
lifelong learning for all. UNESCO. (Incheon Conference
publication.) Available at: http://uis.unesco.org/en/
les/education-2030-incheon-framework-action-
implementation-sdg4-2016-en-pdf-1
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Chapter 12
On the coexistence
of Early Childhood
Development systems
in Africa
Oumar Barry and
Yatma Diop
Introduction
An object and subject of everyday interactions,
the young child is, from birth, at the centre of
social life: breastfed, nourished, carried, put to
sleep, listened to, stimulated, bathed, and shaped
by their mother and their family circle. They are
considered in all cultures as a partner to a set of
multiple exchanges that mark a crucial period in
their life. All African communities have established
their own means of transmitting knowledge to
children. In addition, the collective wisdom of
African societies lays the foundation for the care and
development of children in particular circumstances.
However, the challenges of Africa are complex, given
the immensity of the continent and its diverse cultures.
They vary signicantly between and within countries.
In their beliefs, practices, and customs, today, African
populations often refer to Indigenous, Muslim,
or Western traditions that have long inuenced
their early childcare systems. Early childhood care
is increasingly considered an essential factor for
achieving sustainable development for Africa, but
the policies of its institutional promotion, initiated
in most countries on the continent, have thus far
only recreated and valued models, curricula, and
practices belonging to the Western systems, without
considering other local specicities that come under
either traditional, Indigenous, or Arab-Islamic culture.
Therefore, to better understand and to provide a
more inclusionary approach to early childhood care
in Africa, it is crucial to study the content of three
childcare systems, which are autochthonous: African,
Western, and Arab-Islamic. Furthermore, it is vital to
explore to what extent these systems can coexist and
mutually enrich one another, according to varying
contexts. That being said, let us rst look at the
following facts about early childhood c.are in Africa.
ECD in Africa
Today, throughout Africa, there is a low rate of access
to formal and ocial structures of early childhood
care for children aged 3 to 6 years, who remain the
primary target for political strategies. There are little
to no formal childcare structures for children in rural
areas and some urban suburbs. This scarcity of early
childhood structures in rural areas and metropolitan
suburbs demonstrates the incoherence of strategies
that accompany the policies for developing the early
childhood sector across the continent, until now
essentially focused on preschool learning activities.
Also, the failure to include Indigenous structures and
resources has given rise to a longstanding distrust from
many populations, still anchored in tradition and barely
informed of the stakes of early childhood education.
For this reason, even the few innovations implemented
in underprivileged African urban suburbs and rural
areas of African cities have not had the expected rate
of adhesion. These innovations fail to agree on what
constitutes feasible activities for all children, with
relevance that is recognized by professionals, parents,
and the community (Zeitlin and Barry, 2007; 2009).
Some initiatives that aimed to involve the
communities in participative preschool strategies
were put in place, in rural areas, with the support of
NGOs. Such initiatives contextualized the content of
the curricula based on the local culture by using local
resources and the national languages. They created
hope for the decentralization of structures and the
mobilization of parents and communities around
goals for rural preschooling. Although these initiatives
sought to valorise community-based strategies, they
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
were conceived and implemented without specic
preliminary considerations. According to Barry
(2011), the problems of such initiatives include:
● the absence of preliminary or feasibility
studies before implementation;
● a failure to consider local and
contextual specicities;
● a failure to identify factors of
viability and sustainability;
● a failure to pilot instruments before
large scale implementation;
● and the absence of research-action
activities for continued learning.
All these aspects are crucial for the realization
and the success of any community project.
That is why, although community members
may be enthusiastic at the beginning of ECD
programmes, the rate of adhesion rapidly
decreases over time (Barry and Ilboudo, 2008).
Cultural factors linked to contexts and childcare
strategies for young children aged 0 to 3 do not
always produce the expected results, and very few
programmes develop an integrated approach. The
provided services stay in a sectoral perspective,
while the child remains holistic and contextualized.
Thus, very few programmes truly oer structured
and harmonized activities that involve families and
communities, two fundamental aspects in the African
cultural context of caring for small children. More
so, family and parent education, which should be
an essential component in any acceptable form of
childcare, does not seem a priority in the political
and operational plans created and put in place
(Barry, 2009). However, cultural realities insist, at least
from birth until weaning, that the small children be
physically and emotionally linked to the mother and
the substitute in their natural family environment (Erny,
1987; Mukene, 1988). Moreover, most experimental
preschool programmes are created to keep children
busy outside of their home environments without
incorporating the realities of family life. Most of these
preschools have half-day programmes. Children go
to school only in the morning and stay home all
afternoon and when the centre is closed. Therefore,
children spend most of their time at home or in the
streets without beneting from adult or structured
interactions. This situation demonstrates the
need for parents and family members to gain skill
reinforcement in dierent areas of early childcare
since children spend more time with them than
they do with preschool teachers. This would allow
parents to acquire new skills to better take care of
their children, but it would also prepare them to
monitor their children’s learning in preschool settings.
Parents” attitudes towards certain aspects of early
childhood, including medical care and nutrition
(e.g., vaccinations, treatments, hygiene, and diet),
are increasingly changing. However, most parents
do not see toys and play as learning tools that can
positively inuence children’s development and early
stimulation. Therefore, parents remain perplexed about
activities that include early stimulation (Dembélé,
1998). Yet, many parents in Africa emphasize religious
and confessional education and learning social
values and practical life skills. These skills are crucial
for children living in poverty since they are expected
to contribute later to their families” productive
activities. Additionally, many parents, especially in
rural areas, prefer to send their children to Koranic
schools where they receive an education rooted
in the Arab-Muslim culture (Dembélé, 1998).
Nevertheless, we should emphasize that African
populations possess a variety of knowledge and
Indigenous skills that should be utilized to improve
the quality of ECD programmes on the continent. The
African Indigenous culture of infancy has a wide range
of advantages to consider. For one, parents already
know the culture and trust it. And two, communities
are usually eager to preserve their culture, and these
communities” Indigenous values of childcare and
early childhood educational practices do not always
go against Western child development theories.
But can this traditional system alone provide
African children with a solid foundation for
developing strong learning skills? Also, considering
the signicant changes that globalization has
imposed on African nations, it is worth asking if
this traditional system can assure that education
in Africa can guarantee a generational quality?
We should recall that after this traditional system,
a system that is still very marginalized by political
strategies and ocials of African states, Western
and Arab-Islamic inuences on health and childcare
practices have also existed for a long time and must
be considered. And the future of ECD must involve
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
the multiculturalism that is embedded in diverse
ideological references. For this reason, there is the
need for a space to dene questions relative to the
care and education of young children in Africa:
● What types of care are provided to
African children and why?
● For what kind of education
must they be prepared?
● What culture must they discover?
● To what religious values must they refer?
● For what type of society must they be prepared?
● In what context will they live, and what
skills do they need to adapt to the
demands of their environment?
The response to all these questions could be sought
in the harmonization of native African, Arab-Islamic,
and Western systems in young children’s care and
education practices. In other words, the ECD sector in
Africa will need to orient itself towards innovations that
are formed in distinct cultural spaces and consider the
child’s future in terms of social identity construction,
the role that they must play in the future, and the
place that they will occupy to be able to eectively
contribute to the development of the continent.
Thus, ECD systems in Africa encounter all the problems
one must address in analysing any policy enactment
in African countries. For example, it is essential to
know: the dierent choices of strategies to enact
according to age groups; the attitudes of parents,
families, and communities about the diversity of
services oered; the curricula, the professionals and
their training; and the research and types of reection
on these questions. How can these systems be put in
place to take root in the diversity of regional, national,
and even continental settings? There is a space
today to focus on developing an environment that
favours the coexistence of multiple early childhood
care systems in Africa – one that could integrate
Indigenous, Western, and Arab-Islamic values,
knowledge, and practices. Let us take a moment to
analyse some specic characteristics of each of these
systems in their approaches to early childhood care.
Native African systems of early childhood
care
In traditional African societies, family structures
typically comprise the primary place of childcare and
the education of small children, who are considered
a joint possession that everyone must take care
of (Ki-Zerbo, 1990; Diop, 1981; Moumouni, 1998).
According to the child’s age, distinct categories
of members of the family’s circle of friends and
the community can also take care of the child.
In the family home
From birth to the age of weaning, the child’s mother
is the primary caregiver of the child. Even when
incredibly young, she is the person who, from
the child’s birth, principally consecrates herself to
childcare, including the provision of food, hygiene,
and protection. Until weaning, the mother is
physically and emotionally linked to her child most
of the time, even if other family members, such as
grandmothers, aunts, co-wives, and elders, help her.
Grandmothers and aunts. They play a key role
before and after birth. Everywhere in Africa, they are
the go-to persons for childcare-related knowledge.
These senior women pass on health and childcare
education to young and rst-time mothers. They also
play a caregiver role when the mother is unavailable,
and the child needs to be watched, supervised,
and fed. Besides, grandmothers and aunts are
usually known for giving babies and their mothers”
massages in the rst months following delivery.
Elders. Elders play a crucial role, especially after a
certain age, with most socialization and learning
activities. Games, songs, dances, reciting tales, and
other activities are their primary areas of involvement.
The traditional healer. Often an authority in the
community, the traditional healer is also a central
character that participates in the search for solutions to
the health problems of small children. He often serves
as the rst point of reference for numerous childhood
illnesses. Until the age of three, fathers are not closely
implicated in caring for and awakening small children.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Outside of the family home
Other unstructured forms of childcare can exist
that, by nature, are informal. For example, while
the mother is temporarily unavailable, she turns to
another woman outside the family, most often a
neighbour or friend who cares for a baby of the same
age. In taking care of her baby, she oers food and
care to other small children who are momentarily
separated from their mothers. Even if this practice
is found in diverse cultures, this traditional form of
childcare in Africa remains rarely documented.
However, many studies (Dembélé, 1998; Institut
Supérieur de Formation et de Recherche Appliquée
[ISFRA], 1993a; 1993b) have described a communal
form of childcare for minor children under the age
of 3, based around grandmothers. These are the
traditional day-cares or nurseries held in the residence
of an older woman. Usually, a grandmother watches
the children while their mothers conduct their eld
or household work (Dembélé, 1998). Traditional
day-cares are informal structures that function on a
consensual basis and rely on the trust between the
mother and the person watching the child. They
work without any expectation from the parents or
the community members. Traditional spontaneity
works in their favour, as the activities of childcare are
diverse and varied. The activities linked to the child’s
development and education depend on the host
community for whom the child is a joint possession.
However, after three years, the traditional system
does not have structures that dene the continued
activities for the care of small children. Education
and skill learning that prepare the child for future
life in his community are executed simultaneously
by elders and adults of the family circle and are
usually conducted through household tasks and daily
activities. With the arrival of Islam in Africa, Islamic
religious schools became the natural receptacle
for most of these children, for whom religious
education became an obligatory rite of passage.
Early childcare structures in Africa
inspired by the Arab-Muslim culture
With the Islamization of specic sub-Saharan African
populations, new forms of childcare came about, in
some ways completing the void left by the traditional
system for children over three years old. This form of
childcare in informal, non-structured settings from
the ages of four to ve (Dembélé, 1998), gave way
to the rise of Koranic schools with the primary goal
being initiation and religious education through
Arab-Islamic traditions and practices. These types of
informal structures led by Koranic experts are found
all over Africa with dierent names: vestibules in
Mali, Dahras in Senegal, and Madrasas in the central
and eastern areas of the continent. These Koranic
institutions have been attended by generations of
Africans and aim to teach Quranic verses and the
foundations of the Islamic faith (El Andaloussi, 1999).
They have, by this act, acquired a sacred character
that allows them to perpetuate and adapt and
constantly play an important religious and social role
in Islamized African communities. This has led them
to position themselves as guarantors of traditions
and have been able to continue existing thanks to
a set of rituals and customs that avoid any renewal.
Today, these institutions nd themselves trapped in
an image that, while contributing to their glory and
esteem, sometimes constitutes a bastion of resistance
to change, innovation, and openness to other cultures
and other early childhood education systems in Africa.
Indeed, as childcare structures outside the home,
these Koranic schools have the advantage of
cultivating relationships with integrated groups, but
they limit themselves to teaching memorization of
the Koran, submission, and the reproduction of an
established order. More so, the dimensions of caring
for other fundamental needs of children, such as
health, nutrition, or protection, are not present in
this system’s activities. Predominant religious and
educational values do not leave enough room to
explore other areas, such as creativity, imagination,
autonomy, learning by play activities, and to
prepare to acquire professional skills required for
a productive life. Often escaping social control by
being an independent religious educator of small
children, most Koranic schools continue to incite
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
much grief with their bands of little “talibés”26 in
rags, roaming the streets and neighbourhoods
of African cities, asking for hand-outs or alms. It is
deplorable to note that the principles governing
international child protection laws, ratied by most
African countries, sometimes do not go well with
certain local educational practices of Islam. A sizable
number of children spend too much time in these
schools without being given skills for professional life.
One strategy to remove children from this situation
in certain francophone African countries was to
promote the pairing of Islamic religious education
with teaching of French in establishments named
“franco-Arab schools,” representing an integration of
the Arab-Islamic system with the Euro-Christian.
Systems of early childcare
from Western cultures
In Africa, references to Western cultures and practices
concerning early childhood care usually concern
education in formal preschool structures. Moreover,
the notion of preschool education has seen a
considerable expansion in developed countries since
the end of the last century (Dajez, 1994). Currently,
preschool education in developed countries is
universally recognized as an indispensable step to
building the foundations of adult life. Of course, the
concept of preschool can vary depending on the
time or geographic and cultural area. Nevertheless,
in most cases, preschool is a place for children to
blossom, build personality, exercise independence,
learn socially, and acquire the necessary skills for
academic success. In Africa, preschool education
practices are still relatively recent and are growing
with the construction of education systems specic
to each country and under the power of the
establishing public control over general education.
The growing emergence of a demand for
institutionalized childcare before schooling age (3 to
6 years) creates a new phenomenon that we must
consider for helping African children to nd their
natural place in the larger society. Currently, early
childhood education in Africa is at a pivotal point
where states increasingly manifest their desire to
prioritize their own educational policies, including
the emergence of new institutions that take in
26 A student at a Koranic school.
children at preschool age and even earlier (some
oering to shelter children from a few days old to 3
years). The proliferation in some countries of these
types of institutions, called nursery schools (Jardin
d’enfant), day-cares (garderie d’enfant), preschools
(école préscolaires), and childcare centres (crèche),
on the one hand, reects the absence of a cohesive
early childhood education policy. On the other
hand, they encompass many concepts and practices
that would be interesting to identify and classify
in order to dene the sector and contribute to its
development. This would allow the discovery of
ways to integrate the triptych of native African,
Arab-Islamic, and Western values and practices,
with which families and communities in rural and
urban Africa still strongly identify. This integration
would also prevent other cultural values present
in Africa from uprooting young children, especially
the inuence of Western media, which circulates
norms that can be challenging to accept in the
current socio-cultural context of the continent.
The emergence of new perspectives on
ECD in African French-speaking countries
Since the 1980s, some francophone countries
in Africa have attempted to embrace aspects of
the three childcare systems discussed so far (i.e.,
Indigenous, Arab-Muslim, and Western systems)
through innovative ECD initiatives. More specically,
Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Côte d’Ivoire deserve
much attention because they have put in place
ECD programmes that align with the Sankofa
philosophy, which is the guiding idea of this book.
The experience of “Bi-Songo’” in Burkina Faso
In the early 1980s, UNICEF supported the State of
Burkina Faso to experiment with preschools in rural
areas with the Community Mutual Aid Spaces for
Children (EECE). The EECEs are better known under
the name of “Bi-Songo,” which in Mooré (a national
language in Burkina Faso) means “wise child.” They are
informal types of early childhood support structures,
family spaces based on a system of solidarity and
mutual support of children. The Bi-Songo have
responded to the lack of access to good early
education programmes for young children living in
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
rural and semi-urban areas. The objective was then to
promote better access to education for all children,
especially girls, and to oer integrated services related
to the needs of early childhood. An essential aspect
of Bi-Songo is that although UNICEF supported the
idea, most of the organizational leadership was left
in the community’s hands (Somé, 2017). That is, the
Bi-Songo approach relies heavily on the community to
materialize the idea of the “village school” and not “the
school in the village” (UNICEF and Burkina Faso Ministry
of Social Action and National Solidarity [MASSN], 2005).
For example, caregivers who work at the Bi-Songo
early child education centres are members of the local
communities called petites mamans (little mothers)
or petits papas (little fathers). So, these caregivers
from within the communities take care of children
aged 3 to 6 – the age range of Bi-Songo children – by
oering integrated services in four priority areas: early
learning-education, health-nutrition, water-hygiene-
sanitation, and protection. Moreover, The Bi-Songo
approach embraces aspects of the Native-African
childcare systems discussed in this chapter in the
sense that it promotes learning activities that are
linguistically and culturally relevant to the child.
The approach aims to promote the integrated
development of young children to prevent
developmental delays in physical, mental, and
psycho-emotional domains linked to poor health
and nutritional monitoring, parental illiteracy, and/
or their precarious situation (UNICEF and Burkina
Faso-MASSN, 2005). The Bi-Songo is in line with
the spirit of Burkina’s National Policy for Integrated
Early Childhood Development (PNDIPE) that has
the four following objectives (AGIR, 2019):
1. Enable mothers to participate in literacy activities
and to have income-generating activities.
2. Promote girls” education to bridge the traditional
gap between girls and boys in rural areas.
3. Have a whole-child approach to education,
thanks to the coordination of services geared
toward an optimal development (nutritional
monitoring, health, stimulation, socialization).
4. Prepare for post-preschool education
(primary, secondary).
The Bi-Songo has contributed to the following
outcomes regarding ECD in Burkina Faso:
● better overall care for young children (food and
nutritional security, early learning, learning, etc.)
● babysitting in secure places
● better academic performance
● a sharp increase in the preschool enrolment rate
● commitment of the State and its partners
to the construction of Bi-Songo schools
● strong community engagement
in ECD-related programs
● identication and capacity-building
of “little mothers” and “little fathers”
(supervisors/school monitors)
● quality of education
● use of national languages
● geographical and cultural relevance
of the preschool curriculum
Unfortunately, the scaling up of the Bi-Songo could
not be done systematically throughout the territory
of Burkina Faso, despite its establishment in several
regions and the comprehensive promotion of the
success stories and results obtained, as well as the
targeted support in favour of volunteer communities.
It thus appears that the community approach, to
be fruitful, must be informed upstream, supported,
and supervised in the process by continuous
involvement of the State, which must take over
to play the role of promoter and regulator.
The experience of the “Case des Tout-Petits”
in Senegal
The year 2000 marked a new era for early childhood
education in Senegal, creating the case des tout-
petits, or “young children’s hut.” The cases are early
childhood centres that focus on children from birth
to 6 years and their parents, providing schooling,
community education, health, and nutrition (Soudee,
2009). Abdoulaye Wade, the president of Senegal at
that time, announced the idea of creating the case
des tout-petits (CTP) at the World Education Forum
held in Dakar in 2000. The government of Senegal
worked at an accelerated pace to implement this new
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
model of preschool education by issuing a decree
in 2004 creating the ANCTP (National Agency of
the Children’s Hut), which is composed of members
from the government ministries. One central mission
of ANCTP is to monitor and evaluate the learning
activities of young children who attend the cases.
Undoubtedly, the revolutionizing idea of the case
des tout-petits is that it combines local traditions
with the Western pedagogical philosophies which
had to that point dominated the early childhood
curriculum in Senegal. More specically, in addition to
expanding the access to early education for girls and
children living in rural areas, the case des tout-petits
adopted an integrated approach to early childhood
education while valuing the country’s cultural
legacy through storytelling and singing activities.
Thanks to its approach to early childhood care
and education, the case des tout-petits referenced
existing ECD programmes or policies in Senegal.
For example, it is the model chosen to implement
the current National Policy for Integrated Early
Childhood Development (PNDIPE). The PNDIPE aims
to provide all Senegalese children from conception
to 8 years of age access to optimal childcare services
for survival, protection, social integration, and self-
fullment (ANCTP, 2007). In addition, more visible
structures are now part of the decor, and innovative
strategies accompany them (Bassama, 2010).
The choice of the “hut” concept to designate the
new structures of early childhood education and
protection was purposeful. The centres themselves are
hexagonal, often built using local, natural materials
to symbolize ancestral civilization. The case des tout-
petits reects a way of life, a way of being and thinking,
and it is a symbol of an attachment to African values,
living space, a space for socialization, and the place
where learning begins. Indeed, the huts are symbolic
of traditional Africa. Often grass-thatched, the hut
is where the child experiences their rst bonding
with the mother, and it is also where parents and
other family members transmit norms and values to
children. It is also in front of the grandmother’s or
grandfather’s hut that storytelling activities between
grandparents and grandkids occur (Bassama, 2010).
Through the implementation of the CTP, Senegal
shows a desire to decisively boost early childhood
development: “The State has chosen to invest in child
capital to ensure a quality succession. Early childhood
development in Senegal is not a social action but
a macroeconomic action which is placed at the
heart of development through the enhancement
of human resources” (MFPE, 2002). The CTP is an
ambitious programme that aims to build 28,000 huts
throughout the territory. It is part of community
structures because the populations themselves
manage it. But, unlike authentic community centres,
the State directly supports the construction of the
huts, the salaries of supervisory sta, and operating
and equipment expenses. Its location favours rural and
peri-urban areas to target more vulnerable children
from disadvantaged backgrounds. (ANCTP, 2004).
Overall, the results obtained by ANPECTP since the
start of the programme have been made possible by
implementing a multi-actor and multi-sector approach,
a diverse and fruitful partnership. These large-scale
actions have now made it possible to take care of
31,242 children aged 0 to 2 years in 826 structures
and 136,407 children aged 3 to 5 years through 1,771
DIPE networks made up of 827 toddler huts, 405
public nursery schools, and 539 early learning centres/
community day-care centres. An additional 108 new
DIPE structures were created in 2020 while improving
the quality of the learning environment and facilities
dependent on ANPECTP. These results can be further
enhanced if the ambitions of ANPECTP as set out in
the Strategic Plan 2019-2023 and the Performance
Contract 2019-2021 are supported by the line
ministries in terms of technical support but primarily
nancial (ANPECTP, 2020). The ambitions set out in
the General Sectoral Policy Letter (Lettre de Politique
Générale Sectorielle [LPGS], 2018-2030) reect
the desire of the State of Senegal to develop early
childhood under the presidential directive consisting
in generalizing early childhood care (ANPECTP, 2020).
Even if we are still far from the initial objective in
terms of national coverage, the case des tout-petits
programme in Senegal is gaining ground, and
today it represents the dominant and unifying
model of early childhood care structures in the
country, a symbiosis of cultures and practices
around childhood that transcends sectoral,
and even geographic borders of Senegal.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
The families capacity-building approach in
Côte d’Ivoire
Côte d’Ivoire has a long history of early childhood care
that goes as far back as 1962 with its Early Childhood
Protection Centres (CPPE) that have been contributing
to the stimulation and education of Ivoirian children
aged between 3 and 6 years. The government of Côte
d’Ivoire builds on this experience to implement its
National Early Childhood Development Policy using
a family capacity-building approach as the primary
strategy. The justication of choosing a family capacity-
building approach lies in the fact that many sectoral
initiatives in Côte d’Ivoire have provided only a few
responses to the continuum of care to be provided to
the child for harmonious development. Unfortunately,
parents and families have remained on the side-lines
in the development and implementation of such
initiatives. Given the signicant role that families and
parents play in the care of children aged between
0 and 8 years, their involvement is crucial for the
success of any ECD programme (Republic of Côte
d’Ivoire’s Parenting Education Programme, 2012).
Therefore, it is essential to empower families by
implementing parental education programmes
that provide parents with a knowledge base so that
they can eectively assume their roles with their
children. Parents and the family circle are naturally the
rst caregivers of children and their rst educators,
especially in the traditional African Indigenous early
childcare system discussed in this chapter. However,
achieving the goals of a programme targeting parents
and families can only be eective if appropriate
strategies are proposed. These strategies commanded
by the Integrated Development of Young Children
(DIJE) policy as a whole go beyond the scope of one
eld or ministry, as was the case in past programmes.
They are part of a global vision that makes it possible
to determine relevant actions and make choices
that protect children’s rights to guarantee their
survival and development. This involves integrated
care strategies based on parental education,
allowing parents who have better knowledge and
secular practices in health, hygiene, stimulation,
education, and protection to better use the correct
information for their children. In this context, the
Côte d’Ivoire has adopted a parental education
programme to improve the quality of childcare using
an integrated approach of care provision in various
domains, including heal, nutrition, and protection.
Although this Parental Education provides parents
with child development knowledge from science,
it also considers local early childhood practices. The
goal here is to reinforce parents” parenting skills
rooted in their local cultures to assume their role
with their children and communities eectively.
Four pillars make up the foundation of the
National Parental Education in Côte d’Ivoire:
1. Start from the beginning (i.e., conception
until when the child is born).
2. Prepare the child for success through early
stimulation and learning activities.
3. Improve the quality of primary school
education by ensuring a better transition
from preschool to primary school.
4. Include early childhood development
in general policies (i.e., the government
should make ECD a priority).
It also has as a methodological reference the
National Strategy for Integrated Development
of the Young Child (SNDIJE), put in place by the
2009-2013 Cooperation Framework Plan between
the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire and UNICEF.
Based on the essential elements of this strategy,
this programme aims at bringing together the
practices and skills of ECD actors. In this regard,
it intends to go beyond the discursive divisions
created by specialists in ministerial departments to:
● promote access for all children to
essential quality social services;
● contribute to the acquisition of new
behaviours and positive practices
favourable to children and women;
● and promote the full participation of
all in sustainable development actions
geared toward achieving the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs), of which
seven out of eight concern children.
Therefore, the goal here is to support parents
and families in strengthening their knowledge,
skills, and practices necessary for providing care,
supervision, and protection for their children to
reduce poverty eectively. All children want to live
their lives to the fullest, in Côte d’Ivoire or anywhere
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
else. They want to be healthy, go to school, be
well-nourished, and access healthcare when they
are sick. For all this to happen, children need to
grow in a stimulating and protective environment,
preparing them for success (Dalais and Skard, 1998).
Guiding principles of the “parenting
education” approach in Côte d’Ivoire
The approach proposed for implementing the
parental education programme is oriented
towards prevention, treatment of problems, and
optimization of early childhood development
(PEPCI, 2012). The guiding principles are as follows.
Participatory. As the family is the primary factor
inuencing a child’s development, the child’s
family and their community are stakeholders in
the programme. The programme also encourages
the active participation of beneciaries, rather
than conning it to a passive role of assisted
persons. It is, therefore, a question of considering
the interests of all stakeholders to facilitate
the implementation of the programme.
Respectful of culture. Under the principle of
valuing achievements, the programme relies on the
endogenous knowledge of beneciaries to strengthen
or change behaviours that promote consideration
of children’s rights. Under the doctrine of dialogue
between cultures, the programme is also based on
knowledge of the environment in which the child
lives, the living conditions, beliefs, culture, and values
of the parents. It is about respecting the culture of the
family environment, when it is not in contradiction
with the rights of the child and building on what
is concerning the rights and needs of the child.
Practical. The programme is based on nding
solutions to the needs of families. It focuses
its interventions on the search for relevant
solutions for the realization of children’s
rights and the satisfaction of their needs.
Flexible. The programme consists of a exible
system relevant to the specic nature of the people,
considering the availability of the target groups.
Informative. The programme enables parents and
their caregivers to access information on the basic
needs and rights of children to change behaviour.
Integrated. The programme is based on
the synergy of sectoral interventions.
Carried out according to age groups.
The programme focuses on the life cycles
of the young child (prenatal at birth, 0 to
3 years, 3 to 6 years, and 6 to 8 years).
Based on human rights and equity. The programme
is conducted without discrimination or stigma.
Accountable. Under the principle of accountability,
a mechanism is put in place to ensure the
monitoring of the program’s implementation and
the evaluation of its impacts on the beneciaries
and the identied targets. This mechanism makes it
possible to report on activities and share the program’s
results with the various beneciaries and actors.
Holistic coverage. The parenting education
programme is characterized by a comprehensive and
integrated approach by providing universal (national
scope) and targeted (vulnerable groups) services.
Indeed, it is still premature to assess this programme,
the eective implementation of which has just started,
but based on the intentions and the approach, we
have reason to believe that it will have immense
potential to promote ECD in Côte d’Ivoire.
What early childhood care system
should Africa adopt?
ECD systems in Africa cannot be approached
without rst considering the cultural aspects
inherent to dierent traditions and current
practices in early childhood care. We can attempt
to simultaneously research the cultural elements
shared by the heritages of the native African, Western,
and Arab-Islamic triptych and the specicities
of each system concerning early childhood
care. Though perhaps too ambitious a project,
it reveals the richness of confronting dierent
experiences. For this reason and in this context,
the following reections deserve to be made.
One, while considering the homogenous national
“cultural” ensembles, each country’s internal dierences
also integrate the triptych’s cultural dimensions.
Additionally, we must contemplate the dierences
between geographic areas (for example, rural-urban
and privileged-underprivileged), the dierences
between the types of establishments (public-private),
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
and dierences between pedagogical orientations. We
must try to describe the shared cultural aspects as a
whole nation and analyse the internal dierences. It is
true that, depending on the country, factors of relative
homogeneity are substantial, and today’s African
childcare practices cannot exist without referring
to or building upon one of the triptych’s cultures.
Two, we can also attempt to consider these cultural
aspects timelessly as if they have endured without
notable changes. However, we still must try to
describe specic national characteristics. It is equally
important to consider the historical variations of
early childhood care systems and practices in each
country and in dierent regional cultures and the
interpretations of some current debates showing that
their emerging conditions and terms used to express
them are not the same. Therefore, I plead for an
attentive observation of evolutions or transformations
that aect the systems on a continental, regional,
or subregional level and within every country.
These groups consider dierent models about
cultural, contextual, and conjectural contexts that
will determine the most appropriate option for one
community or another and the best choice for families
and parents. The most crucial questions asked about
early childhood in Africa veer more in the ideological
direction rather than the political. Accordingly,
institutional strategies should integrate the variety
of systems constructed from values and practices
of Indigenous African, Western, and Arab-Islamic
origins. This is the direction taken by the National
Agency for Early Childhood and Case des Tout-Petit
in Senegal, which covers, supports, and monitors all
public, community, and faith-based ECD structures.
Three, elaborate and enact policies that value the
traditional forms of care and awakening through
strategies that permit families and communities to
align their skills with the demands of our era and
with scientic discoveries on the characteristics of
development processes and the importance of several
types of care and stimulation. Parent education should
be a priority and a reality in the strategic plans of the
continent if the goal is to oer every small African
child the appropriate care, a stimulating environment,
and an aectionate and protective family circle. It
is good to note that the ECD policy and strategy
orientation in Côte d’Ivoire goes in this direction.
Four, today, there are no longer structured systems that
perpetuate family education where grandparents once
represented an incommensurable resource. Young
African mothers today are increasingly left to their
own devices, and many of them are still illiterate. This
prevents access by their means to current knowledge
available in books about children’s needs and practices
that allow them to oer better appropriate care and
education adapted to the cultural environment.
Five, where communities prefer to insist on Arab-
Islamic traditions to oer care and education to small
children, it is possible to nd intersections with,
on the one hand, the values that promote certain
traditional practices, and on the other hand, activities
that oer children skills that allow them to develop
their personality and be benecial to their family and
community. This is possible if institutions responsible
for early childhood in African countries are willing to
put fundamental strategies to accompany and support
communities in their willingness to see their ospring
initiated and educated in specic essential values. In
this sense, the exciting experience of the Bi-songo in
Burkina described above reveals the importance of
the role that the State must play in the appropriation
and sustainability of successful community-based
initiatives. It also shows the responsibility of the
government to carry the continuity of innovations
initially supported by communities and parents with
genuine eorts of investment and commitment.
Six, today, day-cares, preschools, and nurseries are
becoming an increasing reality for specic children
in Africa, notably those living in cities, even if they
still constitute a minority. These ways of childcare,
of oering care and education attract the attention
of some African families, even if most parents have
limited knowledge of the curricula, the importance
of certain activities, the skills for which their children
are prepared, and the indispensable prerequisites
to reach success in future school learning. For a
heightened attractiveness and to promote a positive
image to African populations, these early childcare
systems derived from Western culture should nd
ways that allow them to integrate traditional and
religious values, resources, and practices. Legislators
in this domain in Africa should make sure that
these activities are in line with each community’s
cultural, linguistic, and religious characteristics.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Conclusion
Today, ECD is an essential player in the sustainable
development of Africa, but the policies that promote
it, initiated throughout the continent, have not
suciently integrated cultural dimensions specic
to Indigenous African, Arab-Islamic, and Western
systems. Each of these systems benets from a
particular audience of African populations and is at
the origin of practices and traditions regarding care
and education provisions for small children. Also,
these systems possess various knowledge and skills
that others can draw from and exchange to improve
the quality of ECD programmes on the continent.
In this day and age, none of these systems can
oer small African children everything they need
to grow, learn, and build their personalities with a
cultural identity congruous to their communities”
values. In a context of the harmonization of values
that promote early childhood and an increasingly
accelerating globalization, political strategies for
the development of this sector will benet from
the creation of an environment that favours the
valorization of each system in contexts specic to
communities, geographic or linguistic areas in each
country on the continent. For this reason, we feel the
push to orient ourselves towards the coexistence of
dierent ECD systems in Africa that will reciprocally
integrate the values, knowledge, and practices of
Indigenous-African, Arab-Islamic, and Western cultures.
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Barry, O. 2009. Éducation des parents et pratiques
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Barry, O. and Ilboudo, F. 2008. Rapport de l’évaluation des
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Barry, O. and Zeitlin, M. 2011.Senegal’s modern and
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Dalais, C. and Skard, T. 1998. Preface. Vie d’enfant. Editions
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Dajez, F. 1994. Les origines de l’école maternelle française.
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Diop, C. A. 1981. L’armation de l’identité culturelle et la
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El Andaloussi, K. 1999. Petite enfance et éducation
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Erny, P. 1987. L’enfant et son milieu en Afrique noire. Paris,
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Institut Supérieur de Formation et de Recherche
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Chapter 13
The intersectoral nature
of ECD/EDC and the
need for understanding
across sectors
Ibrahima Pierre Louis Giroux
Introduction
Cross-sector collaboration is often described as
essential to ensure a continuum of nurturing
care to children (NCECD, n.d.; Penny et al., 2005).
This collaboration is all the more critical in low-
income countries, wherein limited resources do
not allow one sector to reach all children, resulting
in fragmented services with a very low impact on
their development. Francophone countries in sub-
Saharan Africa (SSA) have been in this situation for
the past two decades, struggling with institutional
leadership issues regarding the eld of early childhood
development (ECD). Despite the cross-sectoral
nature of interventions needed for child survival and
thriving, stakeholders have been deprived of practical
tools to carry out eective coordination dialogues.
However, at the community level, the collaboration
between health, education, and nutrition sectors has
been generally eective. Recently, the intersectoral
dialogue has improved at the central level since the
nurturing care framework, which is covered in more
depth below, was adapted by many SSA francophone
countries in 2018. The question and paradigm have
also changed. It is no longer about “who should lead?”,
as the framework makes it obvious that each sector
is not only a starting point for intervention but, more
importantly, each is needed as part of a coordination
structure for all. This new situation is reinforced at
the policy level, as all key documents call for a strong
collaboration at all levels between sectors. Practical
tools for capacity-building are necessary, however,
to build upon this new institutional understanding
in order to achieve a strong coordinative culture
for ECD in SSA francophone countries. Key next
steps should reinforce ECD workers” capacities to
deliver services that reect the integrated nature
of care provided by parents and communities.
The early years
The rst years of life represent a critical period
in children’s cognitive development. It has been
estimated that over 279 million children in low-
and middle-income countries are at risk of not
reaching their developmental potential in their
rst ve years due to multiple-risk conditions
associated with poverty (Black et al., 2016).
According to the nurturing care framework
document, for every US $1 spent on early childhood
development interventions, the return on investment
can be as high as $13 (World Health organization
et al., 2018). This is particularly important for low-
income countries to consider when developing
their strategic economic plans. A child’s rst 1,000
days are the most critical, as nearly 80% of the brain
is developed by the age of 3 (Shonko, 2012).
During this critical window of brain development,
“children need a safe, secure, and loving environment,
with the right nutrition and stimulation from
their parents or caregivers. This is a window of
opportunity to lay a foundation of health and well-
being whose benets last a lifetime – and carry into
the next generation” (World Health Organization
et al., 2018; see also Naudeau et al., 2011).
It is well established that early childhood development
is, by its essence, multisectoral. High impact
interventions are described as a package integrating
relevant services from health, nutrition, education,
and protection. Parents and communities are key
actors of collaboration to ensure that interventions
will have a lasting impact on children. It is also well
established that health and nutrition are generally
the rst sectors to get in touch with families. For this
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
very reason, they should be empowered to (i) train
parents on ECD including early stimulation and (ii)
lead the coordination dialogue for the sub-sector.
In many francophone countries, ECD is often
confused with ECE and placed as a sub-sector
under the leadership of the education sector. This
is unfortunate because, rstly, as conrmed by all
recent and strong evidence from brain sciences,
preschool is almost already too late when one
considers the importance of brain development
opportunities from the ages of 0 to 3 (Black et al.,
2016; Britto et al., 2017; Heckman, 2006; Hoddinott et
al., 2008; Lagercrantz, 2016; Shonko, 2012; Richter
et al., 2017). Secondly, preschool facilities or services
for the most vulnerable are very rare, which implies
almost no contact between the parents and the
education sector for children under 5 years old. Finally,
teacher training is, most of the time, of low quality.
This amalgam of factors has caused important damage
both to children from 0 to 6 years themselves and
their countries. Lost developmental opportunities
during the rst 1,000 days and the preschool lifetime,
exposure to random parental practices, and reduced
intellectual skills to enter and succeed in school
and life in general are among the most notable
consequences. Ultimately, many francophone
countries are deprived of the real possibility to end the
inter-generational cycle of poverty and ignorance.
At the policy level, the most common observation
is the fragmentation of the institutional leadership.
The main reason for this has to do with the fact
that in almost all of these countries ECD policy is
among the latest to be developed and adopted. For
instance, while traditional sectors such as health or
education developed policies in the early 1970s or
early 1980s, it is only during the 2000s that many
francophone countries developed a comprehensive
ECD policy. It cost these countries two decades
of institutional leadership conict, as the primary
questions have been: “who should lead ECD?”;
“who has the coordination mandate?”; “who has
the expertise?”; and “who has the nances?”
As the proverb teaches not to throw the baby out
with the bath water, we can see that the same
policy documents rmly recommend sectors to
collaborate at all levels. In the eld, decentralized
governmental bodies have developed a certain
culture of collaborating without having formal
instructions from their hierarchies at the central
level. Benetting from this positive institutional
background, in 2018 the international nurturing
care framework oered a greater understanding
of what the coordination dialogue could look like
and helped governmental stakeholders to adopt
a new paradigm. It’s no longer about who should
lead but how each platform (e.g., education,
nutrition, or health) can be set up to provide a
high-impact package of ECD services to children
and their families. Coordination for ECD has turned
from leadership issues to coordination dialogue.
The nurturing care framework is an international ECD
document validated by the World Bank, the World
Health Organization, UNICEF, and the ECD Action
Network among the international organizations. It
“draws on state-of-the-art evidence on how early
childhood development unfolds to set out the
most eective policies and services that will help
parents and caregivers provide nurturing care for
babies,” and it is “designed to serve as a roadmap
for action, helping mobilize a coalition of parents
and caregivers, national governments, civil society
groups, academics, the United Nations, the private
sector, educational institutions and service providers
to ensure that every baby gets the best start in life”
(World Health Organization et al., 2018). Nurturing
care refers to conditions created by public policies,
programmes, and services. These conditions enable
communities and caregivers to ensure children’s
good health and nutrition and protect them from
threats. Nurturing care also means giving young
children opportunities for early learning, through
interactions that are responsive and emotionally
supportive (World Health Organization et al., 2018).
Cross-sector approach at the heart
of ECD: what makes it relevant
In African francophone countries, all ECD policy
documents recognize the multisectoral nature of
the sub-sector. Indeed, based on scientic evidence,
these documents recognize the multiple needs
of children in terms of good health, adequate
nutrition, safety and security, responsive care, and
opportunities for early learning. They also recognize
the link between those domains and the need to
identify and implement high-impact interventions
as dened under the nurturing care framework.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
For instance, according to Luchuo et al. (2013) low
levels of education, especially in women, are key
perpetuators of poor nutrition practices in sub-
Saharan Africa. They further suggest that a multi-sector
approach is vital to tackle the various problems that
maintain or worsen malnutrition in SSA countries
(Luchuo et al., 2013; see also Walker et al., 2005).
Other major threats to ECD in general include:
● extreme poverty
● insecurity
● gender inequities
● violence
● environmental toxins
● poor mental health
● low service coverage
● fragmented interventions with
very weak coordination
● weak family-service dialogue
● inexistence of parental education
programmes at national levels
Accordingly, ECD policy documents in SSA
recognize the need to invest in cross-sectoral
synergies and coordination (e.g., the [Senegal]
National Policy for Integrated Early Childhood
Development, 2007; the [Niger] National Policy
for Integrated Early Childhood Development,
2013; the [Côte d’Ivoire] National Policy for the
Integrated Development of Young Children, 2004).
Three key reasons provide a foundation for a cross-
sector approach for ECD interventions in SSA
francophone countries. First, the continuum of
care format is important to facilitate the dialogue
between service platforms and communities. For
example, good practices recommend that parents
be enthusiastic with their babies during bath or
play and to demonstrate aection to them during
breastfeeding. Many parents demonstrate this kind
of good practice. Health centres in general, however,
with the exception of certain private paediatric
centres, are for the most part not particularly child
friendly. Maternal health centres often have no toys, no
play space, and no parent space to provide parental
counselling. It is not clear whether health agents fully
understand the positive eects of this psychological
dimension of the child’s well-being in the service
platform. Second, the context of resource limitations
does not allow governments to provided ECD services
everywhere they are needed. Without replacing the
missing sectors, the existing sector in a village should
oer a platform to deliver an integrated package
of services. Third, it is necessary to collaborate with
parents and communities to ensure lasting impacts
of interventions in a context of resource limitations.
Cross-sector approach in the eld
The implementation of a multisectoral approach
to ECD varies by country. Within a single country, it
depends on the political priority given to the sub-
sector. This priority is visible through the architecture
for steering the national policy of ECD. For example,
in Côte d’Ivoire ECD was coordinated for a long
time by the Ministry of Planning, and Senegal has a
dedicated national agency previously housed in the
President Oce, along with a support unit for child
protection and a support unit against malnutrition.
In addition, the Gabon workshop on the nurturing
care framework in 2018 helped to change the
approach of sectors on the issue of multisectoral
coordination. Indeed, this framework has made it
possible to see how each sector can be a locomotive
by oering multi-sector governance bodies and
opportunities. For example, in Figure 13.1, the
preschool sub-sector now oers a readable and
coherent architecture for multisectoral coordination
at all levels. This gure applies to Senegal, but it
is very sensibly the case for many francophone
countries in Africa. More interestingly, for instance,
preschool platforms are utilized by health and
nutrition services to ght against stunting. What is
true in Figure 13.1 for preschool is also true for other
sectors with very minor label changes. For instance,
nutrition services often work with community-based
organizations or local NGOs and establish nutrition
service platforms with a very similar architecture.
Following this approach, from the preschool facility
to the central level, children and communities benet
from the cumulative eects of multisectoral dialogue.
For example, the children of the structure benet
from an adequate school feeding programme, a good
nutritional and health surveillance programme, as
well as all the basic services for their development.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Figure 13.1 Pre-primary education system as eective cross-sector coordination platform
Community
Pre-primary
structure
Local
government
Management
committee
Municipal
committee
Decentralized
gov services,
(DGS)
District
education
inspectorate
Regi onal
education
inspectorate
National
directorates
Ministries
District ECD
coordination
platform
Regional ECD
coordination
platform
National ECD
coordination
platform
Eective governance
implementation: community
involvement
Local planning, community
mobilization, partnership with
DGS
District level planning: cross-
sector coordination dialogue,
partnership
Cross-sector coordination
dialogue, M&E
Strategic dialogue: cross-
sector policy/approach
Source: Author.
This schema is already operating in most advanced
francophone countries such as Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal,
and even Niger, but in each country it is waiting to
be more formalized, routinized, and systematized.
The case of nutrition platforms in Senegal is worth
mentioning. The nutrition sector is the most
decentralized and the most active in implementing a
multi-sector approach to improve its performances.
Nutrition platforms have demonstrated a real
accessibility to parents and communities. During the
last decade, nutrition platforms have been oering
an integrated package of services, including early
stimulation, parental coaching, and basic health
and nutrition services (e.g., pre- and post-natal
consultation, vitamins, etc.). It is very interesting to
see a correlation during this same period between
the reduction of the stunting rate in Senegal and
the eorts from the national nutrition council to
actively engage with the other relevant sectors
(e.g., health, education, national ECD agency,
family, agriculture, etc.). As a result, according to
the Global Nutrition Report (2021), Senegal is one
of the most eectively performing countries in the
Africa region regarding the stunting rate – 19%
versus 29% in 2019. Building on those results, in
2018 the Senegal Government adopted a multi-
sector plan for nutrition which is composed of 12
sector-based action plans (e.g., agriculture, water,
family and social protection, education, etc.). The
same is true for Côte d’Ivoire and Niger and for
approximately the same period. It is well known that
good nutrition oers a good start in life which other
sectors can build on (The Lancet Series, 2016).
More interestingly, at the institutional level, policy
documents are oriented towards a cross-sectoral
approach as shown in Table 13.1. This is true for
the dierent francophone countries in SSA.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Table 13.1 Plan for cross-sector approach at the policy level
Policy
Ministry / Agency/ Council of
Family
Education
Health
Nutrition
ECD
Local
Government
Internal
Aairs
Agri.
Commerce
Higher
education
National ECD policy (2004) XXXXXXX X
Strategic plan for reproductive, maternal,
neonatal, infant and adolescent health (SRMNIA,
2016-2020)
XXXXXX X
National child protection strategy (2013) XXXXXXX X
National Nutrition Development Policy
(2015-2025) XXXXXXX X
Multi-sector Strategic Plan for Nutrition
(2018-2022) XXXXXXXXXX
Programme for the improvement of education
and training quality, equity and transparency
(2013-2025)
XXXXXXX X
National strategy for social protection
(2015-2035) XXXXXXX X
National safety net programme (2014) XXXXXXX
Universal health coverage programme (2013) XXXXXXX X
Source: Author.
Achievements
Some countries already have the tools to integrate
a holistic package of care to babies and young
children. For example, Senegal has developed a
multisectoral matrix of essential family practices, a
methodological guide for the integrated package of
nurturing care, a budgeted multisectoral action plan
for ECD, an early learning and development standards
document (under development), an early stimulation
guide (under development), and a cross-sector
guide to improve in-service teacher training. More
recently, high-level sta from health and nutrition
at the central level received a “training of trainers”
workshop on how to operationalize the nurturing
care framework in health and nutrition platforms. In
2021, a training plan was implemented to develop
workers” skills in health and nutrition platforms.
Since 2020, with funding from the World Bank,
Senegal is developing an ECD information
system that integrates all existing information
systems from all relevant traditional sectors (i.e.,
education, nutrition, protection, and health).
The developing culture of cross-sector collaboration
had several positive eects, such as:
● accelerating the dynamics of identifying cross-
sector synergy actions (much more than only
synergy axes as was previously the case);
● allowing for an eective school reopening
in 2020 and certainly in 2021;
● reinforcing government communications
to parents to send their young
children back to school;
● avoiding a worsening of the Senegal human
capital index as a consequence of the
lack of preschool education services;
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
● reinforcing the capacities of nutrition platforms
to delivery early stimulation services;
● preserving the preschool enrolment rate
for 2020 with a possibility for the sub-sector
to perform even better in 2021; and
● setting up the country for the next
step of ECD coordination.
Weaknesses
The main shortcomings in the implementation
of the cross-sector approach are related to:
1. The lack of tools for joint planning,
implementation, monitoring, and
evaluation of ECD interventions at both
central and decentralized levels.
2. Limited resources for strengthening dialogue
and consolidating the foundations for an
eective culture of cross-sector coordination.
Despite an improved collaboration in the eld at
the central level, traditional ECD sectors have yet
to jointly plan, execute, monitor, and evaluate their
interventions. While no existing leadership structures
prevent these joint activities from happening, it
seems like sectors are awaiting the creation of a new
higher entity to coordinate all parts of the human
development sector. For example, some countries
like Morocco have established a human development
institute. In countries like Côte d’Ivoire, Niger, or
Senegal, the human capital development is clearly
an important piece of national development plans.
Setting up a national institute for human development
(NIHD) is the missing piece in development
programming in SSA francophone countries.
That being said, it is true that countries like Côte
d’Ivoire and Senegal have understood since the
very beginning the importance of putting in place
a higher coordination entity. As explained earlier,
ECD planning, implementation, monitoring, and
evaluation were under the responsibility of the
Ministry of Planning (Côte d’Ivoire) or the Oce
of the President (Senegal). Unfortunately, and for
reasons so far unclear, ECD coordination became
fragmented. One possible reason could be the
27
Though NIHD should be mandated to pilot some experiments as needed in the eld.
lack of expertise within the former coordination
entities, preventing them from implementing
sustainable coordination dialogue and approach.
The NIHD we are proposing here would be built on
countries” policy implementation and coordination
experiences. While its mandate may not include
eld implementation, to avoid conicting with
technical ministries, the NIHD would be responsible
for developing quality ECD and HD policies in
general:27 ensuring a coherence between sector-
based strategies, programmes, projects, and action
plans; developing quality human development
standards; developing evidence-based strategies to
improve human capital; and dening or responding
to the country’s needs in human resources.
The “sub-sectorization” of ECD is among its most
strategic weaknesses. What makes ECD a sub-sector?
It is commonly mistaken that ECD is a sub-sector of
education. It was then understood as a sub-sector of a
number of traditional sectors. This is a way of looking
down on ECD and children, though all scientic
evidence describes ECD as the strongest foundation
for all key sectors including security, economy,
sciences, technology, diplomacy, and of course basic
sectors for human development (e.g., agriculture,
nutrition, health, education, social protection, etc.).
ECD is not and should not remain a sub-sector. It
is indeed a meta-sector that feeds all the above-
mentioned sectors. Early childhood development
is the mother of human development. This is a
strategic paradigm change that implies rethinking
the process of formulating national development
plans. It provides a coherent structure from ECD to the
country’s prosperity level. This new paradigm will allow
developing robust, outcome-oriented milestones,
and strategic progress indicators for economic
development. It also allows for planning critical
achievements with a generational objective to end
poverty and ignorance. Without this critical paradigm
change making ECD the mother of all sectors, SSA
francophone countries will in all likelihood not be able
to correctly plan their sustainable development. They
will stick onto the vicious circle of at best begging
to borrow money for expenses, irrespective of costs
for next generations. The virtuous circle is to invest
strategically in the early years of this generation.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Expected next steps
It appears from the analysis, and from the
achievements and the weaknesses mentioned
earlier, that an ambitious ECD policy review needs
to take place in francophone countries. It needs to
be supported by strong analytical work regarding
the existing policy and action plan documents in
those countries. The goal is to identify and correct
what weakens the cross-sector dialogue on the
one hand, and on the other hand to identify
and reinforce key cross-sector synergy axes.
Several key recommendations
One. Countries must correct mistakes according to
which early learning opportunities should and can be
only provided by the education sector. Early learning
is unfortunately and mistakenly understood to fall
within the education sector. However, early learning
opportunities are present and must be seized by the
health and nutrition platforms. These sectors provide
more services to children and parents during the
rst 1,000 days compared to the education sector for
instance. One consequence of this misconception is
that most health facilities do not have “friendly” spaces
with adequate toys and equipment and well-trained
personal dedicated to babies and young children.
Two. Consequently, (i) integrating early stimulation
in health and nutrition platforms is necessary to ease
the communication with parents for a stronger and
more lasting impact, and (ii) the rst 1,000 days should
be coordinated by the health sector (and nutrition).
Three. It must be agreed that, as during the
preschool age, education platforms are more in
touch with families for children aged 3 to 5 years,
therefore education should coordinate ECD.
Four. National ECD standards must rst be dened and
then shared and owned by all ECD traditional sectors.
Five. All training packages for all these traditional
sectors must be reviewed, ensuring that the format
of care services is closer to existing good parental
practices. This new approach requires that key ECD
outcomes be dened and shared among practitioners
and with parents and communities. This denition will
allow identifying a package of key competencies to
be built in frontline agents and services with respect
to the philosophy and the vision from the nurturing
care framework. It means that each agent operating
in any given ECD platform should be able to play with
children and provide at least a basic, comprehensive,
and high-impact package of cares and services. A
concrete example comes from the maternal and child
health services. Agents in those platforms should
concretely integrate the importance of welcoming
parents and babies in a warm, enthusiastic, and
respectful manner. It demands a paradigm change,
so that parents would not be looked down at as
beneciaries of services but considered key partners
for the health sector. It should be fully understood at
all levels in the sector that there is no eective and
sustainable health policy implementation without the
parents” and communities” involvement. As long as the
health sector is failing to build a strong partnership
with parents, sticking to an inecient vision of its
relationship with parent, loss of brain development
opportunities, high unit costs, low services quality,
and poor return on investment will continue to be
the daily reality of ECD in SSA francophone countries.
Once this is well understood and translated into
practice, health agents and health platforms should
be trained and empowered to integrate play-based
activities and parental coaching as part of the
prevention or even caring strategies. Playing with
babies and young children is not and should not
be considered a waste of time for service providers.
It is indeed a gain in health and well-being. It is a
key strategy to create and maintain an eective and
transformative communication between services and
communities. For instance, while communities may
not know what a gene is or what may cause a fever,
they fully know the importance of play to nourish
young children and babies. They also understand
the importance of play in developing emotional
intelligence and they do understand the importance
of emotions in child nutrition, health, and ourishing.
Six. Acknowledge that preschool is already almost
too late; quality brain stimulations are needed much
earlier. ECD professionals and stakeholders at the
institutional level should courageously question the
real contribution of preschool services when there is
no early stimulation service for babies between0and
3 years of age. Because the rst 1,000days are
the most critical window of opportunity for brain
development, it is very likely that children who
received early stimulation (by either parents and
communities or services or both) are better prepared
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
for school than children that did not (including,
potentially, if those children received preschool
services). Children who received early stimulation plus
quality preschool education are the best prepared to
succeed at school. The purpose is not to advocate for
the establishment of platforms especially designed
to provide early cognitive stimulations for those
children. The purpose is rather to clearly identify
and optimize platforms already existing wherein
brain stimulation opportunities would be optimally
seized. Notably, households and health and nutrition
platforms should be eectively providing nurturing
cares. This implies that parents are the rst actors to
build the strongest foundations for child survival and
thriving. Health and nutrition frontline agents come
right after parents but before preschool agents.
Seven. Develop a strong ECD information system
shared among all traditional ECD sectors.
Eight. Build an eective structure for the ECD
sector in which the link and its functionality
between research, innovations, policy, nancing,
implementation, monitoring, and evaluation are
claried and shared at all levels. For instance, the
cost of providing a child a holistic service needs to
be dened showing an advantage for a cross-sector
unit cost as compared to a sector-based unit cost.
Nine. Governance tools and performance and
accountability indicators must be more practically
reconsidered. In particular, the planning dialogue with
communities should be one of the most tracked pieces
of information. Regarding what is explained about the
importance of parental involvement in moving the ECD
agenda forward, it will be critical to track and share with
communities information about local governments”
investments in ECD. At the service level, platforms
should install a culture of sharing with parents
practical, simple, and useful information on ECD yearly
outcomes. They should also explain what each sector
plans to provide as services to achieve those results
and how the child is expected to behave consequently.
For example, nutrition platforms should be able to
dialogue with parents around the expected yearly
nutritional status for each age. They should also explain
how to provide early stimulation as inputs against
malnutrition. Nutrition agents should be able to explain
how early cognitive stimulation could contribute
to developing cognitive competencies and school
readiness. It will be very useful for child development
but also for parents and sectors that monitoring, and
evaluation be jointly conducted. Parents do not need
to be technically competent to be involved in these
activities. Sectors that involve parents deliver a strong
signal to communities that can serve as a needle to
sew the ties within the ECD ecosystem at the eld level.
Ten. Rethink the relationship between service
delivery systems and communities. So far, parents
and communities are not optimally and practically
targeted as partners for the service delivery system.
Their role in scaling up and sustaining intervention
remains unclear in policies and programmes. However,
there is no doubt that parents should be at the heart
of scaling up and sustainability strategies. Let’s take
the case for education in the real context of severe
resource limitations. Since the population increase
rate of children aged 3 to 5 is signicantly greater than
the facility construction rate, the preschool enrolment
rate may potentially continue to decrease despite
an increase in absolute numbers of children being
enrolled. Alternatives exist, however, through piloting
with community-based approaches for preschool
education. Governments and states need to consider
parents as great partners by investing signicantly
in parental education programmes to reinforce their
capacities to prepare their children for school. With
this new approach, parents will outnumber the formal
teachers by a factor of at least ten, and school readiness
in the country will signicantly improve and within a
relatively short time-frame. Paxson and Schady (2007)
found child health and measures of parenting quality
are associated with children’s cognitive outcomes (see
also: Pianta and Harbers, 1996; Wagner and Clayton,
1999; Sylva et al., 2003; Sweet and Applebaum,
2004; Martin et al., 2007; Sylva et al., 2008; Mistry et
al., 2010; Lohndorf et al., 2021; Pancsofar et al., n.d.).
They also found that parental beliefs and parenting
practices in early childhood are fundamental for the
development of pre-schoolers” school readiness and
executive functioning. Their ndings suggest that
pre-schoolers from low-SES homes might possibly
be improved by enhancing maternal sensitivity and
positive behavioural control strategies. These parenting
skills have the potential to mitigate the adverse
eects of low-SES environments to some extent.
The same parents will outnumber the health providers
and other public service agents. It is very clear how this
new development would help the country save money
by building concrete foundations for ECD cross-sector
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
coordination. Firstly, parents do not actually require
sophisticated training to be empowered to care for
their children. The unit cost for the training is unlikely to
be high. Unlike teacher or other agent training, parents
could receive a unique dose of holistic training on
ECD as needed instead of several and isolated sector-
based training. Parents will educate their children to be
good parents and the government might not need to
invest the same unit cost to train the next generation
of parents. In this way, families and parents can play a
greater role to support the cross-sector coordination
eorts in the eld by helping each sector to inform ECD
indicators in a comprehensive, improved manner (see
Figure 13.2). This will oer a very concrete starting point
to kick o a culture of caring for children beyond the
services and throughout the country. Monitoring tools
should also be simplied for the purpose of interacting
and communicating with communities. Parents can
do their bit towards ECD cross-sector coordination.
Figure 13.2 Cross-sector coordination pathway from the household to the central level
Community ECD structure
Local
government
Management
committee
Municipal
committee
Decentralized
gov services,
(DGS)
District ECD
services
Regional ECD
services
National
directorates
Ministries
District ECD
coordination
platform
Regional ECD
coordination
platform
National ECD
coordination
platform
Eective governance
implementation: community
involvement
Local planning, community
mobilization, partnership with
DGS
District level planning: cross-
sector coordination dialogue,
partnership
Cross-sector coordination
dialogue, M&E
Strategic dialogue: cross-
sector policy/approach
Household
level
Parents
caregivers First coordination level
National
human
development
institute
National
human
capital
coordination
Human capital policy analysis,
review, research, innovations,
partnership, nancing
Source: Giroux, 2022
Research studies should address
the following questions:
● How can integrating parents along the lines
proposed above contribute to moving the ECD
agenda forward?
● How could integrating parents improve sectors”
performance and child development outcomes?
● What would be the new yearly cost per child?
● How could the information system improve?
● How could the coordination dialogue improve?
● How could the human capital index improve?
● How could ECD move up from a sub-sector to a full
sector and what would be the gains for children
and countries?
Conclusion
Since their independence, SSA fra
ncophone countries
have made regular progress in ECD under the
leadership of health and nutrition sectors. Those sectors
which provide early services to children and their
families need to play a key role to stop the pattern of
missed brain development opportunities by integrating
early stimulation into their services. Though the way is
still long to ensure all children realize their full potential,
strategic progress is being continuously recorded. Many
countries have (i) multi-sector coordination platforms
at many levels, (ii) multi-sector coordination tools, and
(iii) multi-sector budgeted action plans for ECD. The
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
way to the next ECD coordination level is becoming
clear and while at dierent speeds, SSA francophone
countries are setting themselves up for next steps.
Investments for ECD have signicantly increased in
many francophone countries, with support from
the World Bank, UNICEF, USAID, and important new
donors like the Korea International Cooperation
Agency (KOICA). Available nancing trivially targets
access, quality, and governance. To have a greater
impact on governance, SSA francophone countries
need to invest in creating a culture of cross-sector
coordination dialogue for ECD with the view that
interventions would be simpler, more aordable, have
more impact and be more relevant to communities.
Therefore, new ECD policies and strategies should
be developed based on a robust analysis of existing
documents. They should also integrate the perspective
that parents and communities are more than simple
beneciaries. They represent key partners to scale up
interventions in less than a generation and thereafter
to sustain them. Integrating parents and communities
will potentially reinforce the cross-sector existing
mechanisms for coordination by multiplying the
number of informants and data collectors at the same
time and by feeding forward the existing information
systems. The improvement of service delivery expected
from cross-sector coordination could be more easily
reached with the involvement of communities as
key actors for the well-being of their children.
Finally, SSA francophone countries will benet from
setting up a higher coordination entity like the NIHD
in Morocco. This institute should be preserved from
politization and ruled by specialists with a clear
and strong mandate in coordinating ECD planning,
monitoring, and evaluation. The NIHD is expected
to oer the strongest structure and coherence to
the elaboration of national development plans.
This approach is sensible, as investments in ECD
(i) oer the best starts in life and (ii) provide the
highest return on investment. Setting up a NIHD as
we propose here will help increase the readability
and clarity of development programming.
The points noted above represent the next
level francophone countries in SSA and their
development partners should seek to move to.
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Chapter 14
Participatory planning
of national multisectoral
ECD Policies in
francophone Africa
Emily Vargas-Barón
Introduction
The plane door burst open, and a suocating heat
penetrated the cabin. Hailing from the tropics, I
was accustomed to high temperatures. However,
this heat was dierent; a dry piercing wave that
felt as though it were sucking all the moisture
from my body. I looked out the plane’s window
and I was unable to see anything except for a
thick beige haze. Upon arriving at the cabin door,
I walked down the staircase and felt as though I
were descending into an oven. We had landed in a
huge sandstorm. Through the blowing sand, I could
barely make out the vague shape of a building, and
as I walked toward it, I hoped it was the terminal. I
thought, “how will I survive for two weeks here?”
Two weeks later, as I left Nouakchott, the capital of
Mauritania, I had tears in my throat and I felt a longing
to return, such was the aection I had come to feel
for the people of this fascinating land. They told
me, “Nous sommes les Maures.” “We are the Moors.”
And indeed, they were descended from Moors and
Berbers who had migrated south from Spain and the
coastal littoral of North Africa sometime between
1100 to 1492. During a gathering in the coastal town
of Nouadhibou, I said to one lady, “you look like my
cousin.” She responded, “You look like my cousin!”
We looked so alike that we could have been sisters.
I felt as though I had found what must have been a
long lost relative. My ancestors from southern Spain
had dared to ride the seas to establish the Vice-
Royalty of New Granada in Colombia, while hers
courageously had chosen to preserve their Moorish
heritage in the crusted, rolling sands of the Sahel.
In June 2002, I travelled to Mauritania for the rst leg of
a three-country odyssey to begin a fascinating project
whose goal was to support national policy planning
teams in developing their rst multisectoral ECD
policies. With prior experience in creating and applying
participatory policy planning methods in education
and early childhood development (ECD) in Colombia
and other countries, I was invited to support Burkina
Faso, Mauritania, and Senegal as they prepared their
rst ECD policies – all at the same time. Ms. Jeannette
Vogelaar, the West Africa representative of the
Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Aairs, asked me to
undertake this daunting and somewhat Quixotesque
task. Jeannette also led the Working Group for Early
Childhood Development (WGECD) of the Association
for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA).
UNICEF joined the eort and collaborated fully with
project implementation. Dr Eveline Pressoir, the
gifted UNICEF Regional Advisor for ECD in Western
Africa, who was based in Dakar, Senegal, became
a close collaborator and friend. I encouraged her
to help me adapt my participatory methodologies
for multisectoral ECD policy planning to the
francophone Africa context. Ultimately, she became
suciently adept in applying these methods that
after retiring from UNICEF, she applied them in
other francophone countries of the region.
From the outset, I was aware the project would be
tremendously challenging. However, I was eager to
learn from this “experiment.” I wanted to discover
whether it would be possible to create a synergy
among ECD policy planning teams of three nations
with very dierent cultures. Ocially designated as
the “Project to Support National Policy Planning for
Early Childhood Development in Three Countries of
West Africa,” my work began in June 2002 and ocially
extended to November 2003, although I continued
to support the countries informally until late 2004.
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In 2001, in collaboration with UNICEF, UNESCO-
Breda, and ADEA, the Netherlands Ministry of
Foreign Aairs sponsored a WGECD study on ECD
policies and policy preparation in Namibia, Mauritius,
and Ghana (Torkington, 2001). Working Group
members reviewed study results during the second
consultative meeting of the WGECD that was held in
The Hague in December 2001. This discussion led to
expressions of interest on the part of representatives
of Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and Senegal to receive
technical support to prepare national ECD policies.
By 2001, interest in national policy planning for ECD
had increased signicantly, due especially to the World
Education Forum held in April 2000 in Dakar, Senegal.
The Dakar Framework for Action explicitly called for all
nations to prepare national ECD policies (UNESCO,
2000). Nations were encouraged to ensure their ECD
policy plans were consistent with Poverty Reduction
Strategy Papers (PRSPs), Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs), and other national policies and plans.
In addition, the Conference of Ministers of Education
of African Minister States, MINEDAF VII, had called
for the formulation of ECD plans in all nations of
sub-Saharan Africa (ADEA, 1998). It was recognized
that nations of sub-Saharan Africa would face major
challenges as they sought to develop culturally
appropriate, eective, and sustainable ECD policies.
This three-country project was to lead the way
and ensure strong country-level participation.
National strengths and challenges
Achieving comprehensive and participatory
national ECD policy planning in Burkina Faso,
Mauritania and Senegal entailed identifying
cultural and leadership strengths as well as
facing challenges regarding human, institutional,
workforce, and nancial resources for improving
the status of young children and their families.
Strengths included the presence of strong community
and cultural organizational structures, remarkable
family cohesion and deep aection for children, an
appreciation of the roles of non-formal, informal and
formal education for good child development, strong
traditions of collaboration among social groups and
families, and the presence of some impressive leaders
in ECD sectors and disciplines that were dedicated
to improving child and family development.
Challenges included governance structures that
favoured authoritarian often military leadership
and centralized decision-making processes
in some countries, socio-economic instability
that could impede consistent attention to
social development, sectoral approaches to
planning, and a lack of governmental attention
to ensuring children’s and women’s rights.
Institutional challenges included a lack of
organizational frameworks and low levels of
investment in multisectoral elds such as ECD, a
centralization of services for young children mainly
in the capital or other major urban settings, a lack
of well-developed multisectoral or integrated
ECD services, a paucity of policy advocacy and
communications for parents and families, some
attention to preschool education but few services
for children from conception to 3 years of age
when they would most benet from ECD services,
and a lack of experience in developing integrated
or well-coordinated services for health, nutrition,
sanitation, education, social welfare and protection.
Environmental challenges included impoverished
national resource bases due to dicult Sahelian and
Saharan environmental conditions, inequities in wealth
distribution, and limitations regarding transportation
and communications. Famines due especially to
desertication, changing climactic patterns, imported
agricultural methods, and a series of food security
issues had led to high levels of child malnutrition.
These challenges had caused high levels of endemic
poverty in both urban and rural areas compounded
by migration from rural zones to urban slums that
lacked essential health and other social services.
Health, nutrition, and sanitation challenges led to
chronic ill health and endemic diseases, including a
rapid increase in the incidence of HIV/AIDs. Health
systems lacked adequate geographical coverage
and service quality. High rates of fertility, maternal
mortality, infant and child mortality, and low birth
weight abounded, along with high rates of child
stunting and low levels of coverage on the part of
nutrition programmes. Inadequate access to clean
water, sanitation services, and education regarding
household hygiene and community sanitation
exacerbated already fragile child health situations.
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Education challenges included limited access to
quality basic education (especially for girls), high
nancial and human costs for basic education related
to high levels of grade repetition, absenteeism, and
attrition before the completion of primary school. In
addition, few programmes for parenting and family
support services existed, especially for pregnant girls
and women, divorced or single mothers of young
children, and adolescent girls from poor communities.
Few adequate pre- and in-service training systems
existed for service personnel working in ECD
programmes, including parent educators, preschool
teachers, community health workers, therapists,
and others. There was a general lack of mid-level
managers for planning, coordinating, implementing,
supervising, and evaluating ECD programmes.
Complex emergencies and crises within and
between nations also negatively aected children
and mothers, and especially those displaced
from their homes and/or living in refugee camps
in the Casamance of Senegal and southern
Burkina Faso. Violence and displacement most
negatively aected children and women.
Special challenges for children included high levels
of disabilities and developmental delays, and a lack
of community outreach and child developmental
screening services to identify them. No early
childhood intervention services existed to help
parents provide early stimulation, nurturing care,
and family support. Few laws and other legal
structures had been established to ensure juridical
protection for pregnant women, new mothers,
and children from birth to 8 years of age. In some
settings, and especially in ones with social unrest,
domestic violence and child abuse and neglect were
often found, along with the presence of mendicant
children and persons who exploited them on the
streets. At that time, many children were also aected
by the loss of their parents to HIV/AIDs, and the
number of orphans had grown in each country.
Given these pervasive and complex realities, it was
clear that cost-eective multisectoral, integrated
and well-coordinated programmes were needed.
The goal was to try to use multisectoral national
ECD policies and action plans to help the three
nations address the needs of children, with a special
emphasis on at-risk children and their families.
As noted, most West African families are highly
dedicated to their children and are hard-working. At
the time this project was established, new leadership
for ECD was emerging in each of these countries.
These leaders were skilled in various professional
areas, and they were very collaborative. They faced
signicant challenges, including severely restricted
resources, desertication, loss of livelihoods, and
a low absorptive capacity for managing large
programmes. It became clear they were dedicated to
working hard to resolve as many of these problems
as possible through preparing and implementing
high-quality ECD policies and action plans.
Project guidance and objectives
General guidance
Three national ECD policies and action plans
were to be developed, focusing on expanding
budgetary and other resources to achieve
ECD programming that would be:
● participatory and locally “owned”;
● holistic, comprehensive, multisectoral or
integrated across relevant sectors;
● continuous from conception to age 8;
● culturally derived and culturally competent;
● equitable, reaching the under-served and
most needy families and communities;
● family-centred and family strengthening;
● community-based and nationally supported;
● high in quality, both in terms of
outcomes and inputs;
● exible, accountable and creative; and
● sustainable.
In 2002, it was recommended that, to the extent
possible, ECD policies should cover the period
from conception to age 8 to ensure adequate
attention would be given to the initial period of
rapid brain development from conception to age 3.
Policies should address holistic child development,
parenting and support for family strengthening, early
childhood education and care, and children’s positive
preparation for and transition to primary school.
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Objectives
Project objectives were established based on
discussions held during the WGECD meeting of The
Hague in December 2001 as well as on ECD policy
planning experiences in other nations of Africa, Europe
and South and North America. The project had four
ambitious objectives and several sub-objectives:
Objective 1. Support countries in conducting
policy planning processes and assist them to
prepare their policies for future implementation:
● help country teams consider essential elements
for preparing a multisectoral ECD policy;
● review the status of their policy planning
process and provide technical support
for their planning activities;
● consider the relationship and articulation
of multisectoral ECD policies with existing
education, health, nutrition, sanitation, and
protection policies, poverty reduction strategies,
and other cross-sectoral policies and plans of
government and institutions of civil society;
● stimulate increased governmental support
for ECD, especially at the central level;
● consider alternative implementation strategies
during the policy planning process with the goal
of achieving enhanced programme feasibility; and
● assist country teams to consider systems
for monitoring and evaluation to help
ensure the achievement of outcomes
and full systemic accountability.
Objective 2. Strengthen national networking,
partnerships, cooperation, and policy dialogue
among practitioners, communities, NGOs,
trainers, governmental representatives,
and other ECD stakeholders:
● help country teams identify potential
national stakeholders and partners in the
public sector, civil society, communities,
private sector, and faith communities;
● consider alternative plans for community
outreach, inclusion and consultation;
● assist country teams to prepare Work Plans for
conducting participatory consultative processes
to ensure a strong “ownership” of ECD policies;
● help develop plans to strengthen or establish
sustainable networks and coalitions of
partners and stakeholders for supporting
ECD systems and programmes; and
● review nancial and other resource issues
to help create sustainable ECD policies
and expand funding support.
Objective 3. Enhance methodological and
analytical skills for policy development and analysis
in the eld of ECD so that governmental and other
institutions strengthen institutional capacity:
● help build capacity for participatory policy
planning and analytic activities in both
government and civil society in each nation;
● identify key areas for future capacity-
building and tool development in
support of ECD policy development and
implementation in sub-Saharan Africa;
● help each nation build an Action Plan for ECD
policy advocacy, implementation, investment
and accountability, based on their strengths,
knowledge, practice and experience; and
● provide suggestions for future methodological
guidelines for ECD policy planning.
Objective 4. Identify strategic action areas
for advocacy, mobilization of public and
political support, capacity-building, and
resources for ECD in sub-Saharan Africa:
● contribute to regional capacity-building
and networking in ECD policy planning;
● promote awareness of the importance of ECD
services for social and economic development
and poverty alleviation in West and Central Africa;
● provide policy guidance for the consideration of
other nations in sub-Saharan Africa that plan to
prepare national ECD policies and action plans;
● help build support for WGECD’s subregional
group for West and Central Africa as a step
toward forging a continent-wide supportive
network for ECD in sub-Saharan Africa; and
● attract additional donor and technical
support for ECD in the region.
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Thus, this very challenging and ambitious advisory
activity was expected to build knowledge and
develop new policy planning tools to assist
future ECD policy planning activities in sub-
Saharan Africa and other world regions.
Project overview and core concepts
General project overview
From the outset, the project faced numerous major
challenges. For example, the objectives posited
that the consultant would assist country teams
that were already established. However, country
teams did not exist until the consultant arrived
in each nation and began to work with leading
ministries. Mauritania had some initial policy
work underway that was being conducted by a
consultant, but a full country team had not been
constituted. The rst activity to be accomplished in
each nation was to help representatives of leading
ministries discuss coordination for policy planning,
membership of country teams, terms of reference,
lead drafters, and members of drafting teams.
Other major challenges were the notable lack of
knowledge and experience at ministerial levels
regarding participatory policy planning processes,
including the preparation of situation analyses,
mapping studies, needs assessments, and resource
reviews as well as conducting community and
provincial consultations, and developing methods
for consensus building. The multisectoral approach
to ECD needed to be explained as well as the
reasons for emphasizing the period from conception
to 3 years, parenting, and family support. Action
plans, nancial projections, policy advocacy, and
multisectoral ECD evaluation, and monitoring
systems were also presented, along with ways
to build diversied funding support for ECD.
Participatory processes
The reasons for conducting participatory processes
of ECD policy planning were new to each country
team. Previously, they had only experienced
traditional “central planning” that featured ministerial
personnel and external “experts” who established the
policy structure, wrote the contents of policies, and
ensured they met donor agencies” requirements.
Throughout the project, substantial training was
required regarding the rationale, methods, and results
of participatory planning. Fortunately, excellent
specialists in sectoral planning (e.g., health, education,
and sanitation), national statistics, and programme
development were found in each nation. These
specialists quickly learned participatory approaches,
grasped their relevance to multisectoral coordination,
and applied what they learned eectively. However,
they often lacked the political clout needed to
make nal decisions regarding policy contents.
The multisectoral and integrated ECD
programme approach
Upon arriving in each country, my rst step was to
help organize national ECD policy planning technical
teams and steering committees, from which team
leaders and policy drafting sub-teams were selected.
Each country team requested and received workshop
presentations, individual coaching, and small group
discussions on the multisectoral approach to ECD.
One challenge was that in 2002, few multisectoral and
integrated ECD programmes existed in these countries.
Fortunately, the Bisongo programme of Burkina Faso
presented a model whose directors, although still
developing the programme, were attempting to
build an integrated ECD programme. The conceptual
framework for the Case de Tout Petites programme in
Senegal also featured another integrated approach.
Infancy and parenting education
In 2001, virtually no parenting education and support
programmes were found in the region. In West African
cultures, parents and extended families had been
universally responsible for children’s development from
birth to 3 years of age. However, the status of children
living in poverty and other dicult situations was
very fragile. Due to the lack of parenting programmes,
few understood their eectiveness, especially for
such families. Teacher and caregiver training did not
include infant and toddler development. Furthermore,
research results from other world areas regarding
early intervention and parenting education had not
convinced West Africans of the potential ecacy
and benets of such programmes. Participation in
parenting programmes that were culturally derived
appeared to be essential to help service providers
understand how they might help improve child
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and family development, especially in impoverished
communities. Despite this situation, signicant interest
was expressed by national leaders in developing
new culturally appropriate programmes for parents.
From policy to implementation
In the region, sectoral policy work generally
lacked a linkage between policy planning and
the preparation of annual action plans. A special
eort was required to explain the importance of
building a comprehensive and participatory policy
planning and implementation process, as opposed
to simply drafting a policy document in a room that,
once adopted, would be placed in a bookcase.
None of the country teams had conducted nancial
projections or simulations, and many team members
feared proposing nancial investments that
traditionally had been the sole province of powerful
national decision-makers in ministries of nance and
planning. It was essential to teach country teams how
to prepare budgetary plans and proposals based on
the results of decentralized consultations and to build
a national consensus for those proposals. The role of
social communications for policy advocacy to achieve
policy objectives and expand investments in ECD
also required a major eort. Including an emphasis
on multisectoral monitoring, evaluation, and annual
reporting was also novel to many sectoral specialists.
Diversied funding support for policy
planning
At the outset, country teams did not understand
the reasons for securing multiple sources of funding
support for their policy planning processes. Initially,
they were overly dependent upon UNICEF as the main
donor. Other multilateral and bilateral donors and
international NGOs were interested in participating.
Each team, frequently with the encouragement of
UNICEF country oces, reached out to other donors
and attracted considerable support for their activities.
It was hoped that this change toward diversication
would build incremental support for policy
implementation; however, that did not always occur.
Project activities and results
Project activities
To support the country teams, I travelled several
times to Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and Senegal
from June 15th, 2002, to November 30th, 2004,
and for a few additional months, I continued to
support country teams with policy adoption, to the
extent possible. In addition, meeting reports and
PowerPoint presentations, prepared in French, were
distributed at a regional conference held in Dakar
from 21-23 October 2003 for 14 countries of West
and Central Africa to inform them about the project.
During country missions, small group training was
provided for country teams along with visits to
ministries and non-governmental organizations
(NGOs). I tried to help build national support for
the policy planning process and prepare or adapt
documents and PowerPoint presentations for
country teams on planning policy development
processes, considering methods for holding
regional and community consultations, preparing
nancial projections, identifying, and selecting
indicators, and conducting policy advocacy
and social communications. I gathered, read,
and analysed national documents on poverty,
health, nutrition, education, sanitation, and child
social/juridical protection, worked with lead
policy drafters and their teams, and reviewed
and commented on successive drafts of policy
documents and action plans. Finally, I reported to
leaders of the nations visited, UNICEF, ADEA, the
Foreign Ministry of the Netherlands, and others.
During three of my visits to the region, we held
regional workshops to build a synergy among
country teams. The rst was held in Ouagadougou,
Burkina Faso, 9-11 September 2002. The second
was convened in Dakar, Senegal, 6-7 February 2003,
and the third in Nouakchott, Mauritania, 21-23
July 2003. Each regional training workshop began
with the presentation of country reports or draft
country ECD policy documents, followed by a group
assessment of each country’s progress and needs.
The groups engaged in peer-support to assist
each other with their policy planning processes.
Then, special topics were presented, such as:
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● how to link ECD policies with PRSPs,
MDGs, sectoral plans, etc.;
● methods for conducting community and
provincial consultation workshops;
● multisectoral and integrated approaches to ECD;
● ECD and parenting education and support;
● policy indicators: how to select and use
them within multisectoral ECD monitoring
and evaluation systems; and
● how to prepare nancial projections.
The nal section of each regional workshop was
devoted to preparing or updating each country’s
Work Plan, presenting the Work Plan for discussion,
making suggestions for the next regional meeting,
and conducting other activities for peer exchange.
In addition to planning, holding, and reporting
on these regional training workshops, to
promote ECD policy planning in this and other
regions of Africa, I assisted with consultations
and conferences, including the Second African
International Conference on ECD, Asmara, Eritrea,
28-31 August 2002, the WGECD Consultation at
The Hague, the Netherlands, 14-16 April 2003; and
the UNICEF WCARO Regional Conference on ECD,
held in Dakar, Senegal, 21-23 October 2003.
National planning processes
Burkina Faso
The national ECD policy movement of Burkina
Faso was led by the Minister for Social Action and
National Solidarity, with operational coordination
conducted by MsAgnes Kabore, Director General
of Social Action in the Ministry for Social Action
and National Solidarity. Before the project began in
Burkina Faso, this ministry was delegated by national
decree in July 2002 with the task of developing the
policy for young children and their families. Some
discussion initially occurred with other ministries,
such as the Ministry of Basic Education and Literacy,
regarding who would lead the policy planning
eort. It was decided that because the Ministry of
Education focused mainly on formal education,
to achieve a more multisectoral and integrated
approach, it would be necessary to select a ministry
with a larger mandate and a track record in building
inter-ministerial agreements and working groups.
Two planning committees were developed
to conduct the policy planning process:
● The Multidisciplinary Technical
Committee, composed of selected
ministries and national NGOs.
● The National Validation Committee, composed
of members of the Multidisciplinary
Technical Committee and a large array of
additional representatives of government,
private sector, associations, NGOs,
communities, and cultural groups.
These groups proved to be exceedingly helpful
in conducting community, provincial and central
consultations. Their contributions during a national
review meeting on the four main studies regarding
the status of children in Burkina Faso were very
useful for framing the main strategies of the policy.
MsKabore grasped the potential power and utility
of the participatory approach, and her leadership in
carrying out the planning process was outstanding.
The lead drafter, Mr. Ignace Sanwidi, was an
accomplished and highly respected educational
planner of Burkina Faso who had recently retired
from UNESCO after many years of service in other
nations. He led a drafting team of four specialists
who reviewed the status of children and the services
provided for children in the following areas: ECD
and education; health and nutrition; sanitation;
protection, poverty, and economic development.
The country team carried out consultations in four
cultural regions of Burkina Faso using local languages
and holding meetings with citizens at community
and regional levels. The drafting team prepared
successive drafts of the ECD policy and action plan,
with a second round of consultations and several
reviews by the committees. A large National Policy
Workshop was held in Ouagadougou to discuss
the third draft of the policy, and a consensus was
achieved. A national forum was planned to be
held in Ouagadougou to present the policy to the
nation. However, the adoption of the nal draft was
postponed due to representatives of the World Bank
who convinced the Ministry of Education to focus
on expanding and improving primary education.
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The draft ECD policy, the National Strategy for the
Integrated Development of the Young Child in Burkina
Faso, was nally adopted in 2007, but without its
action plan. From reports, it appears that the lack
of a strong action plan greatly hampered policy
implementation. Essentially, multisectoral leadership
was unable to overcome strong sectoral traditions,
especially due to the stresses of major unrest in
Burkina Faso and several neighbouring countries.
Burkina Faso has proud and accomplished leaders;
however, greatly expanded nancial and technical
support was required to improve the status of its
children and families. The delay in policy adoption
combined with the lack of a strong implementation
plan, a functioning system of accountability, and
eective policy advocacy hampered national
eorts to implement the policy. Fortunately, some
notable advances were achieved in strengthening
integrated child development centres, and
services for early education, health, nutrition,
sanitation, and protection were incrementally
expanded after 2007. Much remains to be done.
Mauritania
The ECD policy movement in Mauritania was led by
the Secretary of State for the Status and Condition
of Women, with operational coordination by the
Secretariat’s Director of Family and Children’s
Services, MsHetoutou mint Abdoullah. Prior to
my rst visit in June 2002, the Secretariat had
been delegated the task of policy, regulations,
and services for women with young children, but
it had been given a very small budget, mainly for
dealing with major social and economic needs.
An inter-ministerial Early Childhood Council
was established including representatives of
relevant ministries and a few national NGOs
and associations. MsAbdoullah was adept at
managing the political realities of her nation,
and she steadfastly pursued project goals.
The planning team was composed of specialists in ECD
mainly from the Secretariat. The lead policy drafter,
Dr Eby Ould Cheikh, a leading Mauritanian specialist
in health planning, helped manage the policy
development process. He became knowledgeable
about other ECD sectors, and subsequently he
assisted other countries to prepare their ECD policies
and action plans. Members of the country team
learned about multisectoral ECD through one-on-
one training, small group discussions, participation
in community and provincial consultations and
regional training workshops as well as international
travels to programmes and conferences, many
of which were sponsored by UNICEF.
The country team in Mauritania completed its National
Policy for Early Childhood Development in Mauritania
in February 2004, along with its well-prepared Action
Plan. These documents were comprehensive, well
structured, and provided strategies, programmes,
indicators, and budget projections. Strategic choices
presented in the policy responded to many of the
most critical issues in child and family development in
Mauritania. They presented plans for long-term policy
implementation, policy advocacy, and transparent
policy evaluation and monitoring. However, during
the period of policy planning, it became clear that the
absorptive capacity of the nation would be limited.
At the time I wrote:
Barring unforeseen political events, such as another
coup or a radical change of leadership in the
Secretariat, because of the commitment of our
colleagues in Mauritania, I expect the policy to
function as a model for the region. Furthermore,
signicant capacity-building has occurred through the
team’s participation in this project that subsequently
will assist with policy implementation.” (E. Vargas-
Barón, personal communication, February 2004)
However, no amount of training could compensate
for the loss of governmental support for child
development that occurred due to repeated changes
of government and coups during ensuing years.
This situation has led me to explore the challenges
of ECD policy implementation in countries with
authoritarian leadership. Although a few autocratic
leaders do focus on child development, most do not.
Senegal
The country team of Senegal was ocially led by
the delegated minister in charge of early childhood
and the “Huts for Little Children” (Case des Tout-Petits),
which was attached to the Ministry of Education,
and subsequently delegated to the Presidency. The
leadership of the ECD policy planning process was
given to the Cabinet of the Delegated Ministry for
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Early Childhood and the Case de Tout Petits (MDPCTP).
The director of the country team was MrMoussa
Ndao, the Early Childhood Coordinator at MDPCTP.
At the outset of our policy work with Senegal, the
management of then President Wade’s banner
programme for the Case de Tout Petits was in the
Ministry of the Family, Social Development, and
National Solidarity (MFSDNS), a special ministry for
ECD. Subsequently, the leadership for early childhood
policy and for the Case de Tout Petits was moved to the
Delegated Ministry MDPCTP. Although some people
were transferred between the two ministries, the
move led to a major revision of programme objectives,
mandated areas, methods, activities, and budgets.
Parent education, for example, remained largely, but
not solely, with the MFSDNS but without signicant
budgetary resources. The Case de Tout Petits and
activities surrounding this programme were placed
solely in the MDPCTP and given greater funding.
A policy planning team was developed with
approximately 30 specialists representing all sectors
concerned with ECD in Senegal, including both
government oces and NGOs. People working on
programmes in regions outside the capital city of
Dakar were invited to participate. To draft the ECD
policy and action plan, the country team selected M.
Tamsir Samb, a skilled INEAD researcher and leader
for child development who was ably assisted by M.
Oumar Barry, a noted researcher in child development,
along with a small team of leading national specialists.
Four consultation workshops were conducted in
dierent regions. A major study on parenting practices,
contracted separately, was completed during the
preparation of the policy, and it helped to reinforce
some areas that were included in the policy.
The National Policy for the Integrated Development of the
Young Child of Senegal and its Action Plan were formally
adopted and launched in November 2004. Benetting
from strong and continuing presidential support for
ECD, national ECD leaders successfully implemented
most major strategies of their policy, including
strategic priorities for the Case de Tout Petits, early
education, and child nutrition, health, and protection.
Key lessons learned
Following are some “lessons learned”
during this three-country project.
Political will
The political will of national leaders is critically
important in governments that are democratic or
autocratic. Major eorts should be made at the
outset to secure or reinforce political will for ECD
policy planning and implementation. Presidents,
prime ministers, key ministers, and parliamentarians
of all or most political parties should be encouraged
to publicly express strong support for ECD policy
planning and implementation. Policy advocacy
in terms of policy briefs and visits to oces is not
enough; public statements of support from national
leaders are essential to helping ensure policy
adoption and eective policy implementation.
Inter-agency partnerships
Inter-agency partnerships are helpful for conducting
participatory ECD policy planning processes.
Collaborative arrangements led by ADEA’s WGECD, in
close coordination with UNICEF’s national, regional,
and central oces, were highly successful in achieving
key objectives for national policy planning. This
partnership signicantly reduced the costs that
usually pertain to national policy planning. Eorts
were made to include additional partners (especially
bilateral and multilateral donors and international
NGOs) to ensure sucient diversied funding and
resources were provided to cover costs related to
ECD policy planning, including national consultants,
regional workshop costs, travel, materials, etc. These
partnerships helped develop diversied support for
the national ECD policies in two of the countries. They
also promoted transparency and accountability and
helped develop national leadership for coordinating
donor assistance for programmes included in the
policies. Without adequate diversied funding at
the outset for policy planning, two of the three
countries initially were unable to meet their goals for
conducting regional and community consultations.
These countries ultimately achieved their consultation
goals, but only after pausing to conduct fundraising
activities. From project initiation onward, international
donors dedicated to ECD should help nations include
as many international and regional partners as possible
both for policy planning and policy implementation.
UNICEF and UNESCO played very helpful roles in this
respect, as did the Government of the Netherlands.
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Synergies from inter-country dialogue
Inter-country dialogue held during policy planning
processes is also very important. We learned that
when country teams develop ECD policies at the
same time, they prot greatly from exchanging
experiences and discussing challenging problems
related to national policy planning. Supportive
bonds were developed between country teams,
and the undercurrent of positive competition kept
each country team on its toes. These exchanges
helped reinforce national leadership and the
sense of policy “ownership” of each team.
Initial consultant visits
Initial consultant visits should focus on structuring the
policy planning process and working with ministers
and their personnel. Organizational structures
for multisectoral ECD policy planning must be
established rapidly to conduct a successful policy
planning process. This goal was accomplished in
each country. The international consultant plays an
essential role in helping country leaders consider
their options and learn about policy planning
experiences in other countries. They should also
promote positive communications, help schedule,
prepare and sometimes even facilitate certain
consensus building and decision-making meetings.
In some instances, it became necessary to mediate
decision making processes among individuals or sub-
groups and help to build a strong esprit de corps.
Each country team initially experienced diculties
in selecting members of its policy coordination
committees and in ensuring the commitment of
all members to the eort. In one case, members
expected payment and other benets even though
this activity was a part of their regular responsibilities.
To avoid potential misunderstandings, from the outset
it is important to establish terms of reference for
each team, list all members, and clarify expectations,
roles and nancial support for their work.
Flexibility
Structuring the policy planning process requires
great exibility on the part of all participants. Every
country has a dierent policy environment in terms
of institutions, inter-ministerial relations, traditional
and institutional cultures, ideology, governance
and leadership styles, methods of legislation,
decision-making processes, rules for holding ocial
meetings, systems of nancial management, etc.
Models for ECD policies should not be imported
from other nations because each country’s policy
environment, needs and institutions are dierent.
Because policy options are sensitive and must
be established exibly within national contexts,
donors and planning specialists should not give
countries copies of policies and action plans of
other nations and recommend they copy them.
However, successful participatory policy planning
processes tend to be quite similar from country to
country, and these processes can be replicated. A
broad array of possible ECD objectives, programme
approaches, indicators, collaborative arrangements,
consultative processes, etc. can be considered;
however, national, subregional and municipal
decisions should result from consensus building
regarding national and sub-national priorities.
At the outset of planning, it is essential to provide
country teams with skills for guiding policy planning
processes; options for structuring their intent; a broad
array of approaches for conducting consultations at
community, provincial and national levels; methods
for establishing objectives, strategic priorities,
services, activities, indicators, schedules, and budgets;
and appropriate spaces for achieving consensus,
adopting, advocating for, and implementing policies.
A broad coalition for ECD policy planning
A broad coalition for ECD policy planning should be
established at the outset. Governmental institutions
should ensure the full participation of all relevant
public institutions and stakeholders of key civil society
and private sector institutions. In nations with weak
NGO systems, the ECD policy planning process should
be used to help strengthen existing NGOs and their
networks, and to encourage the development of new
ECD NGOs and networks, as needed. Representatives
of the following sectors should be included from
the outset: nance and planning, health, nutrition,
sanitation, education, juridical and social protection,
councils or associations for special populations,
national statistical oces, women’s programmes,
and possibly rural and urban development initiatives.
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Donors should be invited to a special initial planning
meeting at the outset, and they should be periodically
informed of progress, challenges, needs and results.
Situation analyses
Analyses, including the mapping of ECD services,
needs assessments, nancial, personnel and training
resource reviews, and studies on the status of children,
revealed major barriers and challenges to good child
development in each country. In two countries,
situation analyses conducted by country teams
constituted the rst studies of their type regarding
the status and comprehensive needs of pregnant
adolescents and women, and of infants, toddlers, and
young children and their families. These studies were
of great value to policy planners and programme
developers alike. They were fundamental to helping
people participating in national, provincial, and local
consultations to understand the plight of many
children and parents living in poverty and other
dicult circumstances. Situation analyses also provided
essential baseline information and helped teams
select their policy goals, objectives, strategic priorities,
services and activities, and indicators for accountability.
Policy planning processes
Policy planning processes utilizing multisectoral
and integrated approaches to ECD constitute
valuable learning experiences that are complex and
necessarily time consuming. Because multisectoral
and integrated approaches ideally should cover the
period from preconception to age 8 and include
several sectors, ECD policy planning processes are
highly complex. The three nations lacked experience
in cross-sectoral coordination. Therefore, they needed
considerable time to plan and carry out consultations
and consensus building meetings, draft and revise
their policies, and build support for their eorts.
Their institutions were already seriously stressed by
many other challenges, and they had relatively few
highly trained professional ECD sta members. For
these reasons, at least one and one-half to two years
should be allotted in similar settings to conducting
ECD policy planning processes. These months do not
represent lost time. Rather, participants learn many
new concepts and skills during these processes, and
they apply during the policy planning period, policy
implementation, and in other aspects of their work.
Policy alignment must be stressed
The ECD policies of the three countries were carefully
aligned with Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers
(PRSPs), Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC)
planning, Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),
plans for Education for All and other sectoral plans
for health, nutrition, education, sanitation, protection,
women’s or children’s development, etc. However,
ECD policies contribute far more than simply present
relevant sections of other plans. They establish new
multisectoral and integrative approaches, enable
programme coordination, and often help develop
new organizational structures for ensuring children
receive expanded and improved resources according
to policy priorities and strategies. International
consultants and donors should help ensure national
leaders improve policy alignment in all ECD areas.
Incentives
Incentives for policy development and donor
coordination are required from the outset. Given
many demands upon the time of ministerial ocials,
severely restricted national budgets for ECD policy
planning, and the relative scarcity of planning
resources in West Africa, from the outset it was
necessary to consider dierent incentives for ECD
policy planning and donor coordination. National
donor coalitions for policy planning were developed,
including national, regional, and international
donors, as well as NGOs and foundations, with each
providing nancial, technical, or material resources.
This support was required to engage national and
international consultants, national, subregional,
and local consultations, hold consensus building
activities, conduct training workshops, materials, etc.
A budget for policy planning should be developed
at the outset and changed exibly over time
to achieve project goals. In two countries, the
initial buy-in on the part of donors helped ensure
their ownership of the resulting policy.
Finally, the existence of a credible ECD policy and
action plan helps meet often-heard donor complaints
(and excuses) that they will not invest in ECD because
developing nations lack well-conceived, costed, and
detailed ECD policies and action plans. In Senegal,
the policy assisted the country to achieve its ECD
objectives. In Mauritania, the policy was excellent
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in reecting ECD needs and priorities; however,
successive changes of government precluded
consistent eorts to prioritize ECD. In Burkina Faso,
World Bank representatives encouraged the country
to rst give priority to primary school education. Three
years later, other ministries were successful in directing
investment interest back to ECD as a foundation
for improving child development and learning.
A national lack of knowledge
Each of the three nations had public and private
preschool education programmes for some children
from 3 to 5 years of age; however, in 2002, they only
served from 1-4% of potentially eligible children.
They lacked programmes for children birth to 3,
other than basic health services for some children.
Each country team received coaching and training
regarding the importance of the early period and
the types of programmes and services that could be
developed. The age range of birth to 3 years continues
to require more funding support, training and advisory
assistance to ensure adequate community services
are developed in collaboration with communities and
parents for the benet of families and young children.
Frequent confusion
Confusion was also found regarding “goals for
programme development” and “goals for policy
development.” National advocates for specic
programmes frequently confused “ECD programme
advocacy” with “ECD policy planning.” Some donors
also exhibited similar tendencies. It is quite natural
for programme advocates to try to dominate the
discourse and decision making. Repeated coaching
was required to help decision-makers understand the
dierence and thereby enable them to contribute
fully to the general policy planning process. This
situation should be anticipated, explained at the
outset, and addressed again whenever needed.
Plans for social communication
and policy advocacy
Plans for social communication and policy advocacy
should be included in all ECD policies and action plans.
Social communication plans for policy advocacy are
of critical importance to achieving policy objectives.
Communication plans cannot be prepared until ECD
organizational structures, strategic priorities, activities,
and services have been outlined. The three nations
lacked experience in ECD policy advocacy, and
special support and training for ECD policy advocacy
and social communication was required. National
media and public relations groups were invited to
participate, as possible, in policy planning processes
to gain their help with future advocacy activities.
Plans for policy implementation, monitoring,
evaluation, and annual revision
Plans for policy implementation, monitoring and
evaluation must also be included in ECD policies.
Multisectoral ECD evaluation, monitoring, and
reporting systems for policy accountability are
essential components of all ECD policies and should
be linked to annual programme and budgetary
planning for ECD. Ministries that manage ECD
programmes tend to have few specialists in
evaluation and monitoring, and educational and
health management information systems (EMIS)
were still in their infancy in the three countries in
2002. In addition to EMIS, it is advisable to include
representatives of national planning departments,
statistics bureaus and institutes, universities, and
research institutes in country teams. These specialists
may become personnel who will guide the monitoring
and evaluation of ECD policy implementation.
A multisectoral plan for ECD monitoring and
evaluation cannot be fully prepared until a consensus
is reached on basic policy objectives, strategic
priorities, services, activities, and key indicators.
National inspiration
Additional nations can be inspired to develop ECD
policies through observing policy development
processes in nearby countries. Invitations to Chad
and Niger to participate in the Third Regional
Training Workshop in Mauritania inspired them
to reconsider their policy planning approaches.
However, follow-up discussions revealed they had
not received enough guidance to understand
essential points or apply them in their countries.
Additional technical assistance was also needed.
However, many participants in the UNICEF conference
held in Dakar for 14 nations remarked that it was
valuable in providing them with tools and knowledge
of other country experiences. Such types of regional
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meetings could help inspire and orient ECD leaders
in additional nations of sub-Saharan Africa who are
contemplating developing or revising and updating
their ECD policies. Although regional workshops
are helpful, experienced specialists in ECD policy
planning are still required to assist countries to
conduct successful policy planning processes.
Conclusion
No detailed follow up study of the three ECD
policies has been conducted yet. Nonetheless,
it is possible to state that the four main project
objectives and many of the sub-objectives were
achieved, albeit slowly in the case of Burkina Faso.
In some instances, expectations were exceeded.
All three countries completed and adopted their
ECD policies and action plans. Although Burkina
Faso’s action plan was prepared, it was not updated
and adopted. Mauritania and Senegal ocially
adopted their policies and action plans soon
after they completed them. Although Burkina
Faso completed its ECD policy and action plan
in 2004, due to the emphasis of the World Bank
on promoting primary education, the adoption
of the ECD policy was stalled until 2007.
Participatory policy planning processes conducted in
Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and Senegal assisted each
country team to consider new multisectoral and
integrated approaches for expanding and improving
ECD services. The processes proved to be valuable
for participants. Many members of each national
team were motivated to make new contributions to
ECD programme development over time. According
to reports from friends in Mauritania and Burkina
Faso, where policy implementation was weaker
than in Senegal, new ECD leaders were identied,
trained, and motivated to begin programmes and
improve existing ones. In the case of Senegal, ECD
became a point of national pride, and it continues
to be strongly supported by national decision-
makers. Therefore, we can assert that the policies
and action plans helped improve and expand from
some to many ECD programmes in each country.
As of this writing, almost 20 years have passed
since that rst day in 2002. A new round of ECD
policy planning activities should be pursued in each
country, with the goal of ensuring comprehensive
policy implementation in the future.
Another result from this three-country project was
the preparation and publication of Planning Policies
for Early Childhood Development: Guidelines for
Action. This guide was translated from English into
French, Spanish and Russian, and it continues to
be used in many countries (Vargas-Barón, 2005).
This guide should be revised and updated.
After working in these three countries of the African
continent, I was invited to support Cameroon,
the Central African Republic, Lesotho, Rwanda,
and later Tunisia in developing their ECD policies.
These experiences and additional international
research on ECD policy planning have reinforced
my conviction that with strong political will on the
part of national governmental leaders, countries
will improve their services for young children and
families. However, lacking that essential leadership
and often facing authoritarian governments, it is
very dicult to do much more than inspire ECD
specialists to work hard to contribute as much as
possible at community and provincial levels.
As a result of this three-country policy project,
new partnerships were developed within and
among nations, between country teams and
national ECD specialists, and among several
regional and international donor agencies. These
partnerships continue to yield positive results
for improving the status of young children and
their families in francophone West Africa.
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References
ADEA. 1998. Report of the Seventh Conference of Ministers of
Education of African Minister States (MINEDAF VII). Pub-
lished conference report. Paris, UNESCO. Available at:
http://specialcollections.nust.na:8080/greenstone3/
library/sites/localsite/collect/unesco/index/assoc/
HASHe79a.dir/Seventh_conference_on_Ministers_
of_Education_of_African_Member_States.pdf;jses-
sionid=C9CD87FD5B4091F7E69B3D0EA9D78E86
Torkington, K. 2001. WGECD Policy Project: A Synthesis
Report. Abidjan, Ivory Coast/The Hague, ADEA/Neth-
erlands Ministry of Foreign Aairs.
UNESCO. 2000. Dakar Framework for Action, “Education
for All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments”. Dakar,
Senegal, World Education Forum.
Vargas-Barón, E. 2005. Planning Policies for Early Childhood
Development: Guidelines for Action. UNICEF, UNESCO,
ADEA, CINDE, and Red Primera Infancia.
SECTION 6
Building forward better –
Reflections on Sankofa
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Introduction
Alan Pence, Hasina Banu
Ebrahim, Patrick Makokoro,
and Oumar Barry
The Akan admonishment of Sankofa put it this way:
“go back to the past and bring forward that which
is useful.” That advice has been a guiding light for
this volume, and the appearance of COVID-19 was
a spur – in the form of a call from UNESCO’s Global
Partnership Strategy for Early Childhood (GPS)
for: “building forward better” (UNESCO, 2021).
For those of us who have long been active with ECD in
Africa, we have known that “better” is important – but
also complex. Over the years “better” has too often
been dened and promoted primarily from outside
Africa, with too little input from within. In comparison,
and as a complement, this book highlights the
importance of also searching within Africa for ways
forward. Africa is rich in experiences and lled with
diversity, but ECD in Africa has been restricted in its
use of that diversity and of its generative possibilities.
This volume seeks to acknowledge Africa’s richness
and to help build an enabling historical foundation
for its future. The call is to “build forward better,” but
to do so requires an understanding and appreciation
of what has come before and of the Afrocentric
knowledges that are central to understanding
what “better” can mean in African contexts.
Africa is replete with proverbs and sayings that
underscore the importance of the past – and of
children – in planning for the future. But within ECD
the most often heard sayings are Western in origin
and the context is not socio-cultural, but socio-
economic: “for every dollar spent [on ECD], $XX are
saved.” While such economic perspectives have a role
to play in ECD, they should be understood as only one
part of a much larger story. The GPS highlights the
importance of ECD being “fully inclusive, accessible,
aordable, gender-responsive, and equitable for
each child […with] culturally appropriate ECCE/
ECD services to foster healthy and positive child and
family development and unleash the full potential
of young children” (UNESCO, 2021, p. 6, p. 13). We
appreciate the GPS” fuller statement and believe
that fundamentally ECD is about the promotion
of capacities across all facets of being human.
This volume is an exploration – an exploration of
African ECD’s past, with the intent to understand
and appreciate how that past can have meaning,
relevance, and hope for the future. As co-editor
Patrick Makokoro noted when commencing his
doctoral dissertation: “why has my generation of
ECD not known about what came before?” Why
indeed, on a continent where who and what came
before has been valued knowledge passed down
across generations, has the history of events that
impacted Africa’s youngest been so hard to access?
And it is not just Africa that has lost so much of its
history – its sense of “who we are.” This is a dynamic
that has played out across the majority of the world
at the hands of the minority. The “missing history,”
that which the editors have sought to “fetch for the
future,” is, we hope, an undertaking that others in the
Majority World will employ, for others” ways, others”
beginnings, and others” developments have relevance
for the whole world, and we hear them too rarely. Their
absence diminishes the eld and diminishes lives.
The Majority World is often pejoratively termed
the “Developing World” and also the “Third World,”
begging questions on who is First and Second and
what constitutes “development” – and who has
determined these rankings and for what purposes?
Our understandings of these terms, of what First,
Second, and Third Worlds mean, has been sharpened
by the COVID-19 pandemic. Two years into the
COVID-19 pandemic and over a year after vaccines
became available, the “First World” ensured it was rst
in line, with over three-quarters of their population
having at least the opportunity to be fully vaccinated,
while the “Third World” was literally dying to have such
access. The WHO Africa Regional oce reported in
late February 2022 that “thirteen countries in Africa
have fully vaccinated less than 5% of their populations”
(Associated Press, 2022). COVID-19 also brings home
the lesson that “until all are safe, none are safe,” with
its transposition for ECD complementing Arnett’s
critique of psychology: “psychology can no longer
aord to neglect 95% of the world” (2008, p. 602).
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What follows are each of the editor’s thoughts
regarding what should be brought forward for
the future of ECD in Africa. Those thoughts are
based in part on the section that he or she led,
but they also reach across to other sources and
perspectives. The editors invite you, the reader,
to share in this process of reection and create
your own “Sankofa list” for the future of ECD.
References
Arnett, J. 2008. The neglected 95%: Why American
psychology needs to become less American.
American Psychologist, Vol. 63, No. 7, p. 602-614.
Available at: DOI:10.1037/0003-066X.63.7.602
Associated Press. 2022. Why are COVID vaccination rates
still low in some countries? WHO Africa Regional
Oce. AP online report, March 3, 2022. Available at:
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2022-03-03/
why-are-covid-vaccination-rates-still-low-in-some-
countries
UNESCO. 2021. Global Partnership Strategy for Early
Childhood, 2021-2030. Paris, UNESCO. Available
at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/
pf0000380077
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Sankofa reections
on ECD country stories
Chapter 15
Alan Pence
Section 1 reminds us of the diversity of Africa, the
importance of context, and the importance of
listening closely locally. Through these eight country
stories, authored by individuals whose lives have
long been committed to ECD in their home country,
a sense of dierences, and of similarities, emerge.
Most of the country stories highlight the importance
of certain traditional family and community caregiving
practices, and while these practices are less common
in an increasingly urbanized Africa, they still resonate
across the continent. As the Malawian authors
in their concluding comments: “such beliefs and
practices have long been a part of traditional child
rearing practices in Malawi and, in concert with
other practices developed more recently, can be
contributors to child well-being for children in Malawi
in the future” (Country Experience, p. 63). Indeed, all
of the authors would agree that many features of
traditional practices are a core Sankofa element –
opening multiple avenues for creative hybridities.
The authors of Section 1 appreciate that in the world
today useful ideas and practices come from multiple
sources – including Western science. Indeed, that
inclusive approach is why the book is in overall
agreement with the recent American Psychology
Association (APA) authors who argue that “research
on the whole of humanity is necessary for creating a
science that truly represents the whole of humanity”
(Arnett, 2008, p. 602). Africa is part of a “whole” that has
for too long been neglected, and for Africa and African
scholars there is hope for a future that is dierent
than the past. This hope has been energized as an
understanding of hegemonic practices expands from
individual academics to institutional recognition, as
is the case in the APA governing Council’s approval
of a statement acknowledging that APA: “failed in
its role leading the discipline of psychology, was
complicit in contributing to systemic inequities, and
hurt many through racism, racial discrimination, and
denigration of communities of colour, thereby falling
short on its mission to benet society and improve
lives” (APA, 2021). The editors applaud the APA and
see this statement as an important facet of “building
forward better,” but even more important will be the
translation of such words into enabling actions.
Collectively, the country stories also highlight both the
diversity and the commonality of religious inuences
on the provision of early childhood programmes. The
Ethiopian authors argue that Priest schools, with a
history that goes back almost two millennia, should
be closely examined and considered when seeking to
maximize outreach services for children, particularly in
rural and remote regions. The Zanzibar story highlights
not only a remarkable synthesis between Islamic
and Western inuences on the provision of early
childhood programming but sets that evolution within
a context of Zanzibar’s political and revolutionary
inuences over time. Many of the country stories
highlight the importance of both Christian and
Islamic institutions in providing care and direction for
young children, with many parents showing a level
of trust in such institutions that they do not hold
for some government and some NGO institutions.
The provision of care and education for pre-primary
age children is a complex undertaking with variables
reaching far beyond the characteristics of a program-
focused micro-system itself (a common focus for
outsider-driven programming), to familial, community,
cultural, faith, and historic dimensions – indeed, the
full ecology of human development. All of which
underscores the need for local engagement and
leadership working alongside governmental and NGO
leadership, and all of those stakeholders working in
support of African-informed scholarly understandings.
The need for cooperation and collaboration across
multiple sectors and systems is clear, but achieving
it is a challenge. A number of the country stories
(as well as a number of the chapters that followed),
describe such challenges, and record some successes
in achieving coordination and collaboration, but
these successes are generally little known. Africa has
experiences and successes that make a dierence, but
the continent is handicapped in its ability to share, to
preserve, and to be tapped as the presenter, rather
than the audience member. This book notes some
ways forward, but many more are possible, particularly
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if we in the world of ECD can come to appreciate
not only what is purported to be gained, but what
has been lost as well through using overly narrow
lenses that privilege what Henrich et al. describe
as a “truly unusual group: people from Western,
Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD)
societies” (2010). This book takes the position that
“WEIRD” has its place, but “the other” (the majority)
must be seen and heard as well, not only in their
own locations, but also on the international stage.
ECD in not new to Africa. Indeed, the provision
of care and education for the young is as old as
humankind itself, whose origins are in Africa. But
even in using independence from colonial power as
a starting point, which many of the country stories
did, countries like Kenya have a long history of ECD
development. One of the earliest, post-independence
programmes was the community based Harambee
Preschools, which captured the spirit of liberation:
“all pull together.” By the mid-1970s Kenya’s ECD
training opportunities and programme outreach
and coordination to the district levels was arguably
more advanced than certain “advanced” countries,
as noted in “Childcare in Two Developing Countries:
Kenya and the United States” (Pence, 1979).
While Ghana’s ECD training and coordination systems
did not move as quickly or as broadly throughout
the country as was the case in Kenya, it did achieve a
level of intersectoral, inter-organizational coordination
by the late 1970s which served it well over time. In
1993 Ghana’s policy development process began,
and while it would be 11 years before the policy was
approved (a year before the Third African International
ECD Conference was held in Accra), various ECD
innovations emerged in the interim, including: a
Centre located in the heart of the “Agbogbloshie”
market in Accra; Street Girls Aid targeting head porters
known as “Kayayee”; and a model nursery associated
with the National Nursery Teachers Training Centre.
In 2004 Ghana’s White Paper on Education (an
outcome of the Anamuah-Mensah report) called for
pre-primary classes to be established as part of the
basic education structure (Adu-Gyam et al., 2016).
Nigeria’s experience with military rule exceeded
Ghana’s, but their ECD policy approval took place
sooner. In 1977 the National Policy on Education
recognized pre-primary education for children 3-5
years of age – however, it left proprietorship in the
hands of the private sector. The level of care provided
was not high and approximately 10 years later only
8% of Nigerian children had access to organized
childcare. In 1987, UNICEF, in collaboration with the
Bernard Van Leer Foundation, approached the Federal
government to launch a pilot programme for children
from 0-6 years. Based in part on the ndings of that
pilot, in 2007 the Federal Government adopted
a new policy for integrated ECD. Subsequently,
the University of Ibadan, in collaboration with
the ECDVU (see Chapter 7), launched an initiative
primarily focused on promoting ECD instruction
in teacher training colleges in a number of states,
impacting literally thousands of ECD students.
Senegal, as is the case with certain other African
countries (South Africa and Ghana for example),
can trace their earliest ECD programmes back to
the rst half of the nineteenth century; however,
those programmes are not part of continuous
ECD development. The 1960s represent a more
continuous history with, for example, the rst public
preschool programme introduced in Dakar in 1965.
The 1960s through 1980 represented a period of
expansion, followed by stagnation in the 1980-2000
period. In 2000, new directions and new energy
emerged, with programmes such as “la Case des
Tout Petits” being developed along with PROCAPE:
“Building Local Capacity to Promote Integrated ECD”
with support from Plan International Senegal.
South Africa’s political history, as is well known, is
substantially dierent from other countries in Africa.
Under Apartheid, state-sanctioned discrimination led
to “many South Africas,” including the provision of ECD
services. Since the creation of “the New South Africa”
in 1994, the country has sought to address the very
signicant dierences in ECD services with varying
degrees of success. In 1997 the rst ever non-racial,
interim ECD policy was put in place, leading to an
evaluation and an Education White Paper on ECE in
2001, with a primary focus on instituting a national
Grade R (pre-primary). Split responsibilities between
the Department of Social Development (for integrated,
multisectoral ECD) and the Department of Basic
Education (focused more on Grade R) remain, but basic
education may take sole responsibility for ECD in 2022.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
What emerges from these diverse stories (and
sub-Saharan Africa has 38 additional country
stories that need to be told) are insights into
what “building forward better” might include:
1. An appreciation of the complex diversity that
characterizes ECD across the countries of Africa.
2. Understanding contexts within those countries
and doing so through utilizing local leadership:
ECD knowledgeable, respected, “insiders” (ECD-KRI).
3. Incorporating ECD-KRI in planning,
training, and engaging with organizations
in-country: ministries, NGOs, tertiary
education, CBOs, employers and others.
4. Facilitating ECD-KRI engagement across countries:
sharing and learning with each other and making
that learning accessible more broadly in Africa.
5. Re-creating and re-inventing venues for
multi-country and regional interactions.
6. Capturing that sharing as part of the
“knowledge base” for ECD in Africa,
made accessible for students, academics,
and professionals across Africa.
7. Bringing Africa’s ECD knowledge base
into the international literature.
The above are but a few suggestions. Longer and
more signicant lists will emerge through active
engagement and listening closely to those whose
lives, and whose children, will be aected.
References
Adu-Gyam S., Donkoh W. J., and Addo A. A. 2016.
Educational Reforms in Ghana: Past and Present.
Journal of Education and Human Development, Vol. 5,
No. 3, p. 158-172.
APA [American Psychological Association]. 2021. Apology
to People of Colour for APA’s Role in Promoting,
Perpetuating, and Failing to Challenge Racism,
Racial Discrimination, and Human Hierarchy in
U.S. Resolution adopted by the APA Council of
Representatives on October 29, 2021. Available at:
https://www.apa.org/about/policy/racism-apology
Arnett, J. J. 2008. The neglected 95%: Why American
psychology needs to become less American.
American Psychologist, Vol. 63, No. 7, p. 602-614.
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., and Norenzayan, A. 2010. The
weirdest people in the world?. Behavioral and Brain
Sciences, Vol. 33, No. 2-3, p. 61-83. Available at:
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X099152X
Pence, A. 1979. Childcare in two developing countries:
Kenya and the United States. Young Children, Journal
of NAEYC, Vol. 34, No. 4, p. 49-53.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Sankofa reections
on the 1990s
Chapter 16
Patrick Makokoro
Section 2 provided an historical foundation that can
help inform and strengthen the development of ECD
programmes across Africa post-COVID-19 as part of
building forward better. The Section focused on the
decade between 1990 and 2000 and highlighted the
importance of several key international initiatives
from early in that period that brought ECD onto
the international development stage. ECD in Africa
beneted from these initiatives (Sifuna and Sawamura,
2010; Swadener et al., 2008). Important events such
as the Conference on the Rights of the Child (UNICEF,
1989), the World Conference on Education for All
(UNESCO, 1990), and the publication of The Twelve
Who Survive (Myers, 1992) provided impetuses for
ECD programmes to focus on the total development
of the child. Importantly, each of these globally
focused and globally signicant events precipitated
counterpart reactions and events in Africa.
An African counterpart to the Convention on the
Rights of the Child (CRC) was the 1st of June 1990,
adoption by the OAU of the African Charter on the
Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC) (OAU, 1990).
This was a signicant step by African leaders in taking
the lead to formally recognize children and their
personhood in African development and welfare (Hart,
1991). The ACRWC places prominence on the role of
the child in Africa by stating that “the child occupies
a unique and privileged position in African society
and that for the full and harmonious development of
his personality, the child should grow up in a family
environment” (OAU, 1990, p.1). Kjørholt noted that
the ACRWC “was adopted to reect the socio-cultural
values related to children’s place in the families and to
the values embedded in enculturation and parenting
practices in the African continent” (2019, p. 30).
The World Declaration on Education for All (EFA)
birthed the key statement “learning begins at birth”
(UNESCO, 1990) and this changed the trajectory
for ECD globally. The EFA, continuing its forward
movement for ECD, placed ECD as its rst goal in
the 2000 Dakar Framework for Action. The focus on
comprehensive ECCE continued throughout the 1990s
in Africa, with the Seventh Conference of Ministers of
Education of African Member States held in Durban,
South Africa, in 1998 making specic commitment to
promote ECD policies (UNESCO, 1998). The challenges
facing the countries, however, included ensuring
funding capacity to formulate culturally appropriate
and eectively integrated ECD policies (Garcia et
al., 2008). Challenges notwithstanding, Section 2
provided a glimpse of an Africa rising to develop and
strengthen ECD programmes for young children by
domesticating and localizing agreements made.
In the book The Twelve Who Survive, Myers (1992)
opined that several dimensions would support
child development and that these had to work in an
interrelated manner since changes in one dimension
would aect the other. Synergistic interaction
between the physical, social, mental, and emotional
dimensions of development as identied by Myers
are critical. Thus, this interaction between dimensions
would promote the notion of the total development
of a child on a continuum, seeing children move
from just surviving to thriving. Myers, using a
large number of locally developed programmes
as examples, argued that children had the right to
live and to develop to their full potential and that
through children humanity would transmit its values.
Myers urged the development of comprehensive
strategies in ECD that would consider programmes
that would address the prenatal, infancy, toddler and
post-toddler, preschool, and early primary school
periods. Myers recommended that comprehensive
strategies must have a multifaceted view of child
development, seeking to integrate programmes and
take advantage of the synergisms among health,
nutrition, and early education (Myers, 1992).
Decades later these sage recommendations ring
true for children to move from surviving to thriving.
It is imperative for all the “systems” that encompass
the child to work together much in the way
Bronfenbrenner (1979) postulated the importance of
the ecological systems framework. These are important
Sankofa lessons that we need to carry forward the
ECD sector in Africa as it works to build back better.
As noted in Section 2, key international documents
have their formative histories, as do regional and
national uptakes. Institutions and governments
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achi
eve agency through the acts of individuals. Too
often what is remembered is the action taken, but it is
the actors behind the actions that matter, that provide
Sankofa lessons for those who would follow. Clearly, a
great deal was accomplished through the individuals
proled in Section 2, indicating their long and strong
commitment to early childhood development over
decades. As I carried out my doctoral research in 2019
and 2020, I observed and learned about the roles that
these individuals played in promoting the face of ECD
in Africa. Their quest to develop ECD programmes,
push boundaries and unite the African continent
around a focused ECD agenda was noble work that
should not be left behind nor forgotten. The ECD
sector is not a nancially rewarding one: it requires
dedication, commitment, and a focus on service.
The individuals proled in Section 2 were not the only
ones working in the ECD sector during this period.
There are many other unsung leaders, those who did
their work quietly, far from the public eye, making a
great impact in villages, communities, and countries.
The “millennial” generation of scholars that I belong
to now needs to work to document the stories of the
previous generation and carry forward the ECD work
they initiated. There is need to reach the smallest of
villages and the largest of institutions found in Africa
to complete a repository of ECD information. The need
for such repositories is another key Sankofa lesson. If
those had been preserved (many were established,
but almost as many were lost over time), then the
questions those of my generation have on “what came
before?” would have had some access to answers.
The inuence of key international documents and their
subsequent impacts regionally follows various lines
of development, but one of them evident in Africa
was the creation of not one, but two ECD networks in
the early 1990s. The question of “why two?” opens up
another key question – the question of regional, vs.
international leadership of such networks. Arguments
can be made for both (primarily nancial on the
side of internationally led), which then opens up
the question of to what degree is such non-African
leadership a facet of the hegemony of the West?
Emerging out of African ECD is the realization that
regional ECD networks can be fundamental and
important vessels that carry forward the aspirations of
the African ECD sector. The pioneering work carried
out by leaders such as Margaret Kabiru, Barnabas
Otaala, and Cyril Dalais highlights the importance of
working together in unity to achieve the objectives
of ECD networking. The unity of purpose and
working together towards a common goal provides a
recognition that ECD in Africa requires leaders that are
uniers, that bring people together and ensure that
a multiplicity of voices is heard, encouraging broad
participation in the growth and expansion of the
sector. Section 2 of this volume has indicated that the
key to success in the process of building an African ECD
network was the relationship building and networking
opportunities that were created through capacity
development and national level networking events.
Fostering an African community of practice allowed
participants in these networks to bring together a
wealth of knowledge informed by their knowledge of
the dierent countries they worked in. For example,
the Early Childhood Development Network for Africa
(ECDNA) created platforms for knowledge sharing and
exchange through meetings held in Gambia, (ECDNA,
1997), Kenya, and South Africa (Makokoro, 2021). Out
of these meetings, the ECDNA developed, translated,
and shared ECD materials with members across the
continent (with support from the Kenya Institute of
Education and consultants). This is an essential aspect
of networking that certainly can be carried forward by
the next generation of African ECD network leaders
both at national and continental levels. Both national
and regional ECD networks must develop well-
articulated and collaboratively developed capacity
development strategic plans. The establishment of
the ECD networks in the early 1990s was premised
around the desire to enhance capacity and knowledge
on ECD issues on the continent (Makokoro, 2021).
Both the ECDNA (1997; 1998) and WGECD (2001)
convened in national and regional meetings that
brought together ECD stakeholders, developing plans
and working towards sectoral integration in pursuit of
a unied agenda. This should continue with emerging
issues such as evidence-based advocacy, demanding
accountability on ECD nancing by governments,
development, and implementation of ECD policy
being at the core of ECD networking on the continent.
The WGECD identied ECD policy development
(Torkington, 1999) and advocacy as key activities that
ensured the relevance of the network, addressing
timely and important issues. The regional ECD networks
should work to enhance the capacity of national-level
networks through institutional, policy and technical
training to enable advocacy, knowledge generation
and networking activities. In Senegal, Mali, Mauritania,
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Namibia, Ghana, and Burkina Faso, the WGECD worked
to develop national-level capacity by supporting the
ECD policy development processes country-wide.
Knowledge must exist not only at the regional level,
but this should trickle to national level networks and
vice-versa. Regional ECD networks should take the
lead in showcasing the local level ECD aspirations
through conferences, symposiums, and publications.
The WGECD was involved in the organizing of the
Third African International ECD Conference in Ghana
and took an even greater conference planning and
coordination role for the 2009 ECD conference held
in Senegal, as discussed in Chapter 5. A key Sankofa
lesson is the importance of collaborations and “playing
well together in the sandbox.” Networks need to
reach out to governmental, NGO, INGO, CBO, and
UN bodies, as well as relevant foundations, tertiary
education institutions, and all other relevant ECD
stakeholders, to ensure that the multiple systems
and actors engaged in supporting ECD in Africa
are all “on deck” and working together eectively.
Section 2 has shown us that it is important to nurture
and grow the professional relationships among ECD
stakeholders so that they are stronger and bound
by unied objectives about ECD in Africa. The work
done by key inuencers proled in Chapter 4 indicates
the importance of professional relationships and
their symbiotic link to the ECD agenda in Africa.
Nurturing professional relationships in the ECD sector
ensures that there is coherence in advocating for
policy development and implementation at national,
subregional and continental levels. This can be
implemented and supported by regional ECD networks
through the intentional designing of networking
and learning events that focus on governance,
organizational development, policy analysis, research,
negotiating, and building skills to inuence the desired
ECD outcomes. The skills acquired and relationships
formed by the ECD stakeholders at a national level
are then used as tools to engage governments in the
form of policy forums for policy advocacy, research,
and knowledge sharing. Regional ECD networks
should work with national ECD networks to hold
governments to account on ECD policy issues through
learning and sustained advocacy that promotes access
to quality, inclusive and equitable ECD in Africa.
Section 2 provided another key example of what must
be carried forward: an Afrocentric perspective on
child development. The issue of Western hegemonic
inuences on African ECD is one that continues to be
problematic as indicated above and in various chapters.
The importance of ECD being grounded in its own
African context should be underscored. The departure
point for Western scholars and ECD practitioners is
the recognition that prior to colonization African
communities had developed their own ways of
training young generations. There had been a mistaken
belief by European settlers that Africans did not have
eective ways of raising young children, ignoring the
fact that the “formal” schools they were starting to
introduce in African communities actually had many
similarities to the “informal” education that African
children received (Sifuna and Otiende, 1992). Chapter
4 proposes that African Indigenous knowledge should
play a central role when developing ECD policies and
programmes in Africa. A key Sankofa lesson is that
it is important to sustain traditional values in child
rearing (Evans and Myers, 1994). It is important for
the generations currently raising children to promote
good morals, teaching children to respect their elders,
be respectful, honest, and responsible citizens of
their community. This stems out of the recognition
that Indigenous parents place value in ensuring that
their children are raised within the context of their
culturally appropriate values (Pence and Marfo, 2008).
The growing awareness of the importance of ECD as a
foundation for lifelong learning (WHO, 2012) provides
an opportunity for ECD scholars and practitioners
to work together to document this African story of
raising children. It is surprising that despite the size of
the continent, Indigenous African voices are seldom
heard in the global child development literature
(Pence and Benner, 2015). African scholars working
in child development must document and publish
their scholarly work in journals and other outlets on
the continent, and beyond. Africa has a rich history of
early childhood development, but in the absence of
a historical narrative or documentation of this history
it is a challenge for scholars and practitioners to know
and understand that journey. This African story must
be told and shared with the rest of the world. Having
this African ECD historical information at hand will
support the development of contextual strategies
and programmes using a Sankofa lens, learning from
the past to inform the present and future learning.
Without this historical information, future generations
of scholars will be unable to identify events of the past
to help inform the present and future actions within
the early childhood development sector in Africa.
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References
Bronfenbrenner, U. 1979.The ecology of human
development: Experiments by nature and design.
Cambridge, MA., Harvard university press.
ECDNA. 1997. ECDNA on Policy and Programming in Early
Childhood Development in Africa. Unpublished
workshop report.
—. 1998. Report on Banjul ECD Institute. Unpublished
report.
Garcia, M. H., Pence, A., and Evans, J. L. (Eds.). 2008.Africa’s
future, Africa’s challenge: early childhood care and
development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington D.C.,
World Bank Publications.
Kjørholt, A. T. 2019. Early Childhood and Children’s Rights:
A Critical Perspective. A. T. Kjørholt and H. Penn (Eds.),
Early Childhood and Development Work. London,
Palgrave Macmillan, p. 17-37.
Hart, S. N. 1991. From property to person status:
Historical perspective on children’s rights. American
Psychologist, Vol. 46, No. 1, p. 53.
Makokoro, P. 2021. The establishment and outcomes of
African early childhood development networks and
conferences, 1990-2009. Ph.D. dissertation, University
of Victoria, Canada.
Myers, R. 1992. The twelve who survive: Strengthening
programmes of early childhood development in the
Third World. Paris, UNESCO.
OAU [Organization of African Unity]. 1990. African Charter
on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. Addis Ababa,
OAU. Available at: https://www.achpr.org/public/
Document/le/English/achpr_instr_charterchild_
eng.pdf
Pence, A. and Benner, A. 2015. Complexities, Capacities,
Communities: Changing Development Narratives in
Early Childhood Education, Care and Development.
Victoria, Canada, University of Victoria Press.
Pence, A. and Marfo, K. 2008. Early childhood
development in Africa: Interrogating constraints of
prevailing knowledge bases. International Journal of
Psychology,Vol. 43, No. 2, p. 78-87.
Sifuna, D. N and Otiende, J. E. 1992. An introductory History
of Education. Nairobi, Nairobi University Press.
Sifuna, D. N. and Sawamura, N. 2010. Challenges of
quality education in sub-Saharan Africa-some key
issues.Hauppauge, NY., Nova Science Publishers.
Swadener, E., Wachira, P., Kabiru, M., and Njenga, A. 2008.
Linking policy discourse to everyday life in Kenya:
Impacts of neoliberal policies on early education and
childrearing. M. Garcia, A. Pence, and J. L. Evans (Eds.),
Africa’s future, Africa’s challenge: Early childhood care
and development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington
D.C., The World Bank, p. 407-426.
Torkington, K. 1999. The Future of the ADEA WGECD.
Unpublished discussion paper from consultative
meeting.
UNESCO. 1990. World declaration on education for all.
World Conference on Education for All. Available
at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/
pf0000127583
—. 1998.World education report 1998: teachers and
teaching in a changing world. Paris, UNESCO.
UNICEF. 1989. Convention on the Rights of the Child. General
Assembly Resolution. Available at: https://www.
unicef.org/child-rights-convention/convention-text
WGECD. 2001. Consultative Meeting of the WGECD Report.
Unpublished report.
WHO [World Health Organization]. 2012. Early
childhood development and disability: A
discussion paper. Geneva/Paris, WHO/UNICEF.
Available at: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/
handle/10665/75355/9789241504065_eng.
pdf;sequence=1
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Sankofa reections
on the 2000s
Chapter 17
Alan Pence
The decade from September 1999 through November
2009 was bookended by the rst and the fourth
African International ECD conferences. The conferences
were critically important in the evolution of ECD in
Africa, but their impact was signicantly amplied
through their synergistic relationship with the Africa-
wide ECD Network, the Working Group on ECD
(WGECD) (which reached its zenith in that decade),
and the leadership and capacity development work
of the Early Childhood Development Virtual University
(ECDVU), which completed the rst three (of six)
cohort-deliveries during the decade of the 2000s.
Key Sankofa lessons from this period
include the importance of:
● utilizing a multiple-systems approach to ECD;
● promoting leadership and cascading
benets structures;
● listening to “local voices” (be they
at national or local levels);
● encouraging strong relationships
and relationship-building; and
● advancing from “solitary and parallel
play to cooperative play” within the
“sandbox of ECD” in Africa.
The Sankofa lessons of the rst decade of the
2000s are in danger of being lost as long-dominant
patterns of external and internal “management and
control” approaches have re-emerged which restrict
collaborative visioning and synergistic possibilities.
The sandbox today is not what it was in the 2000s.
The decade began with a break from the past – a
conference that was less about “what those outside
Africa have to tell us about ECD” and more focused
on “what can we tell ourselves about ECD in Africa”
(see Chapter 5). The shift was purposeful. It had
grown out of a two-fold concern: one, that the ECD
“airwaves” were dominated by ideas from outside
Africa – that Africa was seen as a “recipient,” not a
“creator”; and two, that country-to-country ECD
sharing across African borders was very limited – even
when the two countries shared a common border.
The “ECD development connection” was primarily
with actors from the West, not with each other.
The conference was an eort to expand the focus
– not so much away from sources from outside
Africa, but rather to include sources from within
Africa, as these are also key for Africa’s ECD future.
For the 1999 conference a decision was made to
not have keynote presentations, but to employ a
less hierarchical structure that included an African
Chair/Coordinator for each day and to maximize
the opportunities to “Showcase ECD Innovation and
Application in Africa” (the title of the Conference),
not only through presentations, but also through
displays with conversation periods, and making
available “not already booked” slots towards the
end of each day for impromptu presentations.
A key purpose was to maximize sharing among
the 200-plus attendees from across Africa.
The conference also emphasized outreach to the
many African and international organizations and
foundations that were supporting innovative ECD
work in Africa. Those groups, as well as contacted
governments, arranged for key leaders in projects
they supported to present and participate in
the conference, helping to expand the range of
presentations as well as to provide much needed
nancial sharing of the overall costs to mount the
novel conference initiative. That model of outreach and
shared support continued throughout what became
a series of four African international ECD conferences.
The idea of a series was not part of the initial
planning, however the very positive reactions from
those attending Kampala 1999 led the World Bank to
announce at the concluding dinner that they would
be a core supporter for a second conference (initially
planned for 2001 but postponed to 2002). Given
very supportive responses on a survey conducted
at the conference, the Bank also announced at
the dinner that they would provide development
funds for an African ECD Leadership and Capacity
Development initiative to be called the ECD Virtual
University (ECDVU) (see Chapter 7). This accredited,
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
graduate level, largely online programme was
launched in 2001 with 28 participants from nine
African countries. Those participants were to become
key in developing the Second African International
Conference held in Asmara, Eritrea, in 2002.
The Early Childhood Development Network (ECDNA)
and the Working Group on ECD (WGECD) both
participated in the Kampala conference, but through
discussions at and near the time of the Conference
the two emerged as one network – the WGECD (see
Chapter 6). In turn, the “unied” WGECD became
a key third force for ECD development in Africa
alongside the ECDVU and the Conference series.
While these were three distinct ECD initiatives, they
worked together very closely throughout the 2000s,
with leaders and participants from each being a
part of the other. Communication, cooperation, and
capacity reached new heights during this period,
with ongoing outreach to other ECD focused entities
and initiatives at national, regional, and sub-Saharan
African levels (and also including UNICEF, UNESCO,
the World Bank, The ECCD Consultative Group,
and key international donors and foundations).
The WGECD became an important member in
support of the 2002 ECD Conference held in Asmara,
and a key leading organization for both the 2005
conference in Accra, Ghana, and the 2009 conference
in Dakar, Senegal. Again, this was in cooperation and
coordination with the other organizations and their
key representatives. At one point, the coordinator
for the WGECD was an active ECDVU participant,
and for all of the conferences from Asmara on,
ECDVU students and graduates were central to the
successes of the conferences (indeed, the central
gures for planning and carrying out the Asmara
conference were Eritrean ECDVU participants
working closely with the Eritrean Government).
These three initiatives worked together in other
ways during the 2000s. An example was the priority
that the WGECD had placed on the development
of ECD policies in African countries (see Chapter 14,
for example). ECD policies and policy development
played central roles in the conference series, and the
ECDVU curriculum included a course on ECD policies
and policy development (along with programming,
child development, and other core courses).
In discussions with leaders of these three core
initiatives – conferences, ECDVU and WGECD – as
well as with leaders of other key ECD initiatives
underway in the 2000s, there is a shared sense of a
“golden age” for ECD capacity development in the
2000s. That era was not serendipity – it emerged
from a set of complementary visions and hard work
to align, augment, and communicate. It featured:
● The presence of conferences that regularly
brought together an inter-connected
and ever-expanding set of stakeholders,
from frontline and programme leaders
increasingly through to political leaders,
and all sets of stakeholders between.
● Through the ECDVU it brought enhanced capacity
for ECD leadership at country levels, including
key ministries, diverse NGO initiatives, and
post-secondary institutions, while connecting
those in-country leaders to others in similar
positions across the approximately eight
African countries participating in each delivery
of the ECDVU, and with the internationally
connected and African-experienced set of
professors contracted for each delivery.
● Through the WGECD, leadership was increasingly
available for the mounting of the conferences,
with connections that extended to key
individuals within virtually all African countries,
and through ADEA and other key Africa-wide
organizations it also allowed for access to
political leadership at its highest levels.
The activities noted above were purposeful, the
initiatives were complementary, the leaders were
suciently cooperative, and the participants were
“entangled” in positive ways across the initiatives.
However, the inter-connected set of initiatives was
also fragile. In the 2010s: funds failed to materialize for
a proposed Fifth African International Conference (in
part due to leadership changes within, for example,
the World Bank, but also others); the WGECD entered
a phase of structural transformation (see Chapter6);
and the ECDVU, which had served as a binding
inter-country force linked closely with conferences
development and the WGECD network, became
more of an individual “country-capacity” development
tool. Thus, a key regional dynamic was weakened.
Country-focused ECDVU capacity development
was a very worthy activity, but dierent from its
rst through third cohort deliveries which had nine
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
to ten countries” participants sharing each time
their experiences and expertise and forging multi-
country relationships. Again, leadership changes in
core ECDVU funders played an important role in a
transition away from a “golden age” of many countries,
many organizations and many donors working
together on a shared mission. It would be possible
to recreate such an age – the recipe is known.
The challenge ahead is how to learn from the long
view of ECD – in Africa, in other regions of the
world, and globally. It is important to appreciate
how international initiatives, like those discussed
in Section 2, can bring a movement like ECD from
the shadows onto centre stage and do so in a
relatively short period of time. For example, from
introducing “learning begins at birth” at EFA 1989,
Jomtien, Thailand (UNESCO, 1990), to EFA 2000 Dakar,
Senegal’s Framework for Action goal one: “Expand early
childhood care and education” (UNESCO, 2000).
However, in appreciating the speed of that
transformation, we should not succumb to a belief
that “universals” are the answer that can address the
particularities of all peoples. Africa’s bold decision to
“domesticate,” to particularize the CRC for an African
context, is a key Sankofa lesson – arguably, such
deliberations enhance rather than detract and add
to our understanding rather than diminish it. The
ECD global community, and all local communities,
must also be prepared to question if “knowledge”
is linear and ascending – progressing from a more
brutish and more limited understanding to ever
higher elevations. Such is the fuel of dominance,
of hegemony, and its practice is ubiquitous.
But is the life-experience of humankind ever-
improving? Are earlier ways of understanding
and living “less good,” less satisfying? Have all
benetted from “improvements’? Is humankind’s
future promising, or imperilled? And if imperilled,
were good intentions not a part of the path?
The very nature of ECD, early childhood education,
care, and development, makes these questions core
to what we as ECD professionals must consider. Our
work takes place at the doorway to the future – to
not question what thoughts and ideas are allowed
to pass through is a violation of what we stand for
and a threat to children’s and societies” well-being.
It must be emphasized that the synergy achieved
by key ECD actors in the rst decade of the 2000s in
Africa was not serendipitous. It was not by accident,
and it is replicable. ECD capacity development in
Africa in the 2000s is a Sankofa lesson, and one
that is not just for Africa – its lessons are global.
Priorities for “building forward better” for ECD in
Africa should centre around two main points.
One, pulling together a broad set of ECD partners
(UN and related international organizations,
governments, INGOs, donors, and others) to:
● launch a new ECD leadership and capacity
development, graduate level, online
“set” of francophone and anglophone
universities, in various regions of Africa;
● incorporate, in collaboration with the AU and
the AfECN and ICQN networks, a triennial series
of conferences building on lessons learned
from 1999 through 2009, and from an AfECN
“physical” conference in 2018 and a virtual
conference in 2020, to continue what would
be a twenty-plus year tradition of Africa-
focused, international conferences; and
● conduct external and other evaluations of the
above activities, as described in Section 3, in order
to provide an evidence-base and a strong set
of lessons-learned for building forward better.
Two, a key priority for multi-country ECD cohorts
participating in the above is the creation of
numerous in-country “cascading benet structures”
that include post-secondary provision of ECD
education and career ladders (Nigeria’s focus on
teacher training college leaders/instructors in their
cohorts is one example of a cascading benet).
References
UNESCO. 1990. World declaration on education for all.
World Conference on Education for All. Available
at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/
pf0000127583
—. 2000. The Dakar framework for action. Education for all:
Meeting our collective commitments. World Education
Forum. Available at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/
ark:/48223/pf0000121147
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Sankofa reections on
seeing Africa through
African lenses
Chapter 18
Hasina Banu Ebrahim
Section 4 presents a variety of issues to consider for the
cross-cutting theme of investing in local eorts and
building culturally responsive action for ECD in Africa.
Through engagement with issues such as the African
scholar initiatives, measurement, professionalization,
and ECD at the margins, the section makes salient
inuential historical developments which led to a push
back through local mediations of ECD in context.
Each chapter shows the importance of paying
attention to both the assets and the possibilities for
going forward with ECD in local African contexts.
The issue of capacity-building is approached by
focusing on two cadres of the workforce – the
knowledge production workforce and the delivery
workforce at the frontline. There have been several
eorts directed at creating fertile ground for scholars
to take the reins in building knowledge capital in
the African context. These initiatives have been
making modest contributions to building local
evidence for understanding and local solutions.
Despite promising eorts of some scholarly
initiatives, the fragmentary eorts need a strong
unity of purpose in the African region. This would
contribute to greater impact and inuence of the
work of ECD scholars in the regions and beyond.
The focus on the delivery workforce shows how
women’s labour for paid childcare has been
approached. The feminized workforce experiences the
trappings of being employed but also receiving low
compensation in low status ECD jobs. Additionally,
the knowledge in early care and education provides
them with contents that does not always resonate
with the realities that they face with families and
children in the context of their work. There are
pockets of change characterized by attention to
conditions of service and the Indigenous thrust to
shaping ECD practice. The humble starting points
for the professionalization of the ECD workforce,
however, are in need of broad systemic changes.
In continuing with a focus on the assets in ECD,
the issues of measurement and ECD at the margins
continues to invite critical thinking for its advancement
in Africa. The thrust of objective measurement that
is highly valued in an outcomes and product view
of child development has shortcomings that do not
capture the realities on the ground. When too much
faith is placed on quantitative measures that are
perceived as universally valid then there is the risk
of missing or devaluing ECD practices that are less
known to the Global North. Even where adaptations
are made, the risk of missing indicators better known
in the Indigenous languages and practices remain
hidden. The cultural limits of instruments and the
biasness points back to local capacity-building for
more measurement practices attuned to African
realities of child development and child rearing.
The continued call for epistemic and social justice as
captured in the discussion on ECD at the margins,
shows the resources that can be tapped into for
more culturally responsive ECD. The decit and
pathologizing view of those at the margins is
contested to show that assets and resilience serve
as shock absorbers for ECD in vulnerable contexts.
The power at the margins comes not only through
a focus on the adults, but also children as knowing
and speaking subjects. The dynamic caregiving
space is presented as a powerful space with multiple
possibilities for action. This does not, however,
deect attention from the structural inequalities
that needs to be addressed by governments
for acting in the best interest of children.
Overall, this book shows that the lived experiences
of children and their caregivers is intricately woven
with building contextually relevant ECD for African
early childhoods. The plurality is important to
emphasize, as there are many realities that shape
the lives of young children. The resources currently
present at the margins are in a fragile state, as
vulnerabilities are ever-present. For example, the
exploitation of women’s labour, child abuse in
multi-problem families, and gender-based violence
continue to make the margins an arena of key
interventions which require government investment
in ECD as a system contributing to public good.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
As noted thus far, Section 4 points to some directions
to build forward better. In drawing inspiration from
the Sankofa concept, this book shows the value of
the temporal perspective for growing ECD from
inside Africa. The assets show that there are support
mechanisms that can be leveraged from the ground
up to make ECD contextually relevant. It also
alludes to the importance of partnerships to pool
resources for quality ECD provision for all children.
In this context it is important to ask the following:
how do we think about the temporal perspective
in ECD? how do we arrive at a new hybrid temporal
construct of ECD given what this book has to oer?
Our dilemmas lie in understanding the complex
evolution of ECD as a temporal process where change
– and decision-makers take into consideration the
past assets (heritage, traditions, experiences, cultural
practices), the present ECD amid the pandemic,
and uncertainties of the future. The answers lie in
between all of this and something else. There are
many untapped spaces for meaning making and
action in ECD. Some are named, e.g. capacity-building,
systems advancement, loco-globalization, and
partnerships. In rapidly advancing African societies,
though, many are yet to be named. In continuing to
seek answers from a temporal perspective in ECD,
interrogation of the factual (what), the social (who),
and the temporal (when), among other dimensions,
should continue to guide decision making.
Luhmann (1995) provides a helpful way to look at time
from a systems perspective. Within this perspective,
time is viewed as interpreting reality and looking at
what’s the dierence between the (present) past and
the (present) future. In the current global pandemic
times, ECD in Africa should not be trapped into the
canonical certainties of universalism and its lop-
sidedness. It should have leeway to examine its own
past and futures. To this point, when opportunities
arise for ECD to build forward better, they should
seek to align with aspirational goals for Africa – e.g.,
aspirations detailed in Agenda 2063 – The Africa
we want. The aspirations in the agenda present
possibilities for ECD policy, practice, and research.
Critical engagement is needed for opening and
closing ECD. Previous boundaries must become
part of the territory for nding solutions that are
workable in the multiple realities that children
and their families face daily. The impasse between
the past and future must be addressed. Some
form of unity of dierence could result from
learning exchanges among agents of change.
Young children are included in the call for agentic
action (Ebrahim, 2011; Daries and Ebrahim, 2021). They
have a critical contribution to make to any change
process in ECD. As shown in Section 4, they have
the capacity to be knowing and speaking subjects
in a variety of ways, but this remains diused. The
myopic view of young children’s capabilities in Africa
has inuenced “mundane political practice” (Millei
and Kallio, 2018, p. 31) stemming from dierent
orientations, ideologies, and intentional activities.
In keeping with children’s participatory rights, they
must be considered as having expertise in their
own lives and as being competent to contribute
to aspects inuencing their lives. The spirit of
democratic politics (Moss, 2007) needs to develop
through ECD work with children. Ngutuku (2019, p.
17) urges us to “listen softly” to the spoken words,
unspoken cues, silences, and contradictions that
surface in children’s meaning making attempts. The
relational and contextual dimensions are implicated
in making sense of children’s voices. A shift towards
“listening softly” means ECD would have to function
as democratic spaces where multi-vocality is valued,
and the contingency of experience is engaged with.
The focus on the contingent, however, is inadequate
for robust action in ECD. The African evolution of ECD
in this book shows that it is complex and subjected to
dynamic processes that have created hybridities. It has
and continues to evolve in surprising directions as it
recovers and rebuilds the sector in pandemic and post
times. In all of this, the power of the local context is
fragile. It will have to be constructed and reconstructed
within the ambit of a globalizing world and within
Africa’s past and future for ECD. Complexities will arise
as agents of change pay attention to and act upon
important elements for the advancement of ECD.
What must be guarded against is the risk of over-
adaptability to outside forces to the detriment of the
strengths from within. The repetition of a constraining
ECD history in Africa should be avoided at all costs.
309
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
References
Daries, G. and Ebrahim, H. 2021. Funds of knowledge and
agentic strategies of three-and four-year-old children
in South Africa.South African Journal of Education,Vol.
41, No. 3, p. 1-9.
Ebrahim, H. 2011. Children as agents in early childhood
education.Education as Change,Vol. 15, No. 1, p.
121-131.
Luhmann, N. 1995. Social Systems. Redwood City, CA.,
Stanford University Press.
Millei, Z. and Kallio, K.P. 2018. Recognizing politics in the
nursery: Early childhood education institutions as
sites of mundane politics.Contemporary Issues in Early
Childhood,Vol. 19, No. 1, p. 31-47.
Moss, P. 2007. Bringing politics into the nursery: Early
childhood education as a democratic practice.
European Early Childhood Education Research Journal,
Vol. 15, No. 1, p. 5-20.
Ngutuku, E. 2019. Small stories from the margins:
Cartographies of child poverty and vulnerability
experience in Kenya. H. B. Ebrahim, A. Okwany, and
O. Barry (Eds.),Early childhood care and education at
the margins. Milton Park, Routledge, p. 16-30.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Sankofa reections
on ECD/EDC in
francophone Africa
Chapter 19
Oumar Barry and Alan Pence
Section 5 focused on ECD/EDC in francophone Africa
(FR-Af). Although not specically addressed in that
Section, a backstory on ECD/EDC in FR-Af would note
that the number and intensity of capacity promoting
initiatives available for FR-Af during the 2000s has
been less than that which has been available for a
substantial number of anglophone countries in Africa.
An exception has been the African International
ECD Conference series (see Chapter 5), where
simultaneous translation was available. It is therefore
not surprising that a key francophone leader for the
Accra 2005 Conference, ADEA Secretary General
Mamadou Ndoye (also former Minister of Education
for Senegal), used that opportunity to call a special
open meeting of FR-Af countries to discuss and plan a
francophone “Leadership and Capacity Development
programme.” An approach that Ndoye felt could be
useful was the then recently evaluated Early Childhood
Development Virtual University (ECDVU) programme,
but which was only being oered in English (see
Chapter 7). At the FR-Af meeting held in Accra, a
professor from a Senegalese University agreed to
take the lead (working with the ECDVU) to mount
such a programme, but he, unfortunately, moved to
Europe before the full proposal could be written.
Seven years later, in 2012, following four initial cohort
deliveries of the ECDVU with 106 graduates from
16 SSA countries, only ve grads were francophone
(from three francophone countries). In that same
year, the East and Southern Africa Regional Oce for
UNICEF (ESARO) and the UNESCO/BREDA-WGECD
provided funds to undertake a survey of both
anglophone and francophone countries regarding
how many SSA countries had post-secondary ECD/
EDC educational programmes either planned or in
place. That survey found that 82% of anglophone
countries had such programmes in place (twelve)
or planned (ve) out of 22 countries, while only 25%
of francophone countries had such programmes
in place (one) or planned (two) out of twelve.
The 2010s have seen an increase in another aspect
of ECD/EDC capacity promotion in Africa: support for
scholarly capacity. While six such initiatives have a wide
range of sponsors and academic leaders, overall, only
one is solely based in francophone Africa. A number
of the others” sessions were conducted in English,
the costs for translation being a restrictive factor.
Moving ahead to 2021, sixteen years after Ndoye’s
“call to action,” a leader for ECD/EDC in FR-Af noted:
“In francophone Africa [there are] no networks, no
journals specializing in EDC, [and] few meetings
(conferences, seminars, etc.” (personal communication,
2021). This FR-Af backstory sees a connection between
the call to address capacity issued by Dr Ndoye in
2005, the results of the Africa-wide survey in 2012,
limitations in support for scholars in FR-Af, and the
2021 observation by a francophone ECD/EDC leader.
In noting the above, it is not to say that there have
not been any ECD/EDC workshops or training
sessions available in various parts of francophone
Africa; there have been, as there were for anglophone
and lusophone countries as well. Such workshops,
however, raise another important question: one must
look closely at such opportunities to discern which
are designed to “grow out from Africa” and which are
“implants from outside into Africa.” Just as Swadener
and Mutua (2008) used the term “data plantations”
to describe research projects that hire Africans to
collect data but do not engage African scholars in
conceptualizing, planning, and leading such studies,
those education and training projects that are focused
on “knowledge transfer” (training to do X that was
developed elsewhere to be applied “here’), rather
than on knowledge generation (imagining new Xs
that emerge from “here”; see Pence et al., 1993), can
actually contribute more to capacity depletion than
to capacity development, through marginalizing
African perspectives and dominating with non-
African understandings. Such continuing, neo-colonial
activities need to be called out and addressed.
A good example of what is envisioned as being
preferable is Vargas-Barón’s Chapter 14: “Participatory
Planning of National Multisectoral ECD Policies
in francophone Africa.” Vargas-Barón highlights
the importance of context and collaboration in
developing policies – and the same should apply
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
to virtually all aspects of ECD development: from
research, to programming, to education and
training. All of the chapters in this Sankofa volume
make a similar point: context and culture matter!
Giroux’s Chapter 13 focuses not only on the need
for an appreciation of the multisectoral nature of
eective ECD/EDC services, which some refer to
as integrated EDC, but the need for government
ministries to work cooperatively to achieve such
integration. Transforming such isolated silo structures
into cooperative structures was a key objective for
the ECDVU programme – one which led to a design
for multisectoral participation within a country-
team structure. External evaluations of the ECDVU
(World Bank, 2005; World Bank, 2011) consistently
noted the importance of high-level relationship
building across ministries in order to bend and
blend each ministry’s objectives and purposes
towards a more integrated, collaborative approach.
Barry and Diop’s Chapter 12 highlighted the
importance of listening carefully in order to achieve
co-existence and cooperation within the diversity
and complexity of childcare and child rearing within
Africa. Other chapters, and all of the Country Stories,
have highlighted the diverse “threads” of children’s
care that exist across Africa, many with histories that
go back generations – indeed, millennia. Those long
histories have been joined more recently by other
threads from other locations, and strong arguments
can be made for the importance of seeking to
weave together, rather than separate and cull, these
threads to create new and creative fabrics to hold
families, societies, and countries together for the
well-being of children in an ever-evolving future.
A key principle for moving forward with ECD/EDC
in francophone Africa, and indeed all of Africa, is
an appreciation that because environments for
children’s development are culturally structured, local
knowledge is needed to understand the mechanisms
and processes of development in order to be able to
design programmes that can lead to eective results.
Therefore, the conception of child development
that underlies ECD/EDC programmes in Africa must
always be interpreted through careful analysis of local
variations in the goals envisioned for young children.
Brooker and Woodhead (2010) noted that when
planning interventions, programme designers
should be aware of local ways of doing things,
social circumstances, beliefs, and practices in the
care of young children that can both limit and
create opportunities for learning during early years.
In particular, when programmes reach the most
disadvantaged groups, serious concerns may be
raised about the export of “modern” structures and
their associated goals for the development of children
in societies where these goals may be inconsistent
with the environment, socio-cultural contexts, beliefs,
values, and local priorities (Pence and Marfo, 2008).
Therefore, it can be seen that curricula developed in
Western countries as the model or standard for the
development of early childhood education in other
cultural contexts may be not only inappropriate, but
possibly harmful (Myers, 2000; Nsamenang, 2008).
In a study conducted in Senegal (Barry and Zeitlin,
2013), a Western standardized test (Bayley scales)
was used to consider children’s development from
families living in subsistence farming conditions. The
Senegalese village children performed poorly on the
Bayley scales (approaching one standard deviation
below the mean), however children in Western
countries would certainly score low if asked to do
the household chores mastered by the 3-year-olds in
the local study sample. It should also be noted that
the study was not limited to a Western-constructed
cognitive test, but additional measures demonstrated
that Senegalese children’s early mastery of their
physical environment and the clear functions and
rewards of the traditional system gave them a high
level of emotional security and the ability to cope with
life diculties (Barry, 2010; Barry and Zeitlin, 2013).
At the very least, such contextualized additions to
Western-based tests are much needed, and African
research leadership is critical for a fuller understanding
of development within Indigenous contexts.
Cultural traditions as well as economic and broader
socio-political factors inuence structural dierences
in the life arrangements of young children (Brooker
and Woodhead, 2010). Often, grandmothers and older
children watch over young children. Grandmothers
can also be storytellers and singers and care for
young children when the mother is away (Sagnia,
2004). Even though parents are working they have
several ways to participate in preschool education,
using for example six types of involvement: parenting,
communication, volunteering, home learning, and
community collaboration (Bridgemohan, 2002). Jinnah
and Walters (2008) found that parental involvement
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
positively predicted their level of satisfaction with early
childhood education programmes. Poli and Varier
(2003) describe the experience of “Clos d’enfants”
(closeted by children), which is a place where around
fteen children aged 3-6 come together in a clean
and secure environment in order to socialize and learn
together. Fifteen women form ve dierent groups
of three mother-educators, each comprising a future
young mother, a mother, and a grandmother. The
group volunteers one day each week to take care of
the “Clos d’Enfants” and its activities. In urban areas,
there is a small fee for transportation costs. Learning
takes place in small groups through interactive
games using games created by volunteers. There is
at least one healthy snack or full meal oered each
day. All the players in the “Clos” are involved in a
garden and a henhouse on the site. The structure
of the “Clos” and its programme focus on the overall
development of the child on the physical, emotional,
and social levels. One of the requirements is a site
with a potable water supply. Another expected
benet is that those trained as mother-educators
transfer their knowledge of health and hygiene into
their family life. In short, it appears the crucial role
of families and communities in complementing the
care of children who are in reception structures.
Data obtained in a study carried out in Senegal (Barry
and Zeitlin, 2011) show that there is indeed a set of
endogenous traditional knowledge and practices
which serve as references for mothers and other
members of the family to oer appropriate care and
stimulation in order to promote development of their
children. The research results obtained in Senegal
have shown that culture-specic expectations guide
practices for stimulating particular skills during early
childhood for the future mastery of this or other
professional activity, in which each child will be
called upon to be active within his community (Barry
and Zeitlin, 2011; 2013). By adopting a comparative
perspective, these authors have also carried out work
on the processes of acquiring skills in relation to early
childhood education and socialization systems from a
traditional and modern perspective, without, however,
opposing them. Investigations focused on the
relativism of standards in terms of references for the
assessment of competences and cognitive aptitudes
of children evolving in dierent cultural environments
(Barry, 2010; Barry and Zeitlin, 2013). Nevertheless,
the trend is still towards a uniform perception of
the characteristics of intelligence, seen in particular
from the angle of academic learning skills. Thus, early
childhood development practices are analysed from
the angle of cultural contexts (local particularities,
translated into often “hidden cultural curricula”) and
the universal (school models, which should generate
“academic intelligence”). The questions raised and the
issues analysed show how these types of research can
have major implications in the strategic orientations
of the establishment of ecient programmes and
projects for early childhood development in Africa.
Such research has not been developed to the
degree that would be helpful in making decisions
regarding ECD/EDC policies, programming, and
training in countries across francophone Africa.
While Barry and Zeitlin have been active in this
regard (2011; 2013), greater support not only for
FR-Af research, but for a range of FR-Af graduate
level programmes is greatly needed. Such
programmes are required to provide ECD/EDC
leaders for: curriculum development; teacher-training;
government, NGO, INGO, and CBO leadership; and
more if ECD/EDC is to full the promises inherent
in its child, social, cultural, and economic mission.
This Sankofa volume has provided strong and quite
fulsome accounts of myriad initiatives in Africa
that have helped to advance ECD/EDC over the
past several decades. They, along with initiatives
that have taken place in FR-Af, as documented
in Section 5, provide useful Sankofa reminders
of how the future for ECD in Africa can benet
from an understanding of Africa’s ECD past.
This contribution to Section 6 envisions three key
priorities for enhancing FR-Af’s future for ECD:
1. Funding to develop and launch a primarily online
ECD Leadership and Capacity Development initiative
along the lines supported by external evaluations
of such an initiative in Africa (the two external and
one major internal evaluation of the ECDVU).
2. Funding to evaluate and, based on that
evaluation, create additional or expansions
of existing Scholars” capacity development
initiatives to more fully address FR-Af.
3. Funding to develop a francophone Africa
ECD Innovations and Development Centre, with
collaborative branches at several FR universities.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Addressing these long-standing shortcomings
in advancing ECD leadership and capacity in
francophone Africa must be recognized as a top
priority for GPS action going forward. How to do
so, what actions could be taken, is well addressed
in this volume – including examples from within
francophone Africa itself (see Section 5).
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—. 2013. Use of a western standardized test in dening
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Brooker, L. and Woodhead, M. (Eds.). 2010. Culture and
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Jinnah, H. A. and Walters, L. H. 2008. Including parents
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Nsamenang, A. B. 2008. (Mis)understanding ECD in Africa:
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Poli, Y. and Varier, A. 2003. Une pédagogie ambitieuse, une
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Sagnia, J. B. 2004.Indigenous Knowledge and Practices of
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Implications for UNICEF Programming in IECD. Master’s
thesis, University of Victoria, Canada.
Swadener, B. B. and Mutua, K. 2008. Decolonizing
performances: Deconstructing the global post-
colonial. N. K. Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln, and L. T.
Smith (Eds.), Handbook of Critical and Indigenous
Methodologies. Thousand Oaks, CA., Sage
Publications p. 31-44.
World Bank. 2005. Evaluation of the Early Childhood
Development Virtual University. Unpublished report
sponsored by The World Bank.
—. 2011. Evaluation of the Early Childhood Development
Virtual University. Unpublished report sponsored by
The World Bank.
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Conclusion
Sankofa and GPS
“Building Forward
Better’
Alan Pence, Hasina Banu
Ebrahim, Patrick Makokoro,
and Oumar Barry
The Global Partnership Strategy for Early Childhood
2021-2030 (GPS) (UNESCO, 2021) provides us
with “ve Strategies for Results and Strategic
Priorities,” and this “Sankofa” volume provides an
“insiders” view” of ECCE/ECD over time in Africa.
In concluding this volume, the editors have
copied page 7 from the GPS document. That page
(Figure 6.1) provides a graphic of ve hands, each
associated with one through ve of the “Strategies”
contained in that document (UNESCO, 2021).
Following that page, the editors have also provided
a few of their own short responses based on their
experiences in the eld and their work with the
Sankofa volume (responses are italicized). The editors
invite readers, based on their own contexts and
experiences, to work with the “shorthand” provided by
the GPS graphic to generate their own responses to
the “ve Strategies for Results and Strategic Priorities”.
Figure 6.1 Global Partnership Strategy for Early Childhood
To attain this vision, countries and their development partners will commit
to ve Strategies for Results and Strategic Priorities
Harness evidence
Harness evidence
for action and rights
for action and rights
● Increasing the capacity to use evidence
● Strengthening the evidence for policy and practice
● Establishing networks of champions and increasing
voices for early childhood
Promote countries’ efforts to
Promote countries’ efforts to
scale up access, inclusion, equity and
scale up access, inclusion, equity and
quality
quality
● Expanding access and tackle exclusion to early childhood services
during and after the pandemic
● Expanding and strengthening services and systems for children with
developmental disabilities
● Improving the quantity and quality of the early childhood workforce
● Supporting the monitoring of child development, early learning, and
quality service standards
Leverage data,
Leverage data,
monitoring and evaluation
monitoring and evaluation
for accountability
for accountability
● Monitoring SDG targets for early childhood
● Supporting development of National Multisectoral
Child Monitoring and Evaluation Systems
● Securing data and information to increase and
maximise investments in early childhood
● Measuring impact of the pandemic on early childhood
development and services
Assist countries to strengthen
Assist countries to strengthen
policy, governance, nancing and
policy, governance, nancing and
advocacy
advocacy
● Strengthening international/national normative frameworks and
expand access to services
● Collaborating to develop and implement national multisectoral
early childhood policies
● Promoting at least one year of free and compulsory quality pre-
primary education
● Increasing domestic and international nance for pre-primary
education and child development
Galvanize international
Galvanize international
and national coordination
and national coordination
and cooperation
and cooperation
● Strengthening policies and regulations through
coordinated whole-of-government approaches
● Improving multisectoral and multi-stakeholder
cooperation and coordination at all levels
● Strengthening national capacity to plan,
implement and coordinate multisectoral
programmes
7
Source: UNESCO, 2021, p.7
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
1. Harness evidence for action and rights
a. Increasing the capacity to use evidence
•Not only to “use”, but signicantly increase
African capacity to “develop” evidence.
b. Strengthening the evidence
for policy and practice
•Not only strengthen the evidence (as per
above), but increase within Africa the
capacity to share and add to evidence.
c. Establishing networks of champions and
increasing voices for early childhood
•Champions, working together, are needed
among ALL ECCE/ECD stakeholders:
government, NGOs, academia,
politicians, CBOs, and more.
Additional commentary from editors:
•Evidence building for action and rights
would be impoverished if local expertise and
methodological framings for research ignore
the assets that young children, their families,
and their communities bring. This book shows
the wealth of local knowledge emanating
from the ground up and the frontline
realities that can make for more responsive
ECCE/ECD policies and programmes.
•ECCE/ECD networks, at national, regional, and
global levels, are key partners for supporting
knowledge generation and dissemination.
Through networks, ECCE/ECD capacities
can be promoted in numerous ways.
2. Leverage data, monitoring, and
evaluation for accountability
a. Monitoring SDG targets for early childhood
b. Supporting development of national
multisectoral child monitoring
and evaluation systems
c. Securing data and information to increase
and maximise investments in early childhood
d. Measuring impact of the pandemic on early
childhood development and services
Commentary from editors:
•A key for all four of the points in #2 is to more
fully develop an ECCE/ECD education and career
ladder, commencing with local community-
based education that extends through and
articulates with post-secondary undergraduate
and graduate level leadership development.
•Accountability for quality ECCE/ECD programmes
is a top-down mechanism seen as necessary by
way of policies, plans, frameworks, etc. However,
this creates pressure to perform in particular ways.
The top-down eorts must work synergistically
with bottom-up realities. This book draws attention
to women in a labour force that lack professional
status, children in vulnerable circumstances
compounded by the ills of structural inequalities,
but it also shows the resilience in the eld.
3. Promote countries” eorts to scale up
access, inclusion, equity, and quality
a. Expanding access and tackle
exclusion to early childhood services
during and after the pandemic
b. Expanding and strengthening
services and systems for children
with developmental disabilities
c. Improving the quantity and quality
of the early childhood workforce
d. Supporting the monitoring of child
development, early learning, and
quality service standards
Commentary from editors:
•Various parts of #3 relate to a comment in #2
regarding the importance of developing an
education and career ladder within countries,
however instruction within that “ladder” should
go beyond “knowledge transfer” to knowledge
generation based on input from multiple
sources including, very importantly, local.
•Scaling up ECCE/ECD needs to critically engage
with the ideas and practices that are considered
as “good” ECCE/ECD practice. The competitive
funding environment and agenda setting outside
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Africa, can lead to emphasizing particular
ways of designing policies and programmes
that are not contextually appropriate.
•“Scaling up ECCE/ECD needs to be inclusive
of and respectful towards local knowledge,
values, and understandings. A generative,
inclusive approach is desirable.”
4. Assist countries to strengthen policy,
governance, nancing, and advocacy
a. Strengthening international/
national normative frameworks
and expand access to services
b. Collaborating to develop and implement
national multisectoral early childhood policies
c. Promoting at least one year of free and
compulsory quality pre-primary education
d. Increasing domestic and international
nance for pre-primary education
and child development
Commentary from editors:
•There are some words in #4 that are of concern:
“Assist countries” too often translates as a “top-
down” directive, and “normative” raises the question
of “whose norm” and how was it arrived at? On the
other hand, 4b starts with the word “collaborative”
– something this book feels is very important
for virtually all aspects of ECCE/ECD in Africa.
•One editor noted: No one in ECCE/ECD would be
opposed to “Increasing nance” (and particularly
welcome when coming from the country itself),
but the key question is how”? Another agged:
Strong budgetary commitment and recognition by
countries of the importance of the early years as a
foundation for lifelong learning will catalyse “free
and compulsory quality pre-primary education.”
•Advocacy eorts have to be multisectoral to ensure
that all stakeholders have access to requisite
information that can guide policy development,
governance, and nancing of ECCE/ECD programmes.
5. Galvanize international and national
coordination and cooperation
a. Strengthening policies and regulations
through coordinated whole-of-
government approaches
b. Improving multisectoral and multi-stakeholder
cooperation and coordination at all levels
c. Strengthening national capacity to
plan, implement and coordinate
multisectoral programmes.
Commentary from editors:
•National leadership is critical for ECCE/ECD
development. This book discusses a number of
initiatives that have successfully created in-country,
multisectoral teams spanning not only key
ministries but also including NGOs, post-secondary
institutions, networks, and other partners that
have been able to “pull together” to improve ECCE/
ECD policies and services in their country.
•The book has also highlighted the important
role that ECCE/ECD networks have played in
advancing policy, programme, and overall ECCE/
ECD capacity development at both country and
regional levels over the past few decades.
•The book has also highlighted the important role
that ECCE/ECD conferences have played over time
in bringing together and promoting sharing across
the diverse regions of Africa. Each of these three types
of ECCE/ECD initiatives have sought to advance
knowledge generation and leadership from within
Africa, while also appreciating the importance of
knowledge generation that arises from multiple
sources of knowledge, both external and internal,
including African traditional and local sources.
•Notably, advances have been most signicant at
the points that these three, key initiatives have
collaborated closely – intermingled – to create
synergies lled with meaning, purpose, and progress.
In addition to these short responses to the ve
GPS “Strategies for Results and Strategic Priorities”,
the editors propose three critically important
Actions: that should be undertaken as soon
as possible in support of ECD in Africa:
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
1. Through using social media and other
e-technologies, reach out to all facets
and layers of the ECCE/ECD stakeholder
community in Africa (from parents and
care-providers to governmental and political
leadership) and engage them with the
ve priorities that have been identied
in the GPS 2021-2030 document.
2. The second critically important action, based on
learnings from Sankofa, is to launch a 2020’s
sustainable, multisectoral, multi-institutional
African ECCE/ECD Leadership and Capacity
Development initiative. Such an initiative can
prepare not only diversely positioned, collaborative
ECCE/ECD leaders at a country level, but create
educational and support structures that can
enrich the lives of children, their families, and
communities throughout the country and
throughout Africa.
2.a A critically important addendum to this
second point is that francophone Africa must
not only be included in such initiatives; it should
be a priority for such a programme.
3. The third critically important action for ECCE/
ECD in Africa is that by 2024 a collaborative,
synergistically motivated group of key ECCE/
ECD organizations, networks, institutions, and
others engaged with and knowledgeable about
ECCE/ECD in Africa, with particular reference
to understanding ECCE/ECD at local levels,
convene an African International ECCE/
ECD Conference meaningful and useful for
a broad range of ECCE/ECD stakeholders
from across Africa. Such collaborations
and the synergies they produce should be a
hallmark of ECCE/ECD in Africa for the future.
In closing, the editors note that this book does not
claim to be exhaustive nor the “nal word” – in fact, we
hope the volume will be a stimulus for more words
being spoken and written about ECCE/ECD in Africa,
as well as for other regions of the Majority World.
Reference
UNESCO. 2021. Global Partnership Strategy for Early
Childhood, 2021-2030. Paris, UNESCO. (ED-2022/
WS/7.) Available at https://unesdoc.unesco.org/
ark:/48223/pf0000380077
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Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
Afterword
A reection from Africa
This remarkable book, like Africa itself, has great
breadth and diversity. When I received a copy of it
I was asked to provide a few sentences regarding
the volume, however a few sentences could not
suce. In seeking to move forward, to plan for the
future, we must embrace the wisdom of Sankofa
and “go back to the past and bring forward that
which is useful”. This book is well stocked with
“that which is useful”. The following are some of
my own thoughts on what makes the volume
exceptional and I anticipate that readers of these
stories will have their own list of how and why the
volume is important for themselves and for Africa.
● This book is both visionary and insightful as
it seeks to promote a vision of a decolonized
ECD framework that recognizes the multi-
contextual nature of child development
in Africa and guide the research, practices
and discourses in ECD in Africa.
● It re-interprets ECD from an “Africentric”
perspective, resulting in a redened
epistemology of ECD or what should
count as ECD which in turn determines the
curriculum and research agenda in ECD.
● As the world witnesses rapid changes in all
facets of livelihood, ECD is bound to change
but this change must not be disruptive. By
invoking the spirit of “Sankofa” the authors
aim to ensure the sustainability of ECD.
● The book provides an informed knowledge
base that enables policymakers, ECD leaders,
practitioners, researchers, and beginning
researchers in ECD to tackle local challenges
and generate evidence-based solutions
that meet African needs and contexts.
This is thus a must-read book not only for
ECD but for all educators at all levels.
● What is refreshing is the authors” recognition
of the importance of building connections
between indigenous knowledge systems and
modern trends in ECD, a win-win for all.
● The authors point to the need to guard
against dependence on the North for
knowledge production and theoretical
paradigms instead of promoting endogenous
knowledge, models and frameworks.
The situations depicted in the book should be
seen as only the tip of the iceberg; there are many
additional Sankofa situations from across Africa that
are yet to be revealed, yet to be told and published.
However, the solutions proered by the writers
provide the opportunity for collaboration among
educational thought leaders, national governments,
and international development partners to identify
and resolve situations that are disempowering the
youth in Africa, by using an “Africentric” lens.
Jophus Anamuah-Mensah
Executive Chair of Teacher Education in sub-Saharan Africa;
Former Vice-Chancellor of the
University of Education, Winneba, Ghana;
Chief architect of reform that introduced ECD into schools;
Recipient of the Order of the Volta by the President of Ghana
320
Sankofa: Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development in Africa
What others say about Sankofa:
Sankofa is a must read book and primer for the
future of early childhood care, education and
development both in Africa and globally. An
understanding of the past in diverse contexts in
Africa and everywhere provides a solid and much
needed foundation on which to build a relevant
better future for young children. I hope that it opens
opportunities for many more “Sankofa reections”
on the diverse aspects of early childhood in Africa
and from other regions of the world, narrated by
authors who live and work in those regions.
Elizabeth Lule, Executive Director of Early Childhood
Development Action Network (ECDAN)
This magisterial volume will be the single most
important book on African child development
research, practice and policy for decades. It provides
a history of the topic of early childhood development
in Africa since the late 1900s; incorporates an
unprecedented number of scholars from the
region; and challenges the eld to stop reproducing
colonial, imperialist approaches to research in
favor of perspectives grounded in the diversity of
African experience. An extraordinary contribution.”
Hiro Yoshikawa, Courtney Sale Ross Professor and
Co-Director, Global TIES for Children Centre at NYU
Africa has a rich, but under-documented, ECD
history. The Association for the Development
of Education in Africa (ADEA) welcomes this
impressive and critically important contribution
to better understanding our past to better plan
for the future well-being of Africa’s children.
Albert Nsengiyumva, Executive Secretary, Association
for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA).
Finally, a comprehensive and insightful look at ECD
in Africa that bridges history with planning for the
future. Sankofa takes readers on a journey exploring
various ECD experiences across African nations and
communities. This book is a must read if you believe
that ultimately innovative solutions for building better
and more eective ECD programmes in the future
must include the traditions and knowledge of the
families and communities in which children are raised.
Diane Whitehead, President and CEO of
Childhood Education International
This volume provides an important window to the
history of ECD across multiple African contexts
through chapters covering intersectoral topics that
include early education, health, policy, and parenting
to name a few. As a collaborative researcher in early
childhood policy and practice on the continent
since 1986, I recommend it for anyone doing
work in early childhood in Africa—and beyond.
The editors” commitment to foregrounding the
stories and scholarship of African contributors
reects a needed decolonization of the eld.
Beth Blue Swadener, Professor Emerita, School of
Social Transformation, Arizona State University
This book provides an informed knowledge
base that enables policymakers, ECD leaders,
practitioners, scholars, and beginning researchers
in ECD to tackle local challenges and generate
evidence-based solutions that meet African
needs and contexts. This is thus a must-read
book not only for ECD but for all educators at all
levels. (See fuller statement in the Afterword.)
Jophus Anamuah-Mensah, Executive Chair of
Teacher Education in Sub Saharan Africa
Sankofa: Appreciating the past in planning the future of
early childhood education, care and development in Africa
Alan Pence, Patrick Makokoro, Hasina Banu Ebrahim, Oumar Barry (eds.)
Appreciating the Past in Planning the Future of Early Childhood Education, Care and Development
(ECD) in Africa had several inspirations. One was a question by a self-described ‘millennial’ leader:
‘why had he not been told the history of ECD in Africa’ before undertaking such leadership. His
question resonated with the Akan people’s term Sankofa: ‘Remember the past to make progress in
the future.’ His personal question is equally valid at the global level: ‘Why does the world not know
about how ECD is understood in Africa’, and indeed in other parts of the Majority (Developing)
World?’ This book seeks to address both questions: individual and global, with a hope to stimulate
other regions of the world to tell their stories through their own, contextualized understandings.
The book does not claim to be exhaustive. It calls out for others in Africa, and in other parts of the
Majority World, to tell their stories. Those stories, experiences, understandings and perspectives
are not just important for those who live them, but for the world. Thestories of children’s care and
development from around the globe is historically rich and diverse. The world of ECD has yet to
write, yet to tell, its ‘full story’ – Sankofa is one step in that direction.
Sustainable
Development
Goals
Sankofa: Appreciating the past in planning the future of early childhood education, care and development in Africa
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