Issue 15 of Southern Lens on Development by Prof. Jane Mariara
The Africa Fellows in Education Program (AFEP), a two-year-long research and policy development program launched as a collaboration between the Global Education Analytics Institute (GEAI) and the Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP) saw its first cohort of four Fellows complete the fellowship successfully. By building the capacity of young local researchers through in-country activities and international training opportunities, AFEP aims to improve education decision-making across Sub-Saharan Africa.
Founded by Eric Hanushek (2021 Yidan Prize for Education Research Laureate), the program was developed with initial funding through the Yidan Prize for Education Research. The four Fellows chosen from 275 applicants across 33 African countries—Heleen Hofmeyr, Amadou Jallow, Yselle Malah Kuete, Jaah Mkupete—produced innovative new research across Cameroon, Tanzania, The Gambia and South Africa during the two years (2023-2025).
Notwithstanding the diversity in the contexts and in the research conducted, the studies are bound by the common purpose of addressing the root causes of poor learning outcomes in school education—increasingly a global priority—with the aim to improve both access and quality. In the words of Eric Hanushek, “The quality of schools in Africa will determine its economic future.”
This edition of my newsletter dives deeper into the critical findings that have emerged, which make an important contribution to potentially reshaping Africa’s education policy landscape.
Making the language of instruction a bridge rather than a barrier to learning
In Cameroon, over 270 languages are spoken but children are taught in either English or French, which is phonetically very different from what they speak at home. This misalignment leads to negative impacts on early learning, especially when it comes to listening comprehension. As a result, and especially because children often began school with no prior exposure to the LOI, 60.6% of Grade 2 pupils did not meet the minimum proficiency threshold and nearly 11.8% scored below Level 1, lacking even basic comprehension skills (PASEC 2019 studies). Children further lack support at home due to the low proficiency of caregivers in the languages of instruction.
As part of her research, Yselle developed a phonetic similarity index to measure how closely a child’s home language aligns with the language used in school. The study compared 164 common words across 15 major Cameroonian languages to identify language gaps that may impact learning. Her findings showed that a greater linguistic similarity between the home language and the LOI significantly improved listening comprehension. This is because when there is phonetic alignment with the LOI, children are better equipped to make sense of classroom instruction from day one. The impact was greater in rural areas and among children who received reading support at home.
The study thus, recommended that education policies must include linguistic alignment in early-grade education to ensure equity and better learning outcomes. To achieve this, the study suggested a series of concrete short, medium and long-term steps, such as integrating these insights in pedagogy, providing adequate teacher training, designing relevant materials and more.
Investing in health is investing in learning
Jaah’s study from Tanzania established the interdependence between health and education as critical to human capital development through studying the link between malaria control and academic achievement. Poor child health has been shown to reduce school attendance, cognitive development and educational achievements, and in the case of Tanzania, malaria when contracted in early childhood has particularly adverse long-term effects. Jaah studied the unintended education benefits of Tanzania’s 2004 Malaria Eradication Program and found that it led to significant improvements in lower secondary academic performance with an overall gain of 5.8% in test scores.
Further, while there was a modest gender differential in the impact of the program with female students benefiting slightly more, the performance in arts and business subjects improved considerably. Performance scores rose by 7.4% in arts/business subjects vs. 5.8% in science subjects (STEM), which indicates greater impact on learning in areas more dependent on language and memory skills. Significantly, those born after the intervention was introduced in 2004 gained approximately 2.4 years of schooling as compared to those who were in preschool or in primary school (gained 0.58 additional years) and exposed to malaria at a critical age. This reiterates the importance of early-life health interventions on educational trajectories.
The study, therefore, recommended policy synergy through integrated health and education interventions to advance equity and unlock long-term human capital growth. A few concrete measures included embedding malaria prevention within school-improvement plans, aligning interventions with critical developmental periods, particularly from pregnancy to age five, ensuring coordination of resource allocation across sectors, and joint funding mechanisms between the Ministries of Health and Education to implement integrated programs, among others.
Socio-Emotional Skills as a cornerstone of foundational learning
Heleen’s research in South Africa studied the importance of an often-overlooked factor in early academic success—socio-emotional skills. Her study drew on data from the Roots and Shoots study, a multi-year research project that followed 400 learners across 75 public primary schools in the Western Cape province from the start of grade R—equivalent to kindergarten—in 2022 to grade 2 in 2024. She found that children who enter school with stronger emotional readiness, self-regulation, and social skills achieve significantly higher literacy and math scores by grade 2. These skills help children focus, persevere, collaborate and engage meaningfully in classrooms. Although socio-emotional skills help children across backgrounds, those coming from wealthier households and better-resourced schools are able to benefit more given a stronger enabling environment.
The study, therefore, highlights how integrating socio-emotional learning (SEL) can promote equity and improved academic outcomes across the socio-economic spectrum, offering a promising lever to help narrow learning gaps. The findings recommend that by embedding SEL into curricula, especially in early childhood education where the gains are maximum, equipping teachers with the necessary skills through practical, context-relevant training, and monitoring socio-emotional development, policymakers can create the conditions for these skills to flourish, enhancing children’s long-term educational achievements.
Evidence backed phasing out of Double-Shift Schooling System to balance access and learning outcomes
Amadou’s study in The Gambia analyzed the Double-Shift Schooling (DSS) model, also implemented in many other developing countries. In the DSS system, in order to meet the growing demand to accommodate students, the government operates in double shifts running two shorter sessions (as compared to Single-Shift Schooling or SSS) during the day—in the morning and afternoon. Although a common policy fix, for overburdened schools, even as DSS expands access, it undermines educational quality and student performance, especially at secondary level. As a result, The Gambia’s Education Sector Policy 2016–2030 aims to phase out the double shifting of teachers and reduce the double shifting of classrooms by 2030. However, it is vital to understands its effects for informed decision-making and strategic investment.
The study fills this gap by analyzing the effects of the DSS on learning outcomes at both foundational and secondary levels in public and private schools. DSS is found to negatively affects both foundational literacy and secondary exam performance, particularly in English and for students in urban regions like Banjul. Girls are disproportionately impacted, often due to increased responsibilities at home during off-school hours. However, this negative impact on instructional quality and learning is more pronounced in private high schools than in public primary schools. The evidence, therefore, suggests that policy efforts to abolish DSS may yield greater learning gains if focused on the private secondary schools. At the same time, it is important to not write off the benefits of DSS in expanding access and reducing costs, and hence the trade-offs between access and quality must be carefully balanced.
The study’s policy recommendations, thus, include prioritizing the phasing out DSS in private secondary schools while proceeding cautiously with reforms in public primary schools. It also recommends implementing targeted, gender-sensitive support programs and after-school initiatives to address the disproportionate negative impact on girls, investing in teacher training, better school facilities, and strengthening evidence collection for informed policymaking.
Conclusion
As mentioned above, despite the different subjects that these studies tackle, what unites them is AFEP’s mission to build a homegrown community of policy-engaged education researchers in Africa. This also aligns deeply with PEP’s core mission, which aims to empower Southern researchers to lead policy research for the Global South providing nuanced, context specific and actionable policy solutions. Also, in line with PEP’s approach to ensure policy research leads to effective policy uptake, the AFEP Fellows are engaging with relevant ministries and stakeholders in their contexts to scale the solutions they have developed through rigorous research. Our next cohorts of Fellows are larger and with even bigger ambitions, we are already onboarding the third cohort as well, and I will be delighted to share about their work as it takes shape. As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this newsletter and welcome your thoughts and comments.
