Africa Platform for Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Skills

Proposal for a Side Meeting at the EWF Convening in London, 7-9 May 2023

Background:
Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) skills are a prerequisite for the development and acquisition
of other competencies1. International benchmarks for Foundational Literacy are that by Grade 2/3,
learners are expected to read aloud and comprehend many single written words, particularly familiar
ones, and extract explicit information from sentences. They should be able to make simple inferences
when longer texts are read aloud to them 2. International Foundational Numeracy benchmarks require
that by grade 2/3 learners should be able to demonstrate skills in number sense and computation,
reading simple data displays, shape recognition and spatial orientation. 3

Following the Incheon and Paris Declarations, governments agreed to allocate at least 4-6% of GDP and
at least 15-20% of total public expenditure to education, protecting public education budgets from the
constrained fiscal environment resulting from the COVID 19 pandemic and the global economic crisis.

Despite massive investment in Education and implementation of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy
Programme and catch-up programme, studies show that up to 70 per cent of children in poorer
countries are unable to read a basic text by age 10 4. Examples of such programmes include Tusome in
Kenya, TaRL in Zambia,

Main Agenda
The main agenda of this meeting will be to share and discuss the idea of an Africa Platform for
Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (APFLN). The APFLN will be a regional sharing platform for
achieving Foundational Literacy and Numeracy skills by Grade 3 through system transformation by 2030.
In addition, the APFLN will be a technical platform of Principal Secretaries (PSs) or their equivalences
from SSA countries where they can share what they are doing to improve Foundational Literacy and
Numeracy (FLN) and what is working, as well as constraints and how they are handling these. During the
side event evidence from 6 countries will be shared.

To maintain momentum towards achieving FLN for all children in SSA by 2030, the regional sharing
platform will hold annual Pre-Education World Forum (Pre-EWF) symposia that will be reporting

1
Belafi, C., Hwa, Y., and Kaffenberger, M. 2020. Building on Solid Foundations: Prioritising Universal, Early, Conceptual and Procedural Mastery
of Foundational Skills. RISE Insight Series. 2020/021. https://doi. org/10.35489/BSG-RISE-RI_2020/021.
https://riseprogramme.org/sites/default/files/publications/RISE%20Insight_2020_21_Belafi_Hwa_Kaffenberger.pdf
2
UNESCO, 2022. Spotlight on basic education completion and foundational learning in Africa, 2022: born to learn.
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000383289
3
Ibid
4
UN, 2022. Transforming Education: An urgent political imperative for our collective future.
https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/2022/09/sg_vision_statement_on_transforming_education.pdf

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progress at the main EWF. The Symposia will be rotational with Kenya proposing to hold the first
symposium later in 2023 or early in 2024.

Proposed timing
8th Breakfast or Dinner
9th Breakfast

Venue
The meeting will be held at a venue close to where the Education World Forum will be held. The actual
venue will be communicated later.

Hosting
The meeting will be chaired by the Government of Kenya, supported by the What Works Hub (Zizi
Afrique and British Council).

Participants
Participants will include Education Ministers, Principal Secretaries or their equivalences and one
Technical advisor from each Sub-Saharan Africa country.

Format
Format The side-event will be open to questions and insights throughout the side event and further
discussion among the attendees and speaker at the end.