The European Union has signed programme funding of €245 million (US$263 million) for various educational projects in Africa, including academic mobility across the continent, an Africa-Europe Youth Academy, vocational education and training in Africa, research and learning in Nigeria, and girls’ education in Zambia.
European Commissioner for International Partnerships Jutta Urpilainen announced the funding at a Global Gateway High-Level Education event in Brussels, Belgium, on 11 April 2024.
The event was a follow-up to the Transforming Education Summit in 2022, where the EU committed to increase the share of education in its international partnerships budget from 7% to 10%. And it brought together key global education actors in the run-up to the United Nations’ Summit of the Future, scheduled for September 2024.
“I believe that education is the vehicle to shape a more sustainable world,” Urpilainen said in a statement released after the event in Belgium on 11 April. In an online news announcement, she added: “I am pleased to launch these new initiatives during the African Year of Education.”
African Year of Education
The African Union (AU) earlier designated 2024 as its ‘Year of Education’, calling on governments to accelerate progress towards achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 4, which is to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”.
According to the African Union Development Agency, an additional US$40 billion is needed to finance education in Africa to achieve the SDG and align with the AU’s Agenda 2063 aspirations.
International mobility encouraged
Urpilainen launched 15 Intra-Africa Academic Mobility Scheme projects in Brussels, funded to the tune of €27 million.
The scheme is the EU’s programme to encourage international learning mobility across the African continent. It provides support for consortia of African higher education institutions as well as scholarship opportunities for African trainees, students and staff.
It forms part of the EU’s Youth Mobility for Africa flagship initiative, which aims to support learning opportunities and exchanges and ultimately to promote Africa as an attractive study destination.
The 15 projects are aimed at boosting high-level green and digital skills.
Dr Nico Elema, director of the Centre for Collaboration in Africa at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, welcomed the announcement.
“Mobility is important because we need to get into each other’s space to understand our different contexts. Within higher education, academic mobility promotes better collaboration and knowledge sharing,” he said.
Youth academy also planned
During the event in Brussels, the EU said it would support a first set of actions of the new Africa-Europe Youth Academy to the amount of €15 million.
The academy will provide opportunities for formal and informal learning and exchanges for young people who want to improve their leadership skills and create networks between Africa and Europe.
It is a key initiative of the Youth Action Plan in EU external relations, a policy framework for “increasing the voice and leadership of young people worldwide”.
Vocational education and training
An initiative called Opportunity-driven Skills and Vocational Education and Training in Africa was also launched, financed with €75 million from the EU budget for the period 2024-28.
It is a regional initiative of Team Europe, consisting of the EU and, in this case, four of its member states – Belgium, Finland, France and Germany.
Urpilainen said it was “urgent to allow young people to build their green and digital skills, in particular skills that match the opportunities present in the labour market”.
Support for this approach comes from the African Development Bank, which says on its website that “Africa’s challenge is not only to create jobs fast enough to keep pace with this population growth but also to equip everyone with the skills to join a productive workforce.
“There is a disconnection between the skills the education system produces and the ones the private sector wants. African students rank lowest internationally in reading and computational skills. To support the rapidly changing demands in African economies, the education system needs to build skills in traditional professions – such as teachers, nurses and lawyers – and in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Also urgent is the need to develop skills for micro, small and medium enterprises.”
The EU initiative entails “a paradigm shift in how training is designed, tailoring it to available opportunities”. The identification of employment and training opportunities for women will be compulsory.
Research and learning in Nigeria
Urpilainen signed an €18 million cooperation agreement to enhance research and development capacities for implementing Nigeria’s national plan for the pharmaceutical industry and local production of vaccines and medical technologies.
She did so with Didi Esther Walson-Jack, permanent secretary of Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Education.
Africa’s most populous country will also benefit from six of the 15 Intra-Africa Academic Mobility Scheme projects launched at the event:
• Capacity-Building for Engineering Education Practice and Research, or CB4EE, with the participation of the University of Lagos;
• The same university is participating in Green, Resilient and Entrepreneurial Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics for Africa (GREEN STEM);
• Climate Research and Education to Advancing Green Development in Africa (CREATE-Green Africa), with the participation of the University of Port Harcourt;
• Mobility for Plant Genomics Scholars to Accelerate Climate-Smart Adaptation Options and Food Security in Africa II, or GENES II, coordinated by Ebonyi State University;
• The same university is participating in Mobility for High-Skilled Scientists and Entrepreneurs on Orphan Crops in Higher Education for Accelerated Climate Change Solutions in Africa, or ORPHAN); and
• Promoting Inclusive Home-grown Clean Energy Solutions for Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation in Africa, or HCE Solutions, coordinated by the Federal University of Technology, with the participation of the University of Nigeria.
Education for girls in Zambia
Urpilainen and Zambia’s minister of education, Douglas Syakalima, signed an agreement to support the country’s National Development Plan and Free Education Initiative with a €110-million EU grant.
This will help enhance the quality of primary and secondary education, reduce girls’ dropout rate, increase accessibility for learners with disabilities, and boost early childhood education and development in the underserved Luapula and North-Western Provinces.
At the recent Nobel in Africa symposium held in Stellenbosch, South Africa, Professor Pascaline Dupas, a development economist at Princeton University in New Jersey in the United States, gave a presentation on the effects of free secondary education in Ghana.
She and her colleagues have been investigating the impacts of free secondary education through scholarships awarded to qualifying students in that country. Their research highlights the positive effects of free secondary education, particularly for girls. It increases educational attainment, improves learning, increases labour-market participation, leads to higher tertiary education rates, and delays marriage and childbearing.
EU prioritises education and research
The EU undertook to prioritise education and research under its Global Gateway strategy, launched in 2021. It focuses on boosting smart, clean and secure links in digital, energy and transport sectors and to strengthen health, education, and research systems across the world.
One of its areas of partnership is education and research, specifically investing in high-quality education, focusing on girls, women, and vulnerable groups.
