Background: Reimagining what education can achieve

3. Education service delivery in nine African countries

Background: Reimagining what education can achieve

Education is important for empowering citizens, developing a skilled workforce, enabling upward socioeconomic mobility, improving economic growth, and fostering a prosperous society. Article 26 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognized that everyone has the right to education, a principle that translated into the promotion and expansion of access to quality education for all through the Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals (UN 2011; UN General Assembly 2015).

Before the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, most national education systems were already facing a crisis. Its nature was spelled out in the World Development Report 2018: Learning to Realize Education’s Promise (World Bank 2018) and in the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s 2013 report The Global Learning Crisis: Why Every Child