Negotiating Scale-Up: Politics and Processes of Expanding an Early Grade Reading Program in the Democratic Republic of Congo

• In Event: Literacy, language, politics and money: impacts on scaling up reading reform programs

Proposal

The ACCELERE! Activity 1 project is a USAID/UKAID co-funded project in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The purpose of ACCELERE!1 is to improve educational outcomes for boys and girls in select education provinces in the DRC. To contribute to achieving this overarching purpose, ACCELERE! 1 supports access, reading, and governance service delivery in public primary and non-formal schools (including écoles conventionnées run by religious networks) in 26 education sub-divisions across 8 provinces: Haut-Katanga, Lualaba, Kasaï-Central, Kasaï-Oriental, Equateu, Sud-Ubang, North Kivu, and South Kivu.
The ACCELRERE!1 Project has been working the last three and a half years to build on the Ministry of Primary, Secondary and Professional Education’s existing program for early grade reading in grades 1-3 in Kiswahili, Ciluba, Lingala, and French (3 of the 4national languages). Over this time, as the project has scaled up from two provinces and two languages to eight provinces in four languages in primary schools, and as the ministry looked to scale nationally some political discourse inevitably resulted.
This presentation will explore the political conversations that took place in the areas of language, competing donor priorities, and resources. ACCELERE!1’s sociolinguistic study highlighted linguistic diversity in the languages of instruction the project was working in and how in one instance the standard variety of Kiswahili differed to local variety. These differences manifested in the reading outcomes and have implications for the training of teachers and future materials development. Operating in a large country where donors overlap has at times lead to competing donor agendas that required deft management by the project leadership. In a low resource environment time and funds are always hot button issues. Negotiating the time and need of staff be it at the central or school level for trainings is a constant balancing act. This fall and winter we anticipate we will have to negotiate final specifications related materials improved under ACCELER!1 over the years and how all partners can produce the best product at the best price without sacrificing quality so that the Ministry can afford to print the materials at full scale under their GPE agreement.
The presenters will examine the following questions:
• What are the implication of language difference? What can the ministry and future projects plan to address language differences?
• How did the project respond to conflicting donor agendas? What can the ministry, donors and project do in the future to avoid conflicting donor agendas?
• What recommendations does the project have for managing resources and the discussions that inevitably turn political?

Authors

• Laura Harrington, Chemonics International

• Jean Marie Mangobe Bomungo, Secrétaire Général Ministry of Primary, Secondary, and Professional Education Democratic Republic of Congo