Convening expertise and building consensus through dialogue in Nigeria

• In Event: The strength of contextual knowledge for sector analysis and planning

Proposal

This presentation will reflect on the complexities of the GPE KIX Africa 19 Hub’s model of country-led national policy dialogue through the experience of Nigeria in 2023. National education policy dialogues are one-day formal conversations initiated, organized, convened, and concluded by national policy experts in Ministries of Education, led by the KIX focal point who represents their government in liaisons between local, national, and international stakeholders. The policy dialogue culminates in the writing of a call to action or statement of commitment which documents the educational policy priorities agreed upon by the experts in the room.

Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa and in the regional KIX hub, organized and held a national policy dialogue in March 2023 to allow experts to deliberate on challenges in educational data collection, and on the hurdles to providing gender-responsive and inclusive education for all Nigerian children. The organizing KIX focal point from the Federal Ministry of Education rallied support and participation from local and international stakeholders and also brokered negotiations to get the ensuing statement of commitment approved by the Ministry and international organizations. She also grappled with the complexities of convening different parties with different knowledge and political power at the same table. The dialogue raised difficult but important questions about which educational stakeholders are perceived by the government and international development agencies as having enough credibility to share knowledge in an important policy discussion. Arguably, the Nigeria dialogue would likely have been more sharply focused and more richly detailed had the primary discussants been contextual experts from the local, community, and school levels.

However, even within the dynamic shared by the federal government and international development organizations, there lies the question of whether governments themselves are perceived by international agencies as credible enough to decide their own educational priorities and report on their own educational story. Relatedly, governments, especially in Africa, must contend carefully with the presence of international funders and donors, who expect to leverage at least some control over the planning and outcomes of the work they finance. International funders may sway the objectives and theme of national dialogues and set up monitoring mechanisms to ensure certain outcomes are met. In the case of Nigeria, the international funder mostly “provided” the government with the autonomy to organize its own dialogue and write its own statement of commitment, but this autonomy existed only within parameters erected by the international project: the focus on data, gender equality, and inclusive education were pre-loaded.

As Nigeria continues to conduct follow-up conversations stemming from this policy dialogue in March 2023, the focal point and her fellow national policy actors are bringing their contextual knowledge to the international platform of the KIX hub, often adopting the language of international organizations to do so; and they are translating and adapting KIX project objectives for their local contexts. This presentation will explore these complexities through the example of the KIX policy dialogue started in Nigeria.

Authors

• Claris Nwaejuafor Ujam, Federal Ministry of Education, Education Planning, Research and Development Department

• Victoria Kanobe Kisaakye, UNESCO