Advancing education in Africa: insights and challenges of the GPE KIX Africa 19 Hub's monitoring and evaluation approach

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Use of outcome mapping and outcome harvesting in the Global Partnership for Education Knowledge and Innovation Exchange: challenges and successes

Proposal

The Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX) Africa 19 Hub was established in April 2020 through the Global Partnership for Education Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (GPE KIX) initiative, a collaborative effort between the Global Partnership for Education and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The hub's purpose is to collect, generate, exchange, and facilitate the effective use of data, knowledge, and innovation for education policy formulation and implementation across 19 African countries in Eastern, Western, and Southern Africa.

The KIX Africa 19 Hub acts as a platform for amplifying, co-creating, and sharing data, innovations, and knowledge while fostering partnerships within and between member countries. Its mission is to serve as a central regional resource where African education stakeholders can access, adapt, and utilize both established and emerging evidence to tackle critical issues identified by the countries themselves. This support is delivered through a team of country representatives, who drive educational change by engaging with various stakeholders and decision-makers at national and regional levels.

A key feature of the KIX Africa 19 Hub, as with other KIX-supported projects, is its robust Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) system. This system, utilizing tools and processes of Outcome Mapping (OM) and Outcome Harvesting (OH), plays a crucial role in capturing significant changes in the capacities and actions of these country representatives, highlighting shifts in behavior, relationships, actions, policies, and practices within the educational landscape.

Through OM and OH, KIX Africa 19 hub has focused on identifying and documenting changes in the behaviors, relationships, actions, policies, and practices of country representatives, and tracing how specific activities have resulted in these changes. By capturing these behaviour changes, the KIX Africa 19 Hub is able to pinpoint existing capacity gaps and customize support and development efforts to address the unique needs of each country. Tracking of behaviour changes also facilitates learning from the experiences of partners and helps in identifying the most effective strategies for learning and adaptive management.

However, several challenges persist in the use of OM and OH. One significant issue is the difficulty in capturing the dynamic and evolving nature of educational changes across diverse contexts in Africa. The complexities of local political dynamics and differing stakeholder interests potentially affect the accuracy and relevance of data collected through OM and OH-based tools. Additionally, while OM and OH provide valuable insights into shifts in behaviors, relationships, and practices, they require continuous updates to remain relevant. This need for ongoing adaptation can strain resources and complicate efforts to maintain up-to-date and actionable information. Furthermore, the effectiveness of these methods is often contingent upon the quality and consistency of engagement from country representatives. Thus, ensuring that monitoring data reflects the most current and comprehensive picture of change remains a persistent challenge.

Authors

• Victoria Kanobe Kisaakye, UNESCO

• Yvonne Risper Atieno Mboya, UNESCO IICBA