• ADEA Triennale opens in Ghana to tackle Africa’s deepening education crisis
• 100M children out of school; funding cuts risk 6M more losing access
• AU, AfDB launch education fund as nations push for self-reliant financing

African ministers, education experts and development partners are gathered in Ghana’s capital on Wednesday for the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA)’s Triennale on Education. 

Africa is taking charge of its learning future!?

Yesterday at the #ADEA2025Triennale, we launched FLIGHT — a bold, Africa-led partnership to transform foundational learning for every child.

Join the journey, learn more about the initiative ➡️ https://t.co/JFGz3nztKy@obyezeks pic.twitter.com/0BjVL7GUvj

— ADEA (@ADEAnet) October 30, 2025

This year’s edition held under the theme: “Strengthening the resilience of Africa’s educational systems: Advancing towards ending learning poverty by 2035 with a well-educated and skilled workforce for the continent and beyond.”  It comes amid a sharp decline in international funding. 

Opening-day figures underscored the scale of the challenge. Around 100 million African children remain out of school, and 80% of pupils in sub-Saharan Africa are unable to read by the age of 10. “We cannot speak of learning outcomes if children are not in school,” said Albert Nsengiyumva, ADEA’s executive secretary, noting that Africa is the only continent where the number of out-of-school children continues to rise.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) warned that recent cuts to education financing could deprive another 6 million children of access to schooling. AfDB representative Ayerusalem Fasika said the shortfall compounds a structural weakness: Africa invests only 0.59% of its GDP in research and development, compared with the global average of 1.79%.

With traditional donors pulling back, African countries are being forced to rethink their funding models. Ghana’s deputy finance minister Thomas Nyarko Ampem said the continent must “look inward and stop depending on external aid,” which has fallen to its lowest level since 2000. He said Ghana has allocated its largest-ever education budget this year, including a 33% increase in school feeding funds and a 73% rise in capitalization grants.

Vice President Jane Nana Opoku-Agyeman urged governments to expand domestic revenue rather than focus solely on education’s share of national budgets. “If your only skill is collecting cocoa and exporting it raw, our budgets will never grow,” she said, calling for investment in human capital to enable local value addition.

The event also marked the launch of several continental initiatives, including the African Education, Science, Technology and Innovation Fund (AESTIF), jointly developed by the African Union (AU) and the AfDB to mobilize domestic resources and attract private investment. Ghana, Botswana, Malawi, Kenya and Zambia have already pledged contributions.

AU Commissioner for Education Gaspard Banyankimbona called for a shift “from dependency to self-reliance,” urging the rapid implementation of these new financing tools under the African Decade of Education and Skills Development (2025-2034).

Several sessions of the Triennial are devoted to educational technology and artificial intelligence, as countries seek to bridge the digital divide while maintaining cultural and linguistic relevance in their curricula. Participants are also reviewing the Foundational Learning Initiative for Government-led Transformation (FLIGHT), a philanthropic partnership that aims to end learning poverty in Africa by 2035.

The ADEA Triennale is Africa’s leading high-level forum on education, held every three years to assess progress and shape collective strategies. The 2025 edition in Accra follows previous meetings in Ouagadougou, Dakar, and Mauritius (2022).

The three-day conference is expected to conclude today, Oct. 31, with policy recommendations and financial commitments aimed at turning continental ambitions into measurable improvements in classrooms across Africa.

 Ayi Renaud Dossavi