Accra, Ghana — Foundational learning, the ability to read, write, and do basic math, is the bedrock of every child’s education. This is not just an educational failure, but also a development emergency.
In Africa specifically, challenges are more pronounced.
Too many students are still missing this crucial start. The challenge now is how to scale what works and finance it sustainably across the continent. When every child has the right book and teachers have the right guidance, the promise of foundational learning begins to take root. The foundations of learning include basic literacy, numeracy, and transferable skills. Students often fail to thrive in school or in the workplace without foundational learning, leading to intergenerational poverty and vulnerability.
Across Africa, the state of foundational learning is alarming. Approximately 90% of children in this region are unable to read and understand a simple text or undertake simple mathematical tasks by the age of 10.
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Emmanuel ‘Manos’ Antoninis, the Director of UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, a position he has held since 2017, said Africa still faces a steep challenge in ensuring children acquire basic literacy and numeracy skills.
“Only about 14% of children who reach the end of primary school in Africa achieve the minimum level of proficiency in reading and mathematics,” said Antoninis at the ADEA Triennale on Education, in Accra, Ghana. “If we also consider that one in five children do not even complete primary school, that means just 11% of all children attain that basic proficiency level.”
He said the latest figures, drawn from nine different data sources, underscore a major learning crisis on the continent. Antoninis said that learning outcomes in Africa remain alarmingly low, with fewer than one in seven pupils reaching the minimum global standards in literacy and numeracy by the end of primary school. He said this shows the continent faces a “big mountain to climb” as only a handful of countries – just four – record proficiency levels above 30%.
Only 1 in 10 children in Africa completes primary education and achieves minimum learning proficiency.
He added that strong school leadership could help turn the tide. Antoninis said that studies from the global north, where there is a lot more data on both the outcomes and the practices of school principals, tell us that school leaders are the second most important factor for improving student learning outcomes. “They’re only second to teachers, and they account for more than a quarter of the differences between students in learning outcomes,” he said.
He said that the role of school principals goes far beyond administration. “School leaders are not only responsible for learning, they’re also key to promoting inclusion, civic responsibility, and the integration of technology in education,” he said.
According to Antoninis, the main challenge that Africa needs to face when it comes to the role of principals is that traditionally, principals have been seen as figures of authority, managing the schools, the administration, and delivering on a range of issues that are not necessarily focused on learning. “… Africa needs to face is shifting that mindset,” he said. “It’s time for African countries to make that shift in approach and mentality. School leaders need to move from being administrators to being instructional leaders.”
He made these remarks while discussing UNESCO’s latest Spotlight Report on Foundational Learning, titled Lead for Foundational Learning. In the report, produced in partnership with the African Union and the African Centre for School Leadership, governments are urged to make school leaders better instructional guides to drive classroom change.
Policies take time to work
Antoninis said that while some African countries have developed stronger policies for school leadership, progress remains uneven across the continent. “A policy is not something that brings results from one day to the next,” he said. “You need to introduce policies and give them time to work.”
According to Antoninis, only about a third of African countries have stand-alone professional standards for school leaders, and even among those, not all emphasize instructional leadership. He said that the majority of school principals across the continent are “not adequately prepared for the job,” as recruitment processes rarely require prior training. “Only about 19% of countries require school principals to be trained before they start on the job,” he said. “There is a low level of skills… And just 30% have induction programmes to mentor or coach new school principals when they start on the job. So there are things that need to be done still to say that countries really embrace these policies.”
A new policy dashboard was launched by the GEM team in order to assist countries in tracking progress, such as pre-service training and induction. In the report, eight recommendations are made to strengthen the education system.
Antoninis outlined three universal measures that are often overlooked: ensuring that all children have access to textbooks, learning in their native language, and receiving a nutritious school meal. “Foundational learning will not improve unless every child has a textbook, learns as much as possible in their native language, and is well-fed to concentrate in school,” he said.
Yet, the reality remains stark. “Africa is the only region in the world where 80% of children do not learn in their home language,” he said. “And only about 40% have access to school meals.”
In addition, he said that there is a lack of data and planning that prevents progress. He said only one in five African countries has an assessment framework to guide learning outcomes. “Without such frameworks, countries are really moving in the dark,” he said. “That’s why making a learning plan is one of our key recommendations.”
Other priorities include supporting teachers to cope with challenging classroom conditions and elevating school principals from administrators to instructional leaders. “Being a good teacher is not enough to make someone a good principal,” Antoninis said. “We need to professionalize school leadership, select principals carefully, train them, and give them clear goals.”
“What we find is that school principals and parents are much more optimistic about the situation of learning in their classrooms and their schools than we know from objective data collected across the continent,” he said. “If they had better data, they would understand much more about the mountain they have to climb.”
He also emphasized the importance of data-driven decision-making, saying many principals and parents are often overly optimistic about learning progress.
Why is there little data on children’s learning levels?
Antoninis also acknowledged that part of the problem lies in the limited availability of reliable data on children’s learning levels across the continent. “That’s a big question,” he said. “Much of the data that does exist isn’t easily accessible or comprehensive enough to give a full picture for Africa.”
He explained that this issue ties directly to one of the report’s key messages about international assistance. “There has been a mistake in the way data collection has been supported,” Antoninis said. “Donors often fund assessments, extract the data for global reporting, and leave. But development isn’t about that – it’s about helping countries build their own national assessment systems so they can collect and use data for their own purposes.”
He said that countries need to learn from each other. “That’s an essential precondition for improvements. They need to have the measures and the policy dialogue environments like here in this ADEA triennale to understand, and not hide from each other, but actually try to learn,” he said.
On financing, Antoninis warned that external support for foundational learning is projected to decline by more than a quarter over the next few years due to global geopolitical and economic pressures. “This makes it even more important to redesign support programmes in more sustainable ways,” he said. “Some interventions currently cost up to $70 per student per year – nearly as much as what countries spend in total on each learner.”
“How can we expect governments, therefore, to deliver if it is going to be so expensive?, he said. But there are ways to reduce the cost. As long as governments are more purposeful in how they want to use these resources.” He called for smarter, more targeted spending focused on the essentials. “Governments should prioritize the missing core inputs – textbooks, teacher guides, and coaching support – and find affordable ways to deliver them to all students,” he said.
Antoninis urged donors to shift how they support countries: “Funding should go toward building institutions and systems,” he said. “Development is about strengthening national capacity so countries can track and improve learning outcomes themselves, not about extracting data for international use.”
It’s not cheap to bring people together and exchange experiences and ideas.
“The Triennale is an event that goes back more than 30 years,” he said. “It is really an opportunity for policymakers from around the continent to exchange views and understand what developments are taking place in education.”
Antoninis said that collaboration among countries is never simple, even in regions like Europe. “No country wants to be told what to do in education,” he said. “Every country is proud and wants to find its own way, and that’s completely understandable. But there are real benefits that come from listening to your peers.”
He said that the challenge lies in sustaining these spaces for dialogue. “It’s not cheap to bring people together and exchange experiences and ideas,” he explained. “That’s why the African Union should look carefully at how to prioritize and fund such cooperation.”
Antoninis said that investing in collaboration may not deliver instant results, but it is fundamental for helping countries broaden their perspectives and strengthen their education systems. “It doesn’t bring immediate outcomes,” he said, “but it is essential for opening the minds and perspectives of countries.”
SDG 4 target
African countries have made significant progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4), said Antoninis, but there is still much to do. A key goal of SDG4 is to “ensure that quality education is accessible to all and ensure that lifelong learning opportunities are provided to all” by 2030. This initiative has specific goals for literacy, education completion, early childhood development, employment skills, and higher education access. As of 2025, progress towards SDG 4 hasn’t met targets.
2030 indicates the target year for achieving these global goals.
According to the 2025 SDG 4 Scorecard for Africa, 118 million children and youth are not in school, with numbers increasing sharply in conflict-affected countries like Somalia and Sudan. By 2030, many African countries aim to reduce out-of-school numbers by 58 million.
“Africa and SDG4 is, of course, a difficult question,” he said. “Global agendas are inspiring, and every 15 years or so, countries come together to express their aspirations. But there’s also a tendency sometimes to be a little bit too ambitious and promise to deliver things that are impossible to achieve. “
Antoninis said that while global frameworks are valuable for setting direction, they must remain realistic and grounded in national contexts.
“What we have done with the GEM Report, working with the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, is to encourage countries to go back to the drawing board,” he said. “Instead of focusing on universal access to secondary education or learning for all, countries should start from where they stand and define how far they can realistically go, because, at the end of the day, they are accountable to their citizens.”
He said that global targets should not expect every country to achieve the same outcomes. “That’s not fair,” Antoninis said. “Our role at the global level is to help define common indicators so that countries understand where they are, not to impose uniform expectations.”
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According to Antoninis, Africa has struggled for decades to attain universal primary completion, a goal first promised in the 1960s. “Africa pledged to achieve universal primary education by 1980,” he said. “It didn’t happen. Then came the 1980s and 1990s, when economic challenges caused stagnation – for 20 years, primary completion rates barely moved.”
Progress started improving in the 2000s, as there was a goal to achieve universal primary completion by 2015. But it was not achieved.
He said the continent is still behind. “We won’t achieve universal primary completion even by 2030,” said Antoninis. “At the current rate, that milestone may only be reached in the late 2040s because still only 80% of children complete primary school. One in five children in Africa still do not complete primary school.”
Out-of-school numbers rising again
He added that the number of out-of-school children has risen since 2015, from 42 million to an estimated 45 million, and possibly closer to 50 million when factoring in countries affected by conflict, such as Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“There’s still a lot to be done,” he said. “And unfortunately, countries are once again squeezed financially, just like in the 1980s. Public debt is rising, and middle-income countries in Africa are spending less on education. They used to allocate about 17% of their budgets in 2012; now it’s around 15%. Just as needs are growing, countries are spending less.”
Aid alone won’t fix the learning crisis
He also referenced a recent UNICEF report, based on GEM estimates, showing that even if an additional U.S. $3.2 billion were invested globally, only about six million of the 272 million children out of school would benefit. “Aid alone won’t fix the problem,” Antoninis said. “At the end of the day, it’s about what governments manage to do with their own resources. They have the main responsibility, and that’s very important to understand.”
According to the GEM Report, the conditions of learning environments remain a major barrier. “A school building that is not in good condition is not conducive to learning,” he said. “Yet half of the classrooms in Africa are considered to be in poor condition, and countries are spending less on infrastructure because budgets are so tight.”
He said that while civil society groups in many African countries are active in monitoring education, meaningful accountability requires data, systems, and clarity of goals. “Understanding how difficult the conditions are, and how low the outcomes really are, is not easy,” he said. “That’s why it’s so important for countries to have a clear measure of what they’re trying to achieve.” He said that real change starts with awareness and alignment across all levels of the education system.
“Only when there is that realization will all the machinery of the state be mobilized, from ministers to district heads, to school principals,” Antoninis said. “Unfortunately, many countries are still a little in the dark about what exactly they are trying to do.”