The Fundamental Imperative
Financing education, particularly “foundational learning”, is the smartest investment a nation can make. The returns on foundational learning, the ability to read, write, and count, are individual, social, and economic, touching every level of society. Evidence from the World Bank report indicates that each additional year of quality education can increase an individual’s future earnings by approximately 10%. Beyond the individual, these investments can yield up to 30 times their value in economic returns, building the human capital upon which national innovation, stability, and shared prosperity depend.
Yet, even as the case for investing in our children grows stronger, the official funding landscape is tightening. According to UNICEF’s analysis, the global aid to primary education is projected to fall by US$856 million, a staggering 34 percent drop, between 2023 and 2026. In Sub-Saharan Africa, where fiscal pressures from debt and inflation are already acute, these reductions threaten to stall or even reverse hard-won gains in foundational learning. We are seeing classroom reforms and training efforts that have shown promising impacts being scaled back or discontinued.
In this environment, we cannot afford to mistake access to education for learning achievements. The initial work and general enrollment might have surged across the continent, however, learning has stalled, with nine out of ten children still unable to read a simple sentence by the age of ten.
Catalysing Government-Led Reform
In this shifting global landscape, philanthropy has a unique opportunity to play an increasingly strategic role. As education systems navigate political, fiscal, and institutional pressures, philanthropy can help shape the enabling conditions for long-term, system-level transformation.
Philanthropy’s flexibility, risk tolerance, and long-term perspective are distinctive assets, enabling it to catalyse change where others may be constrained. These characteristics uniquely position philanthropy to strengthen the political commitment, institutional capacity, and accountability frameworks that make large-scale, government-led reform possible.
This flexibility allows support to organizations that engage governments, test new approaches to political advocacy, and adapt strategies as opportunities and constraints evolve. The goal is to strengthen government systems so that foundational learning reforms are sustained and scaled over time.
A Model for African-Led Transformation
The partnership between the Hempel Foundation and Human Capital Africa (HCA) exemplifies this shift toward system-aligned philanthropy.
For the Hempel Foundation, this has meant rethinking its role. For years, the Hempel Foundation has supported organisations working alongside governments to implement proven service delivery interventions in foundational learning. That work remains essential. But implementation alone is not enough. Sustainable, system-wide change depends on political leadership.
The Hempel Foundation therefore shifted part of its strategic focus toward catalysing government leadership. This means investing not only in what works in classrooms, but also in the conditions that make reform possible at scale.
HCA is an African, data-driven advocacy and accountability organization dedicated to making foundational learning a top priority across the continent. Rather than delivering services directly, HCA focuses on creating the specific conditions that allow governments to enable and sustain reform.
The partnership between Human Capital Africa (HCA) and the Hempel Foundation aims to strengthen political prioritisation, advance evidence-based policy reform, and encourage greater public investment in foundational learning. In doing so, it helps create demand for proven service delivery approaches — ensuring they become nationally owned reforms rather than isolated successes.
Further, the partnership is built on the conviction that for reforms to take root, they must be African-led and anchored in government leadership. HCA achieves this by mobilizing an ecosystem of bold African champions that can build the enabling conditions required to drive reform and place foundational learning at the center of the governments’ agendas. A prime example is the African Foundational Learning Ministerial Coalition (AFLMC). By bringing together over 20 Ministers of Education, HCA has created a country-led platform for peer learning, mutual accountability, and shared progress tracking. This ensures that the impetus for reform comes from within African ministries, supported by the technical evidence they need to succeed.
Furthermore, HCA is also leveraging African partnerships to unlock the continent’s potential for foundational learning reform. Through the launch of the African Philanthropy Coalition for Foundational Learning and the African CEOs Coalition for Foundational Learning, we are mobilizing the continent’s own resources. With an estimated US$2.5 trillion in investable African wealth, these coalitions prove that homegrown collaboration can turn commitment into lasting, system-wide change.
To deepen the impact, Human Capital Africa and the Hempel Foundation have launched this partnership focused on three core objectives designed to ensure the sustainability of education reforms:
- Advancing Political Commitment: Our collaboration is designed to position foundational learning as a top-tier political and development priority. By engaging Heads of State and Ministers of Finance, we work to ensure that foundational learning remains at the heart of national development agendas, even amidst fiscal constraints.
- Driving Data Use: Complementing this advocacy focus, the partnership will support governments in Malawi and Uganda to embed data use and accountability within the education system. By applying tools such as the Adoption Tracker and Foundational Learning Action Tracker (FLAT), it will strengthen monitoring, promote evidence-based decision-making, and ensure that lessons from the classroom inform policy at every level.
- Strengthening Continental Accountability: This partnership will also lay the foundation for a continental accountability mechanism to track progress and guide reform, ensuring that political commitments translate into measurable outcomes for children across the region.
The Next Frontier: Principles for Sustainable Reform
Sustaining Africa’s foundational learning reforms requires more strategic allocation of philanthropic funding — not simply greater volume. Four core principles can guide how philanthropic organisations invest for impact.
- Create the Enabling Conditions Necessary for Reform: Long-term change requires addressing both the political “demand” for reform and the technical “supply” of enablers. This means investing in high-level advocacy and regional coordination to build political will, while simultaneously providing the tools and data frameworks that allow governments to implement and track progress effectively.
- Support Local Champions to Navigate Complex Systems: For reforms to be durable, we must invest in backing local champions and building the leadership and organizational capacity of African entities. These leaders are uniquely positioned to navigate the complex political and institutional landscapes within their own countries, driving systemic change from the inside out.
- Synchronize Financing with National Priorities: All catalytic investment must be demand-led. By aligning our financing with national reform agendas, we ensure coherence, mutual accountability, and long-term program continuity.
- Catalyze Innovation through Risk Capital: Philanthropy can test and iterate on models that larger players find too risky. By investing in breakthrough knowledge and initiatives, we identify what works before these innovations are ready for system-wide adoption.
A Shared Responsibility
Solving the learning crisis in Africa demands action, accountability, and alignment from every sector. Governments must treat foundational learning as a social contract; private sector leaders must recognize today’s learners as tomorrow’s workforce; and philanthropy must catalyse progress by backing the organisations and system reforms that make sustained, large-scale impact possible.
Lasting progress comes from systems, not isolated projects. When governments lead with vision and philanthropy provides purpose-driven support, we create the conditions for transformation. The future of Africa depends on ensuring that every child gains the strong foundational learning they deserve. Every investment we make today in strengthening these systems is an investment in the continent’s lasting prosperity.
