The Africa Education and Learning Hub (africaeducationhub.org) is the digital platform of the Horn, Eastern and Southern Africa (HESA) Leaning Collaborative, an initiative mooted and advanced by Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) working in education sector policy advocacy and influencing in Africa. The idea was first initiated by CSOs implementing the Education Out Loud (EOL) program in the Horn Eastern and Southern Africa region with support from Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and lives to provide seamless exchange of ideas and resources amongst its membership[KD1] . (See Home | Education Out Loud for more information about the program). The hub serves as the digital market place where collaborators interact, access materials, resources and learn from each other’s work in the spirit of improving performance through sharing and learning.
Global dynamics herald a constantly changing environment that require actors to be flexible and adaptive to changing circumstances within the operating environment. This flexibility and adaptability cannot be realized without deliberate effort to institute and promote a learning culture and the practice of adaptive management. It is important to note that problems are becoming more intricate and to surmount them, the practice of individuals and organizations working together in networks, partnerships, collaboratives, mergers and acquisitions is gaining currency and relevance as an effective approach to doing business. It is in the consciousness of this reality among education advocates across the African continent that the idea of setting up a Learning Collaborative is premised.
With a Vision of building a dynamic collaboration and learning platform for transformative education in Africa and a Mission of promoting collaboration, learning and innovation for improved and sustained policy influencing and community organizing to address challenges facing access to inclusive and equitable quality education and life-long learning for all in Africa, the HESA collaborative’s Goal and Purpose hovers around applying research, knowledge generation and sharing, peer review and development, innovation, and discovery as well as resource mobilization as means to strengthen individual and organizational advocacy, policy and community organizing capacities for greater impact.
The HESA Learning Collaborative plays a crucial role in enabling members create resourceful partnerships, share and learn from each other to advance their missions. We provide opportunities for members to team up and work as consortia, but also, where opportunities arise, members can forge bilateral partnerships. This approach creates a transnational reach thereby amplifying the education advocacy agenda in Africa.
Our objectives include:
- To foster a culture of learning, collaboration and adaptive management as an approach to strengthen quality of actions for greater impact.
- Establish and support a platform for research, knowledge generation and sharing, learning, innovation, discovery and resource mobilization among education advocates in Africa.
- Establish a peer review and development mechanism for collective continuous support and improvement.
Our core functions include:
- Establishment of transnational partnerships for sharing and learning from diverse experiences and perspectives.
- Undertaking relevant researches to support evidence based policy advocacy and influencing. It will
- Engaging regional policy blocs including SADC, ECOWAS, EAC, AU and other relevant regional policy formations.
- Establishment of a peer review and development mechanism that will guide peer learning and review to foster collective responsibility and accountability.
- Monitoring and evaluation of performance of the learning collaborative to inform adaptive management strategies, learning culture and an intellectual framework of operation.
- Organize and facilitate learning and knowledge sharing sessions/courses for members
- Providing a mechanism for coordination of operations and engagements among collaborative members.
- Documenting and disseminating knowledge products across collaborative members and stakeholders as a significant communication channel with and amongst collaborators and stakeholders
- Undertaking resource mobilization initiatives and serving as a partnership negotiating entity on behalf of all or some of the members/collaborators as well as a platform to provide visibility of members’ works.
HESA Learning Collaborative exists to serve members working across the African continent. These members undertake education policy advocacy, accountability and influencing work in Horn, East, West, Central and Southern Africa.