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About Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) / African Development Bank (AfDB)

Association for the Development of Education in Africa, ADEA, African Development Bank, AfDB Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) / African Development Bank (AfDB) Vision Statement: High quality African education and training geared towards the promotion of critical skills for accelerated and sustainable development in Africa. Mission Statement: To serve as an open and flexible pan-African organization that informs and facilitates the transformation of education and training to drive Africa?s accelerated and sustainable development. The Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) is first and foremost a forum for policy dialogue, composed of all the 54 Ministers of Education in Africa and 16 development partners. It was established in 1988 initially as a framework for better coordination among development agencies. Twenty-four years later, ADEA has come to represent a genuine partnership between African ministries of education and training and their technical and external partners (see Box 1 for the history of ADEA). It has also developed into a network of policy-makers, educators and researchers, and, based on its capacity to foster policy dialogue, a catalyst for educational reform. Since its inception, ADEA has acted on processes that have had a profound impact on policy-making in Africa through policy dialogue based on research and analytical work, capacity building, advocacy and networking. ADEA works on different areas of education, including higher education, technical and vocational skills development (TVSD), early childhood development (ECD), non-formal education, teaching profession, information and communication technology (ICT), books and learning materials, education statistics covering education management and policy support, peace education, education for sustainable development, and communication for education and development. ADEA is recognized as a pan-African organization that has a continental voice in education development, and the capacity to bring together the major players of the continent on policy issues in education as evidenced by the participation of 4 African Heads of State, a Prime Minister, over 50 Ministers, the private sector, civil society organizations, representatives of the youth, the African Diaspora and development agencies at its Triennale in February 2012. ADEA is perceived by stakeholders as providing a platform for innovative policy dialogue. The last evaluation report (2010) of the Universalia Management Group stated that stakeholders regard ADEA as ?relevant to the needs of educational policy dialogue in Africa?, ?achieves results in an environment that is decidedly challenging and at a scale that few other organizations of its size can match,? and produces valuable work that supports the decision-making needs of African governments at the national and regional levels. Most importantly is the fact that ADEA is consistently and positively assisting to make a difference in education on the continent.
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