UN Global Education Compact Summit Holds, Leaders Strategise for Action

By Funmi Ogundare

About 25,000 leaders from the world of business, government, the UN, and civil society will be convening this week, virtually, for the Global Compact Leaders’ Summit themed, ‘Elevate Ambition for Strategic Collective Action’.

They will all be part of the largest initiative to drive social good; the UN Global Compact, to mark 20 years of a worldwide commitment to social impact.
Every organisation forming part of the UN Global Compact works to further its goals of making the world a better, fairer place. That includes NewGlobe, as a learning leader supporting the education of nearly one million children a day across Africa.

The Group MD Nigeria, NewGlobe, Omowale David-Ashiru, in a statement made available to THISDAY, said as long term signatories, the body stands behind the Compact’s recognition that: investing in education is essential to developing a skilled workforce for the future and improving economic growth, adding that increasing smart investment in education over the longer term is needed.
“We also recognise that transformational change in education systems requires more than investment. It also rests on long-sighted and ambitious political and community leadership.
Increasingly, such change is being prioritised by political leaders who recognise its overwhelming benefits for their societies; benefits which reach far beyond economic growth.”
Across Africa, she said governments, societies and communities are being supported by learning leaders like NewGlobe in partnerships with the power to revolutionise educational outcomes for millions of children and help build stable, equitable and prosperous societies.
The managing director expressed delight about working with the EKOEXCEL and EdoBEST programmes, through far-sighted political leadership, delivering educational system transformation and hugely improved learning outcomes for hundreds of thousands of primary school children in Lagos and Edo States.

David-Ashiru noted that in Liberia, its Bridge Liberia programme was supporting the Liberian government to improve teaching and learning in schools, educating tens of thousands of students across the country with dramatically improved outcomes.
“In Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria, our Bridge community school network supports underserved communities by delivering superb education since the very first school opened in Nairobi in 2009.”
She emphasised on what unites the programmes saying it is as a result of her organisation’s commitment to learning as a science, and the use of education data to improve every aspect of learning.
According to her, “we are learning about learning constantly, and everything we learn is applied to make outcomes for students better. We are proud of our work. We also recognise far more is needed. Tens of millions of African children remain out-of-school or are in school, but not receiving the high quality education they require to build our shared future. As Kenya’s President Kenyatta commented recently, ‘We need to make smart investments in education technology to help close the digital divide and leapfrog infrastructure deficits in schools.”

The Covid pandemic which has disrupted education across Africa and the world, she noted, has made such investment even more urgent, adding that it has also shown how technology can be harnessed in support of learning.
“In Lagos State, nearly half a million mp3 players were distributed to students during school lockdown, through the EKOEXCEL programme. They provided grade appropriate pre-recorded lessons, regularly updated to make learning at home easier and more accessible for children of all households. This was the largest ever eLearning drive in Africa. It shows what can be done with smart investments in education technology.
Local, national and international leaders are focused on ‘building back better’.
” In education, this means reviewing what is proven to work at a system-wide level in Africa and replicating those approaches, ” she stressed.

The managing director said it was only through multi-stakeholder collaboration, innovative thought leadership, transparent reporting on progress and focused data driven initiatives can we get back on track, adding, “as leaders in learning and supporters of the urgent need recognised by governments, communities and all UN Global Compact signatories to invest in educational transformation, we could not agree more.”