Ghana introduced what it calls the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) programme in 1994. This meant that families could send children to public schools without paying school fees. In 2005, it introduced the Capitation Grant Scheme to further reduce financial barriers to education and increase access.

The grant was to discourage schools from charging unapproved fees and levies to make up for the lost tuition fees. Basic education in Ghana currently covers the pre-primary, primary and lower secondary levels. Pre-primary involves two years of kindergarten (for ages 4 and 5 years), primary is six years (for ages 6 to 11 years), and lower secondary is three years of junior high school (for ages 12 to 14 years).

After junior high school, students have the option to continue to senior high, technical or vocational school (for ages 15 to 17 years). Several other countries on the continent, such as Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, have put in place free basic education policies too.

At the core of Nigeria’s exam failure epidemic is a dangerous misalignment. The WASSCE curriculum emphasises structured, predictable content: basic arithmetic in Mathematics, definitions and formulae in Physics. But students walk into the UTME hall and encounter abstract concepts they were never taught.

JAMB tests them on logic, data interpretation, calculus-level reasoning, and obscure physics applications: content well outside the reach of the average public school classroom. This disjointed approach is not merely a gap; it is a gulf. Students are taught one thing and tested on another, and failure becomes inevitable.

Yet year after year, the education authorities insist on defending the structure, as though rigour and fairness were mutually exclusive. It begs the question: if two major exit examinations meant to assess the same academic journey diverge so drastically in content and expectation, who exactly is the curriculum designed to serve?

Ethiopia’s mission to deliver quality education aligned with international standards like the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is fraught with challenges. From systemic inefficiencies to resource shortages, the nation faces significant obstacles in building a future-ready generation. However, amidst these hurdles, promising efforts are being implemented that may pave the way for transformative change.

Addis Ababa University Associate Professor of Education Belay Hagos (PhD), underscores the severity of the education crisis. He noted that researches documented by the World Bank reveal alarming statistics: by age 10, 90% of Ethiopian children cannot read a simple text, reflecting a profound “learning poverty”.

Belay and his team traced the root causes of this crisis to a chain of interconnected factors, including inadequate teacher preparation, low salaries, and insufficient resource allocation. Despite the gravity of these challenges, there is momentum toward addressing them. The Ministry of Education, has launched strategic reforms based on studies from Young Lives, the World Bank, and its own educational roadmap.

The recent shooting incident at Adventist Senior High School, Bantama-Kumasi, is a stark reminder of the deep-seated problems plaguing Ghana's education system. As the National Executive Director of the Ghana National Council of Private Schools, I am compelled to speak out against the alarming trends that are turning our schools into breeding grounds for crime and violence.

The incident involving Bernard Amoabeng, a student who took a gun to school and threatened his colleagues, is a symptom of a larger problem. It highlights the failure of our education system to nurture moral values, discipline, and skills development in our children.

The lack of moral education is a significant contributor to the problems facing our education system. The emphasis on academic achievement has led to a neglect of moral values and character building. Our children are not being taught the importance of respect, empathy, and responsibility, which are essential for creating a safe and supportive learning environment.

Ghanaian teacher Portia Dzifa Dzilah from Pakro Anglican Basic School in the Akwapem South Municipal Assembly in the Eastern Region has made history as the first-ever Ghanaian regional winner of the 2025 Cambridge Dedicated Teacher Awards organised by Cambridge University Press and Assessment in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Selected by the judges for her incredible dedication to the young people in her community, Ms Dzilah is the first Ghanaian teacher to be recognised as a regional winner in the competition’s seven-year history. She is one of nine regional winners of the global Cambridge competition that celebrates the achievements of teachers around the world.

As a regional winner, she will receive £500 worth of books for her class, a trophy, take part in a regional awards ceremony and receive publicity for herself and her school during the coming year. She will also appear on a ‘Thank you’ page at the front of a range of new Cambridge textbooks, available to the public from November 2025.

Our education system has been under threat for a very long time. Consequently, standards have been going rapidly downhill. The decline was poked into our faces only last week with the just released JAMB results. Some university dons have had cause to draw public attention to gaps in supposed passes in flying colours in the public qualifying examinations and the performance in the lecture rooms.

The performance has been shown not to be the touted brilliance of the students. It flowed from irregularities sponsored by unscrupulous parents or commercially-minded proprietors of private schools who want their schools at the top of competing schools’ chart to attract patronage. In the 40s up to 50s, exceptional Standard Six certificate holders were retained in their schools to teach.

The suitability of the prospective undergraduates is not the only issue that bedevils our universities. The welfare challenges and attendant frustrations over which the leaderships of the lecturers’ association have intermittently called out their colleagues on strike in the last 30 years remain unresolved. My attention has been drawn to their complaints ventilated by a lecturer bordering on their status and welfare.

Over the last decade, there has been a focus on the relationship between South Africa’s education sector and technology. That focus was sharpened during the COVID-19 crisis when teleconferencing and education technology became critical for learners, educators, and institutions to engage with one another, conduct classes, and share curriculum material and resources.

Studies conclude that the crisis succeeded in pushing the boundaries of digital transformation and the need for education to become more learner-centered and technology-driven, but it is up to all sector stakeholders to continue that momentum to deliver a universal and enhanced digital learning experience for South Africa’s youth.

Part of that effort involves realigning our education technology infrastructure to meet the needs of the sector’s administrative and student management processes. With the right deployments, the help of quality hardware, and strategic partnerships with vendors and solutions providers, our schools can serve as shining examples of education technology.

In Uganda, half the population is under the age of 18, while unemployment rates are sky high. But the government’s ‘Skilling Uganda’ programme appears to have, over several years, shifted the focus from theoretical learning to practical skills that are in demand, an initiative that is revitalising technical and vocational education and training (TVET) institutions across the country.

In towns like Mpigi, Wakiso and Fort Portal, where many young people have turned to vocational training as a more viable path than traditional academia, the results are slowly becoming visible, although not without challenges. At the Mpigi Institute of Health Sciences, located off the Kampala-Masaka highway, instructors are seeing a change in how both students and the wider community perceive vocational education.

“Ten years ago, people looked down on technical schools,” says Moses Luyinda, an electrical engineering instructor. “Parents wanted their children to become lawyers or doctors. Now, some are beginning to realise that you can make a decent living as a plumber or welder.”

The measurement of science, technology and innovation (STI) in the African context is under-researched, but the knowledge base to inform the design of STI measurement indicators is growing. This is the main message of a study titled ‘Do we measure what should be measured? Towards a research and theoretical agenda for STI measurement in Africa’ published in Innovation and Development in March.

The study was authored by Dr Glenda Kruss and Dr Il-haam Petersen from the Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (CeSTII) of the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa as well as Dr Maruf Sanni, Dr David Adeyeye and Dr Abiodun Egbetokun, all based at the National Centre for Technology Management in Nigeria.

The study, a review of the literature on STI measurement in Africa, said: “The literature on African innovation measurement tends to be characterised by assessments of ‘absence’, of what does not exist, when measured against high-income countries.

The proliferation of new threats against academic and intellectual freedoms across Africa has emanated mainly from the deepening of neoliberal cultures in society and in higher education institutions, driven, in part, by a worsening economic crisis. A total of 48 presentations were posted on the conference website as part of the event that was hosted by the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania from 29 April to 2 May.

Against this backdrop, there is an urgent need for a renewed drive to safeguard these freedoms across Africa, according to the concept note that framed the international conference, ‘Academic Freedom in Africa: Revisiting the Kampala Declaration’, organised by the Senegal-based Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA).

David Mills, the director of Oxford University’s Centre for Global Higher Education, United Kingdom, told University World News: “This major CODESRIA conference – happening as American universities face existential threats to their funding and autonomy – is a vital reminder that academic freedom has to be constantly practised, struggled for and defended.”

The Managing Director of the Nigeria Education Loan Fund (NELFund), Akintunde Sawyerr, has disclosed that the agency has disbursed N54 billion to beneficiaries of the student loan scheme across the country.

He explained that since the scheme commenced, NELFund has received about N203 billion from the Federal Government through various channels, including the Office of the Accountant General, the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which provided recovered proceeds of crime as directed by President Bola Tinubu.

Sawyerr stated these when he appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Student Loans on Wednesday. He clarified that the amount represents disbursements to 303 government-owned institutions and 293,000 students nationwide.

The Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) has expressed dismay over delay in the payment of salaries of its members. The union, in a letter to the attributed the delay to the migration to the Government Integrated Financial and Management Information System (GIFMIS) platform.

President of SSANU, Comrade Mohammed Ibrahim in a letter to the Accountant General dated, May 7, 2025, with the title: “Concern over the consistent delay in the payment of monthly salaries of University workers,” expressed dismay over the persistent delay since the university based unions exited from the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) payment platform.

He said that the continuous delay in salary payment to SSANU members was in breach of the 2022 agreement reached between the Joint Action Committee (JAC) of SSANU/NASU and the Federal Government, which led to the suspension of the prolonged strike action.