The ARESRO project is led by Makerere University School of Public – ResilientAfrica Network (RAN) in collaboration with The Resilience Research Centre at Dalhousie University and LINK-Uganda, with funding from IDRC. The project aims to strengthen the resilience of education systems across 42 Global Partnership for Education (GPE) KIX partner African countries through evidence generation, stakeholder engagement, and policy influence. The overall goal of the project is to contribute to the improvement of the education system resilience (ESR) in GPE partner countries in Africa through evidence-informed programming. The project seeks to answer the following research questions:

1. How do education stakeholders understand and practice education system resilience in the GPE partner countries?
2. What do education and other relevant stakeholders envision as the future shocks, stressors, risks, and vulnerabilities to the education systems in the GPE partner countries?
3. What are some potentially effective approaches to addressing these future shocks, stressors, risks, and vulnerabilities to the education systems in the GPE partner countries?

It seeks to study how education systems in GPE KIX partner African countries understand Education system resilience and how they cope with the diverse shocks and stressors such as climate change, public health emergencies, conflict, and economic instability. The main scope of focus is Early Childhood Education (ECE), Primary, Secondary Education and Teacher training. RAN implements this project in close partnership with university partners across 8 GPE partner countries:

1)        Uganda (Makerere University)

2)        Ethiopia (University of Addis Ababa)

3)        Zambia (University of Zambia)

4)        Malawi (University of Malawi)

5)        Cameroon (Université de Yaoundé I)

6)        Senegal (Université Cheikh Anta Diop)

7)        Mali (Yambo Ouologuem University)

8)        Ghana (University of Ghana)

The project is implemented in three phases; (1) Context analysis (desk review) of existing literature on ESR including both published and grey literature; (2) formative data collection to speak to the main actors in the field of ESR; and (3) foresight analysis, where futures analysis techniques are deployed to assess future resilience issues and where stakeholders collaboratively meet in a systems thinking workshop to discuss what are the future priority resilience issues – shocks and stressors as well as interventions that should be deployed to strengthen resilience of  the education system. The foresight analysis systems thinking workshops are deployed in a selected five of the GPE KIX partner African countries.

The project aims to support countries in generating evidence and translating data into actionable policies and plans that ensure learning continuity for all children, especially the most marginalized. Click here to read more.