The Continental Education Strategy for Africa 2016-2025 (CESA 16-25) was adopted by African Union heads of state and government, during its 26th Ordinary Session held in Addis Ababa on 31 January 2016, as the framework for transforming the continent’s education and training systems. CESA concretized the vision set out in its Agenda 2063 for enabling citizens to be effective agents of change to achieve the ‘Africa We Want’. It also localized the global Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goal on education (SDG 4) within the context of Africa-specific priorities and challenges. At the 2018 Pan-African High-level Conference on Education (PACE), Member States asked the African Union and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to produce, on a regular basis, a continental report monitoring progress towards achieving the implementation of CESA 16-25 and SDG 4. The two organizations entrusted UNESCO’s International Institute of Educational Planning (IIEP-UNESCO) to produce this first report, which aims to contribute to efforts to accelerate the achievement by African countries of the strategic objectives and targets set out in both agendas. It presents a baseline situation analysis covering the first five years of implementation. The report is aligned with the ongoing benchmarking process conducted by the African Union Commission (AUC) and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and anchors its conceptual and analytic frameworks to the agreed benchmark indicators.
