Challenges facing education in Malawi, Kenya, and Tanzania

Even though the governments of Malawi, Kenya, and Tanzania employ substantial efforts to provide quality education, we still have a long way to go, especially for learners with diverse needs. They are left out. That is the case even though the disability prevalence rate grew from 3% in 2008 to 10% in 2018 in Malawi; the special needs education budget reduced by 6.5% and 7.7% in the fiscal year 2019/20 and FY 2020/21 respectively, and in Tanzania, the education sector budget declined from 20% to 15% between 2014/2015 and 2017/2018 (UNICEF, 2018). In the absence of empirical study, anecdotally, we know that the COVID-19 compacted the situation.

Our responses and commitments

The Pamodzi for Inclusive Education in South-East Africa (PIESEA) is a transnational alliance of four (4) organizations namely Fount for Nations, Rays of Hope, Kesho Kenya, and Shule Direct, from Malawi, Kenya, and Tanzania.

The goal of the project is to reduce implementation and awareness gaps that exist between available inclusive education policies and the implementation status.

PIESEA has made the following commitments.

• The provision of real-time data on the status of inclusive education across the three countries through an online monitoring tool that houses the visualization dashboard and geo-mapping references of all inclusive education service providers for informed policy decision making.
• 60% Increase in funding to support for Inclusive and special needs Education
• Establish and Train 56 community structures across the 4 implementing partners to promote the inclusive agenda through community-driven advocacy and lobbying
• Bi-annual engagement with the parliamentarians to lobby for increased funding toward inclusive education agenda and implementation.
• Undertake the yearly budget allocation analysis and monitoring for allocations towards Inclusive Education across the 3 Countries.

The PIESEA project will target the national level policy makers, experts, regulators, and implementers through catalytic advocacy and increased citizen awareness on inclusive education. In turn, we hope to serve all learners with diverse needs based in Malawi, Kenya, and Tanzania.

Our partners and us

Rays of Hope has an admirable record in mainstream education, targeting district-level education structures, school structures, community structures, teachers, and learners. It has an extensive teacher network serving over 3,000 teachers nationally reaching over 230,000 students. It sits at the National Education Cluster Forum that contributes to the shaping of the education agenda in response to constraints and emergencies.

Fount for Nations provides in-service training for 328 teachers, and volunteer teacher assistants in creative arts teaching and learning techniques for children with disabilities serving 10,115 children in schools, hospitals and centers. Fount for Nations sits at the district child protection committee, working closely with the inclusive education department at the Ministry of Education.

Kesho Kenya has over sixteen years’ experience in education and child protection in the coast of Kenya. Their holistic work straddles the spectrum of financial support to access education, literacy and academic support in public schools, accountability mechanisms in school communities and education advocacy at both the local and national levels.

Shule Direct is a non-government organization that provides local, relevant, digital study platforms for learners in Tanzania. In total, the partner's efforts are serving over 2 million beneficiaries.