Mandate

The Pan-African Institute of Education for Development (IPED), a specialized institution of the African Union (AU) was given the mandate to serve as the African Education Observatory for the continent. Based on a continental Education Management Information System of agreed monitoring framework of indicators supplied by the Member States, the Observatory would not only be a knowledge base of documentation on the education and training developments on the continent, but use the statistics gathered to generate research and continental and regional reports to monitor the implementation of the African Union’s continental education strategies, such as Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CES) 2016-2025. The CESA 16-25 is designed to involve the broadest coalition possible for education and skills training in Africa.

IPED operates in a complex political and technical ecosystem. It has multiple roles from building the capacity of Member States to provide key education statistics and to promoting itself as a repository of information to support policy dialogue of education decision makers and stakeholders at continental, regional and national levels. IPED acts as a coordinating hub eliciting the collaboration of multiple stakeholders who occupy this ecosystem. These include the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and their Member States, the AU Commission, specifically the Department of Education, Science and Innovation (ESTI) under whose guidance the Institute is located, other AU agencies such as the STATAFRIC, the AU Statistics Institute, the AU Development Agency NEPAD, its sister Institute, CIEFFA, other AU mechanisms in particular the AU CESA clusters on Education Planning and ICTs in Education and Training, as well as critical engagements with external development partners, in particular the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) who has a competing mandate in obtaining education statistics from countries.

IPED since its inception, had a difficult childhood with multiple transformations in roles and mandates, never quite being fully accepted into the AU family with appropriate staffing complements, budgets and legal status. The monitoring role assigned to the Institute to report on Member States performance on the CESA 16-25 has not been fulfilled and there are less than four years to achieve the objectives of that continental strategy. The Institute’s trajectory as an Observatory has been characterized by a series of stop-start initiatives since 2006, with some innovative and successful achievements, most notably the AU EMIS Norms and Standards Assessment Frameworks endorsed by multiple REC Ministers and widely implemented by Member States, and the production and wide dissemination of the AU Continental and Regional Reports monitoring the AU Plan of Action in the Second Decade (2006-2015). These achievements were largely implemented by IPED’s partners - UIS and ADEA. On the whole however, there have been long periods of notable absence of activities largely because the Institute lacked the necessary organizational and legal infrastructure, platforms and staffing. The impact of the COVID 19 pandemic further froze the potential  of the Institute to respond to its mandates and engagements. Furthermore, since 2017, the AU Commission is undergoing a major restructuring exercise in streamlining and repurposing its departments and agencies, the effect of which is now impacting on the transformation of the Institute. There is a recognition of the urgency to reposition the IPED to properly fulfil its role as the African Education Observatory to support the Africa We Want vision of the AU Agenda 2063 by giving Member States and other stakeholders the necessary tools, research and frameworks to implement this vision.