3rd KIX Knowledge Café

Financing Education Data Systems for Africa’s Future

Date: 7 October 2025

Organizer: African Union’s Pan African Institute for Education for Development (AU-IPED) under the Global Partnership for Education – Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (GPE-KIX) Africa 19 Hub a joint endeavor with Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC)

Platform: Virtual - Zoom

Participating Countries: Uganda, Liberia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Eswatini, Cameroon, Tanzania, Sudan, Burkina Faso, The Gambia and Senegal

Executive summary

The 3rd KIX Knowledge Café focused on building financially sustainable Education Management Information Systems (EMIS) for Africa’s future. The event brought together 45 participants from education ministries from 12 African countries, researchers, and development partners from across the continent to explore a central question: how can African countries finance the education data systems that drive smarter and fairer decisions?

From the outset, AU-IPED’s Head, Mr. Adoumtar Noubatour, set the tone with a memorable statement - “Financing EMIS is not an expense; it’s an investment.” His words underscored the theme that EMIS should be viewed as long-term public infrastructure enabling data-driven decisions, equitable resource allocation, and innovation in teaching and learning.

Across presentations from Africa Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC), Liberia’s Ministry of Education, and UNICEF, three key insights emerged:

• Sustainability depends on domestic financing and local ownership, not short-term donor projects
• Capacity and coordination - especially across the Ministries of Education, Finance, and ICT - are as essential as software and technology
• EMIS evolution must be context-paced, maintaining aggregate systems while piloting learner-level data where feasible and secure.

Education Management Information Systems are the backbone of effective planning, budgeting, and monitoring in education. Yet, in many African countries, EMIS financing remains challenging and externally driven, with limited operational budgets and human capacity. The 3rd Knowledge Café therefore, explored how countries can transition from donor-driven projects to domestically financed, country-owned EMIS that continue to function and improve beyond project cycles.

Within the GPE-KIX Africa 19 Community of Practice (CoP) on Data Systems Strengthening, established in 2021, AU-IPED launched the Knowledge Café series in 2024 to sustain country-led dialogue between major activities. The series provides a structured yet informal platform for peer learning - combining expert spotlights, country reflections, and open discussions guided by four core pillars: Policy, People, Infrastructure, and Financing. This design ensures that Member States lead the conversations, exchange experiences, and collectively identify actionable solutions to strengthen EMIS across Africa.

Key Insights from Café

Opening: Investment Mindset Meets Budget Reality

The café commenced with Ms. Lisa Njenga welcoming participants before inviting the Head of AU-IPED, Mr. Adoumtar Noubatour, to provide the opening remarks. He argued that reliable EMIS is a public investment that enables data-driven decisions, equitable resource allocation, and pedagogical innovation aligned to African Unions’ Continental Education Strategy for Africa 2016-2025, 2026-2035 (CESA 16-25, 26-35). He also issued a call to action: bridge the education funding gap with public and private resources and coordinate efforts across national, regional, and continental levels so that “leaders will consider our job” with the seriousness it deserves.

Lukman Jaji, the KIX Project Lead and EMIS Policy Officer at AU-IPED set the scene, reminding participants why the Café series exists, which is to keep EMIS conversations alive between conferences, connect researchers who generate evidence with governments who will use it, and organise dialogue around four practical pillars i.e. policy, people, infrastructure, and financing. Of the four, he noted, money is the indispensable enabler.

Their remarks reinforced that EMIS sustainability requires long-term domestic investment and high-level policy commitment, not reliance on fragmented external funding.

Subnational Systems, Public Goods, and Open Source (APHRC)

Dr. Damazo Kadengye (APHRC) presented lessons from the KIX-SEEDS work in Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Uganda, where strengthening subnational data systems has been central. He described a familiar problem - centralised architectures, fragmented workflows, thin ICT infrastructure, and low data literacy, and then showed how judicious use of open-source tools like District Health Information Software 2 (DHIS2), coupled with local capacity building, can push back against each constraint.

Two points stood out. First, Damazo argued for treating education data as a public good noting that when the value chain, from school to district to ministry, works, more people make better decisions more quickly, and the benefits compound. Second, he stressed that open source reduces cost, but doesn’t remove the need for expertise. Government buy-in and local implementation partners are what translate codebases into functioning systems. In other words, sustainability is institutional before it is technical.

In essence, sustainability is institutional before it is technical - a theme echoed throughout the session.

Liberia’s Lens: Budgeting for the Invisible Costs

From Liberia’s Ministry of Education, Emmanuel G. Dolokelen focused on budgets and trade-offs. He explained that Liberia’s EMIS has long depended on donor-funded hardware and has not had clear budget allocations for software, maintenance, and most importantly, people. Hidden costs such as ongoing training and data security are often underestimated but are vital for reliable systems. In a tight fiscal environment, EMIS funding competes with teacher salaries and classroom construction, so financial plans need to be realistic, phased, and well justified.

Liberia’s approach has been twofold: setting up a technical working group to align donor support with the national EMIS strategy, and promoting school-based data collection to reduce recurring costs. However, Emmanuel stressed that the real turning point is institutionalisation. “Sustainability begins when EMIS has its own line in the national budget, not just a mention in project documents,” he said. Over the next five years, he added, ownership rather than dependency must guide Liberia’s efforts.

Liberia’s experience demonstrated that true sustainability emerges when governments move EMIS from project status to a core budget function, supported by policy and political will.

UNICEF’s Guidance: Finance the Operations and the People

Polycarp Otieno (UNICEF) shifted the focus from projects to broader systems. He urged countries to move away from short-term, project-style funding and adopt domestic, multi-year financing that supports ongoing activities such as data collection, validation, analysis, maintenance, and technical support. He stressed the importance of people, noting, “There is no sustainable EMIS without stable teams who can run and improve it.” He also called for stronger collaboration with National Statistical Offices, which can help set standards and share infrastructure.

Polycarp advised caution about the rush toward individual-level data systems. When aggregate systems are functioning well, he said, they should not be disrupted just for the sake of innovation. Instead, individual-level modules should be tested only where they bring clear value and where data protection, infrastructure, and staff capacity are ready. Progress, he concluded, should be gradual and suited to each country’s context.

His reflections reinforced that sustainability depends as much on human and institutional capacity as on financial or technological inputs.

The Discussion: Individual vs. Aggregate, and the Role of Qualitative Data

The dialogue that followed was energetic and nuanced. Sophia Kousiakis from the University of Oslo, questioned the affordability of national, learner-level records and the feasibility of universal school IDs. Angela Arnott from Global E-schools and Community Initiative, encouraged countries to leverage GPE funding windows to pilot individualized records, while Jaji reminded everyone that starting points differ: “one model cannot fit all.” Polycarp’s balancing act - maintain what works, pilot what’s next, won broad agreement, and participants called for comparative cost research to guide choices rather than intuition.

On qualitative vs. quantitative data, Emmanuel noted that Liberia often runs separate surveys for qualitative insights. Polycarp unpacked the modular nature of EMIS, spanning school censuses, household surveys, learning assessments, and other sources. The consensus: integration matters more than categorization. Systems should enable side-by-side analysis so policymakers can pair “how many” with “what it means.”

Ownership, Structure, and Sustainability

Several participants focused on governance issues. Safia Abdi from Somalia’s Ministry of Education emphasized that EMIS units need a certain level of independence within the ministry structure to safeguard their role and ensure continuity.

There was also discussion around whether to use open-source systems or custom-built proprietary ones. The general consensus was practical: open-source tools can be affordable and adaptable, but only if countries invest in building strong local teams and skills that aren’t tied to specific vendors. Proprietary systems can also work well, provided long-term service agreements and data ownership are clearly defined.

A recurring theme was the need for stronger coordination between Ministries of Education, Finance, and ICT. This collaboration is key to turning ideas into funded, workable plans. It also helps reduce donor duplication by giving development partners a unified, government-led roadmap to follow.

Challenges

Participants spoke openly about the challenges facing EMIS implementation. These include reliance on short-term external funding, the lack of dedicated EMIS budget lines in many ministries, persistent staffing and skills shortages, fragmented donor interventions, limited coverage and connectivity in remote areas, and difficulties in integrating qualitative insights into data systems. While none of these challenges are new, all can be addressed through long-term planning and sustained institutional commitment that extend beyond individual projects.

Recommendations

Based on the discussions, participants shared the following key recommendations to strengthen and sustain EMIS across Africa:

• Integrate EMIS into national and subnational budgets with clear, dedicated, long-term funding lines for operations, maintenance, staff training, and data protection.
• Support subnational teams with steady funding for data collection, cleaning, analysis, and use - and invest in the people who manage these processes.
• Adopt platforms like DHIS2 where they fit the country’s needs, but also invest in local technical teams to ensure the systems can be maintained over time
• Establish inter-ministerial coordination mechanisms linking Education, Finance, and ICT ministries to align policies, funding, and standards.
• Align EMIS with National Statistical Systems to share infrastructure, metadata, and data-quality protocols.
• Maintain existing national systems while testing learner-level records where infrastructure, capacity, and data safeguards allow.
• Conduct comparative cost analyses to estimate total ownership costs and guide scalable, evidence-based system development.
• Build security, access control, and privacy measures into EMIS design and budgets from the beginning.
• Integrate data from schools, districts, and ministries by linking administrative, survey, and learning assessment information to transform EMIS into a comprehensive tool for evidence-based policy and planning.
• Use government-led technical working groups and clear national roadmaps to coordinate donor support and avoid duplication.

Next Steps

• Scope a short, comparative Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) study on individualized vs. aggregate EMIS, including infrastructure, skills, and legal prerequisites
• Responsible: KIX African 19 with interested Member States
• Explore models for financing through/with National Statistical Offices to future-proof standards and infrastructure
• Responsible: Member States led, supported by AU-IPED
• Share the date/theme for the 4th Knowledge Café
• Responsible: AU-IPED

Closing

The Café closed as it started - with a reminder that finance is where commitment turns into capability. As Mr. Noubatour noted, sustainable EMIS is how Africa invests in its learners - not once, but year after year. The collective task ahead is to convert today’s consensus into next year’s budget lines, teams, and systems that endure.

Watch the full session here: 3rd KIX Knowledge Café on Education Data Systems