PEP Africa Fellows Program

An indispensable element of successful long-term economic development is a skilled population.  However, the major problem in many developing countries, particularly in Africa, is the low quality of education. For example, most children in these countries complete primary school without acquiring functional literacy and numeracy skills, reflecting educational systems struggling to prepare large numbers of students1.

Numerous factors contribute to this challenge, and a wide array of potential solutions have been proposed to tackle it. Transparent and analytically useful data from student assessments is perhaps the most critical initial step toward improving school performance. When properly constructed, this data identifies possible performance levels and encourages analyses that can improve low-performing school systems.

However, there is a lack of national testing and participation in regional or international assessments due to several factors, including costs, lack of capacity to conduct assessments, and aversion to possible embarrassment from the results. Notably, some of these issues are being addressed by the broad-based efforts of regional and international organizations to support the expansion of comparable student assessments.

Still, a closely related issue needs to be addressed: the need for more local capacity to use student outcome data effectively to improve policy and schools. While it might be initially possible to swap external people for trained local researchers, this is neither sustainable nor conducive to developing sound and well-informed decision-making in schools.

The Africa Fellows in Education Program (AFEP) aims to address this local capacity gap and improve education decision-making across Sub-Saharan Africa. AFEP will support a network of local policy fellows with enhanced skills in evaluating existing educational research, developing and using performance data to make better decisions, and introducing rigorous evidence into the decision-making process.  Having a network of highly competent researchers across a region reinforces the value of using systematic evidence in decision-making and supports broad policy improvement. Local expert researchers will also form a constituency for expanding and improving the assessment structures in each country. The Fellows will be able to identify and produce high-quality research utilized in educational decision-making.  They will also become active in outreach to policymakers and civil society actors and advocate for sound, analytically based local policies.

In sum, the objective of the AFEP is to build a group of Africa-based leaders capable of developing evidence and shaping educational policies relevant to their countries.  They would be part of a global network of such people and could help build local networks of strong advocates for improving schools.

General Information

Aim and Benefits

Funding includes a $35K research (cash) grant. Other expenses, with a value of up to $25K, for mentorship, study visits, conference travel, and in-country workshops to share research findings and training will be covered directly by the Program.

Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible for this call, applicants must:

• Be a national of a Sub-Saharan African country;
• Have an MA or PhD degree, preferably in Economics, education policy, social/public policy, development studies or international development, with a strong focus on education. While a PhD is not mandatory, GEAI and PEP encourage new PhD graduates who can benefit from mentorship and additional training to become solid researchers;
• Be proficient in quantitative data analysis, with a strong knowledge of data analysis software such as R and Stata;
• Not be older than 35 years old;
• Demonstrate interest in education policy research and analysis;
• Work for the government or have an affiliation at either a research or higher education institution in a Sub-Saharan African country and intend to do so for the foreseeable future;
• Qualified females are strongly encouraged to apply.

For more details, visit PEP website.