Over 25,000 leaders from the worlds of Business, Government, the UN, and Civil Society are convening this week - virtually, because of the global Covid-19 pandemic - to mark 20 years of a worldwide commitment to social impact.
They are all part of the largest initiative there has ever been to drive social good - the UN Global Compact.
Every organization forming part of the UN Global Compact works to further its goals of making the world a better, fairer place.
That includes NewGlobe, as a learning leader supporting the education of nearly one million children a day across Africa.
As long-term signatories, we stand behind the Compact’s recognition that investing in education is essential to developing a skilled workforce for the future and improving economic growth.
Increasing smart investment in education over the long term is needed.
We also recognise that transformation change in education systems requires more than investment.
It also rests on long-sighted and ambitious political and community leadership.
Increasingly, such change is being prioritized by political leaders who recognise its overwhelming benefits for their societies, benefits which reach far beyond economic growth.
Across Africa, governments, societies and communities are being supported by learning leaders like NewGlobe in partnerships with the power to revolutionize educational outcomes for millions of children and help build stable, equitable and prosperous societies.
In Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria our Bridge community school network supports underprivileged communities by delivering superb education since the very first school opened in Nairobi in 2009.
In Nigeria we are delighted to work with the EKOEXCEL and EdoBEST programmes, programmes which thanks to far-sighted political leadership on behalf of the Governors of Lagos and Edo States are delivering education system transformation and hugely improved learning outcomes for hundreds of thousands of primary school children.
In Liberia our Bridge Liberia programme supports the Liberian Government to improve teaching and learning in schools, educating tens of thousands of students across the country with dramatically improved outcomes.
What unites all of these programmes is NewGlobe’s commitment to learning as a science, and the use of education data to improve every aspect of learning.
We are learning about learning constantly, and everything we learn is applied to make outcomes for students better and better.
We are proud of our work. We also recognise far more is needed. Tens of millions of African children remain out of school or are in school but not receiving the high-quality education they require to build our shared future.
Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta commented recently that we need to make smart investments in education technology to help close the digital divide and leapfrog infrastructure deficits in schools.
The Covid-19 pandemic which has disrupted education across Africa and the world makes such investment even more urgent.
But it has also shown how technology can be harvested in support of learning.
At the onset of the pandemic, the Kenyan government closed all learning institutions to curb the spread of the virus.
This confined over 18 million children at home who required support to learn remotely and ensure continuity of the learning process.
Bridge Kenya put together a free programme - called @home - of learning resources designed to help keep children engaged, entertained, and most importantly learn.
The resources were based upon the technology and access that parents and pupils already use in their daily lives.
The learning resources are aligned to the national curriculum and are specifically designed for children’s age and grade or class.
The extensive and robust home learning resources are available not only to Bridge pupils, but to all pupils nation-wide.
This has given Bridge an opportunity to reach and serve more children than ever before in Kenya.
In Lagos State nearly half a million mp3 players were distributed to students during school lockdown through the EKOEXCEL programme.
They provide grade appropriate pre-recorded lessons - regularly updated - to make learning at home easier and more accessible for children of all households.
This was the largest ever e-Learning drive in Africa. It shows what can be done with smart investments in education technology.
The impact of the home learning was imperative. In March 2021 Bridge pupils sat for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) for a sixth consecutive year from 30 counties across Kenya.
Our pupils' results in this high-stake exam is a testament that technology supports improved learning gains with a KCPE average of 21 points higher than pupils nationally, the highest in Bridge Kenya history.
34% scored more than 300 marks, which gives a competitive edge in admissions to great secondary schools. Nationally less than 25% of pupils achieved such high scores.
Local, national and international leaders are focused on ‘building back better’. In education, this means reviewing what is proven to work at a system-wide level in Africa and replicating those approaches.
This week’s UN Global Compact Leaders’ Summit will - in its own words, elevate ambition for strategic collective action. Only through multi-stakeholder collaboration, innovative thought leadership, transparent reporting on progress and focused data driven initiatives can we get back on track.
As leaders in learning and supporters of the urgent need recognized by governments, communities and all UN Global Compact signatories to invest in educational transformation, we could not agree more.
Reuben Wambugu is the Managing Director, Bridge Kenya