Why Partnership is Key to Transforming Education in Africa

As Africa works to reform its education systems, one message from the 2025 ADEA Triennale in Accra resonated strongly: no single actor transforms education alone. 

Reforms in foundational learning, digital innovation, teacher development, and secondary education are expanding across the continent, but their success depends on something deeper than technical excellence or funding alignment. It depends on partnership. 

In today’s education landscape, partnership isn’t the support act, it is the leadership act. 

This is the goal at the heart of the African Centre for School Leadership (ACSL), a collaboration between ESSA, VVOB, ADEA and FAWE. ACSL was founded on a simple yet powerful awakening: education systems thrive when leadership connects people, ideas, and action.   

Why Partnership is the Way to Go 

Across Africa, ministries, schools, universities, and communities are all trying to fix the same problems in education: teacher shortages, data gaps, inequities in access and skill mismatches. The complexity of the issues requires innovative partnerships to generate lasting solutions. 

Undeniably, there are numerous partnerships in education, but many remain transactional, limited to information sharing or joint events. What Africa needs are transformational partnerships built on shared accountability, co-ownership, and mutual learning. 

That is where leadership through partnership becomes powerful. It moves collaboration from coordination (working side by side) to co-leadership (working as one system). It calls for ministries to use evidence from research and practice. It also urges development partners to align government priorities, and practitioners and communities shaping the policies that affect their schools. For example: 

• In foundational learning, partnerships between ministries, teacher training colleges, and communities will ensure that early-grade reforms reach every classroom and reflect local realities.  

• At the secondary level, leaders who collaborate across schools, districts, and government structures will ensure coherence between policy ambitions and classroom realities.  

• In tertiary education, universities that engage with ministries and schools can better prepare future teachers and leaders who understand the system they will serve. 

This shift demands a change of mindset: leaders are not only those at the top of institutions, but those who bring others together to act on shared purpose. 

The ACSL Approach: Promoting Leadership Through Partnership 

Across its work in countries such as Tanzania, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Liberia (Implementation phase), Kenya, Ghana, and Rwanda (Foundation phase), ACSL brings together researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and civil society to shape a shared vision for school leadership.  

In Tanzania, for example, ACSL recently led a national mapping validation meeting where Government officials, universities, and education partners came together to prioritise areas for school leadership research, from instructional leadership and ICT integration to inclusion and partnerships. The process was more than consultation; it was collaborative leadership in action. The consultation demonstrated how diverse actors can lead together to shape the research and policy agenda. 

This embodies what ACSL stands for: evidence-driven partnership as a model of leadership. 

A Triennale Reflection: Partnership as the Path Forward 

At the ADEA Triennale 2025, one reflection stood out clearly: Africa is not short of ideas, pilots, or passion. What is missing is collaboration, a way to connect the many promising initiatives into a system that learns, scales, and sustains itself. 

That collaboration can only come through leadership built on partnership. 

As ACSL partners, our collective commitment is to model this in practice, by linking research and policy, aligning investments, and amplifying African voices in global education debates. 

The future of education in Africa will be shaped not by isolated leaders, but by networks of leadership — connected, collaborative, and evidence-informed. 

For Africa to realise its vision for inclusive, high-quality education, the focus must embrace partnerships. Through ACSL, we continue to advocate for this form of leadership where ministries, universities, teachers, and development actors share ownership of the education transformation journey. When we lead together, we create not just stronger schools, but stronger systems. Not just projects with impact, but partnerships with purpose. 

Because in Africa’s education transformation, partnership is, and must remain, the new leadership.