Why School Leadership Will Drive Africa’s Education Reforms

At the  2025 ADEA Triennale event in Accra, Ghana, one message stood out to me: education reforms in Africa will only go as far as its leadership.  

Across Africa, governments and partners are driving major education reforms across different levels. The players are strengthening foundational learning, expanding secondary education, and improving data use, inclusion, and digital innovation. Yet these efforts often operate in isolation. 

This is where school leadership comes in, not just as another reform, but the connecting thread that turns policy into action, motivates teachers, and keeps learners at the centre of education improvement efforts.  

Why Leadership Matters 

Leadership is what ensures foundational learning reforms happen. It ensures foundational learning reforms reach classrooms, secondary schools become spaces of innovation and inclusion, and tertiary institutions strengthen the next generation of teachers and researchers. 

In Tanzania, for example, the mapping of school leadership research revealed how leadership influences everything. It shapes teacher motivation, influences student knowledge and skills, and guides the implementation of reforms such as the Competency-Based Curriculum and the School Quality Assurance framework. 

Similar insights are evident in Sierra Leone, Malawi, Ghana, Rwanda, and Kenya. Leadership is increasingly recognised as the lever that holds reforms together. 

Yet, school leadership remains one of the most overlooked areas of education. Training is inconsistent, and many leaders take roles without proper preparation. Without investing in leadership, even the best reforms will fade away.  

How to Nurture Leadership for Change 

Education is a journey, and leadership must grow along the way: 

• Early years: Strong leadership at early childhood and primary levels ensure teachers use evidence-based literacy and numeracy methods, engage communities, and create safe environments. 

• Secondary education: Leaders at this level implement curriculum innovation, gender inclusion, and digital learning. 

• Tertiary and teacher education: Institutions prepare the next generation of teachers and leaders to drive change through innovative training models.  

When these layers are connected through shared leadership standards, mentoring pathways, and aligned policies, the result is a resilient education system that learns, adapts, and improves continuously. 

Collaboration in Action: The ACSL Experience 

The African Centre for School Leadership (ACSL), a partnership between ESSA, VVOB, FAWE, and ADEA, was established to strengthen research, policy, and practice in school leadership across the continent. 

Recently, ACSL and its partners co-hosted a national co-creation workshop in Tanzania bringing together government representatives, researchers, practitioners, and civil society to identify priorities for improving school leadership. Together, they identified five national priority areas comprising instructional leadership, ICT integration, inclusion and equity, best practices and models, and partnerships. 

This participatory process demonstrated what is possible when countries and actors from different countries come together to build evidence-based solutions that respond to real system needs. To move forward, more of these experiences need to be recreated and institutionalised within ministries, teacher training institutions, and education networks. 

Towards a Connected System of Reform 

The insight from the 2025 ADEA Triennale in Accra could not be clearer: education transformation in Africa requires systemic coordination. Investments in foundational learning, digital innovation, and teacher development will only deliver sustainable impact when guided by effective, empowered leadership at every level of the education cascade. 

These are my reflections from the conversations and connections formed during the Triennale, a strong conviction that school leadership is the glue that holds the education system together. 

To achieve this, countries and partners should: 

• Institutionalise leadership development as a central component of education reform, not a peripheral activity. 

• Strengthen research and data on school leadership to inform national policies and regional cooperation. 

• Create leadership pathways that connect foundational, secondary, and tertiary education through mentorship, continuous professional development, and recognition systems. 

• Promote cross-sector collaboration among ministries, universities, civil society, and private partners to align priorities and leverage expertise. 

Looking Ahead: From Fragmentation to Integration 

As Africa strives toward Education 2030 goals, the time has come to see school leadership as the bridge, linking the teacher in a rural classroom to the policymaker in the capital, and the researcher in a university to the community advocating for better schools. 

By connecting reforms through leadership, countries can ensure that the gains made in foundational learning flow into stronger secondary systems and more responsive tertiary institutions. 

Effective school leadership will only transform schools when we first transform how we understand, prepare, and support leaders. 

True transformation in African education begins with leadership. It’s what connects classrooms to policy, teachers to opportunity, and reforms to real change. 

When we invest in school leaders, from early years to tertiary institutions, we’re not just improving schools; we are shaping the resilient systems that will carry Africa’s education vision into the future.