Download the full conference report here

The First Africa Adult Learning and Education (ALE) Conference, hosted by DVV International in Cape Town, South Africa, was held from 30 to 31 October 2024. It acknowledged the potential of ALE to contribute to community development and to the Just Transition in Africa. The conference, themed Adult Education for a Just Transition: ALE as a Key to Community Development, brought together adult education practitioners from 16 African nations, including Algeria, Benin, Botswana, Cameroon, Chad, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, Togo and Uganda, as well as Germany.

Apart from the keynote address from Ivor Baatjes of the Canon Collins Trust, entitled Adult Education and the Just Transition, the conference also included two other inputs to help stimulate discussions: Community Learning Centres as a Key to Community Development by Imelda Kyaringabira from Uganda, and Agriculture, Climate Change and ALE by Nela Rassaa from Tunisia. These presentations helped provide invaluable insights into some of the experiences and contextual realities of ALE on the African continent.

In this article, we take a look at some of the main findings, with a view to stimulating further discussion on African ALE and to add to the body of work already available nationally, regionally and continent-wide.

Summary of main findings

The conference asked the participants to throw the net wide and list and discuss some of the essential areas for African ALE. This was achieved through various group work and discussions, inspired by the aforementioned presentations and panels. The conference sough to, among others:

• Solicit inputs for the MOJA Digital Platform.
• Explore a longlist of ALE themes; intended to identify multiple ALE themes.
• Interrogate regional preferences and ALE topics.
• Identify a shortlist of some of top African ALE themes.

The MOJA Platform

Participants provided inputs on activities they would like to see MOJA doing in the future, as well as sharing ideas on how they can become more active members of the MOJA community. The exercise yielded the following insights:

1. Members offered a wide range of activities that the MOJA Platform can be engaged in.
2. There is a general wish for MOJA to become more focussed in its activities.
3. Some of the suggestions related to activities that MOJA is already carrying out. This suggests that these activities need to be better publicised (through various channels) so that people are more aware of them.
4. Ongoing communication is required on the exact mandate of the MOJA Platform so that members are aware of what exactly falls within this, and what is more difficult to respond to.

The general thematic areas that surfaced included: Content diversification; Advocacy; Adult education support; Continental cooperation and collaboration; Raising awareness; Inclusion of more languages, and Digitisation. The broad range of topics proposed will be further analysed in view of the wish that MOJA should also become more focussed. Communication and engagement are cornerstones of MOJA activities, and while these are ongoing, MOJA needs to keep rethinking how it engages with people so that they are reached through a variety of means.

Participants also showed a strong willingness to be involved on a national and regional level in the activities of MOJA. Strategic engagement is needed to further involve members at the country level, so that they attract others to join the MOJA community.

A longlist of ALE topics

In groups, participants explored and discussed a wide range of ALE themes. This was aimed at revealing a wide range of ALE themes (which could later be shortlisted). Some interesting findings were revealed:

1. The list of ALE topics that practitioners are interested in and concerned with is vast.
2. ALE has the potential to be effective in a wide range of fields. It is multisectoral.

The list of topics generated was very long and yielded the following top 10 general themes, under which many other related topics were clustered: Advocacy for ALE; Agriculture; Climate change; Political economy of adult education; Youth; Vocational skills; Digitisation; Financial literacy; Entrepreneurship, and Prison education. This list in no way negates the importance of other topics that emerged from the discussions. Rather, it was intended to allow participants to engage with a broad diversity of ALE topics and further consider their application to a variety of situations and contexts.

Regional Priorities

Participants gathered in regional groups to view the longlist of ALE topics through a regional lens, and consider which topics are most relevant and important for their work and context. This was an important exercise that recognised the different regional priorities, which may vary greatly from one context to another. It was also important for MOJA to understand these different regional preferences as it can help to inform planning and appropriate activities for each African region. Some of the main findings to emerge from the discussions are listed below:

East Africa: Agriculture and rural populations; Professionalisation of ALE and Vocational education and training, with areas such as gender and climate change as cross-cutting issues.

North Africa: Environmental education and food security; Entrepreneurship; Migration and Youth, with areas such as human rights and youth cutting across.

Southern Africa: Climate justice; NFE; Funding for ALE and the role of CLCs.

West and Central Africa: Climate change; Funding; Peace education and Youth.

It became clear that the situation of youth (e.g. unemployment, training, etc), as well as climate change were major concerns in all regions.

Shortlisting ALE topics

Following these exercises, participants sought to shortlist the ALE topics – based on the longlists discussed. This yielded the following Top 3 topics:

1. Agriculture
2. Political economy of adult education
3. Digitisation

It goes without saying that all of the ALE topics discussed were important. This ‘top 3’ is not meant to represent a definitive list. It was intended to be provocative and to stimulate debate among the participants on whether or not they agreed with the selection. A few interesting findings emerged from this exercise that were reinforced by the general discussions over the two days of the conference.

The term ’political economy of education’ may not resonate with everyone. Other interchangeable topics (such as development) could be more engaging. This topic is very broad and we should select language that people are most likely to engage with.

ALE emerged from liberatory roots that were in the service of communities. However, today this has been overtaken by a paradigm that prioritises a human resources approach. The emphasis is on an instrumentalist view in which ALE is subservient to economic interests. These interests are often at conflict with communities, and exacerbate factors such as poverty, food insecurity and environmental degradation. There is a need to rediscover and promote these liberatory roots.

Some of the topics identified were cross-cutting themes. Areas such as gender, youth, climate change and general advocacy for ALE can be considered transversal and should be integrated in all of our other ALE activities.

We live in an era where the word ‘polycrisis’ is often used. This refers to the wide range of crises (e.g. war, floods, droughts, etc) that affect populations. The impact of these crises is more severe in some geographical regions than others and tends to disproportionately impact vulnerable populations. ALE cannot ignore these crises and should play an active role in their mitigation and resolution.

The conference was an opportunity for a broad range of ALE stakeholders to interact and exchange views on the state of ALE in Africa. It was a positive step, but even more important is where we go from here. The African ALE community must be one of solidarity and exchange so that it can contribute meaningfully to creating dignified lives and livelihoods for all people.