WISE@Accra Places Education High on Agenda of African Countries

The World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), an initiative of Qatar Foundation (QF), in partnership with the office of the president of Ghana, H.E. Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, today held WISE@Accra, a forum to engage education stakeholders from across Africa.

The one-day forum, which took place in Ghana’s capital, Accra, was held under the theme ‘Unlocking the World's Potential: Leading and Innovating for Quality Education in Africa’. The event explored a number of topics including quality education, ethical leadership, teacher training, teaching 21^st century skills, funding, partnership accountability, and regional collaboration to tackle development challenges.

Mr Stavros Yiannouka, CEO, WISE, said: “With almost half of the world’s youth living in Africa, the international community stands to benefit from empowering the leaders and change-makers of tomorrow.”  

The forum also served to highlight the engagement of WISE with African policy-makers, thought leaders, business leaders, entrepreneurs, and educators.

During the WISE 2017 summit, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo underscored the importance of education to achieve prosperity: “Education creates social mobility, and it’s the hope of every parent that their children may have access to education to alleviate them from poverty and offer an opportunity of an improved quality of life.”

Dr Patrick Awuah, founder and president of Ashesi University and the 2017 WISE Prize Laureate, re-imagined the future of higher education, during his keynote address: “The work that we do as educators is to make the world a more hopeful place for generations to come.”

Ashesi University is empowering Ghanaian youth by equipping them with entrepreneurship, ethics, and leadership skills to build the future of the continent.

By showcasing education enterprises and projects from its global programs – the WISE Prize, Awards and the WISE Accelerator – WISE@Accra demonstrated the positive role innovation plays in enhancing access to education and improving learning outcomes.

Participating projects from the WISE Accelerator initiative were present at the forum, including Kepler; Make Ghanaian Girls Great; and Green Shoots, a South African initiative that improves the quality of mathematics education through ICT.

The Director of Green Shoots, Jo Besford, said: “The urgency to deliver quality education for all is driving an ‘innovation explosion’ in Africa.”

The mentorship, network, and visibility provided by the WISE Accelerator has had a significant impact on GreenShoots, recently featured by the Blended Learning Universe, an initiative of the Clayton Christensen Institute. WISE@ is a series of local and regional education forums held between WISE biennial global summits. The events engage prominent leaders, policy-makers, and young people on working towards an improved and connected education system.