Speak Up Africa (SUA) is an Advocacy Action Tank dedicated to catalyzing leadership, enabling policy change, and increasing awareness for sustainable development in Africa Through our platforms and relationships and with the help of our partners, we ensure that policy makers meet implementers; that solutions are showcased and that every sector – from individual citizens and civil society groups to global donors and business leaders – contributes critically to the dialogue and strives to form the blueprints for concrete action for public health and sustainable development.
Education is the key to unlocking opportunity for anyone anywhere – from getting a job and raising healthy families, to creating conditions for sustainable economic growth and independence for entire nations. By 2050, 1 in 3 youth globally will be African – a major demographic opportunity for inclusive growth, opportunity and development. Unlocking Africa’s demographic advantage and realizing this potential depends on whether children learn to read and do math early – essential foundational building blocks of every child’s future. Strong foundational skills need to be acquired for strong learning outcomes and future opportunities.
Foundational learning is now recognized by the African Union as a non-negotiable building block for human capital and inclusive growth. In a rapidly changing world, where economies are strained and global aid budgets have shrunk, a high-impact solution lies in the simplest of places: a classroom where a young child learns to read, write, and do math – because when kids achieve these essential foundational skills by age 10, everything else becomes possible. But the current reality is foundational learning outcomes in reading and math across Africa remain far too low – up to an estimated 90% lack these essential basic skills. The key takes are how to turn these numbers around and expand and scale in more countries the 10% that do acquire these skills. The evidence base for what works at scale that has the greatest impacts on learning outcomes is structured pedagogy and targeted instruction. More countries are deciding to scale these evidence-based interventions, but not yet enough – this requires more and better advocacy to raise the demand and prioritization of foundational learning for better learning outcomes
The remaining gap is at the level of political prioritization – foundational learning becoming a source of political credit, funding what matters from domestic budgets, and accountability
To help drive more and better advocacy is the the FLN Advocacy Hub. It is transitioning to African leadership under Speak Up Africa to provide the continent’s infrastructure of influence: a shared banner, common cadence, and country coalitions that translate evidence into policy and financed outcomes, including more and better investment in evidence-based approachesand uptake (including structured pedagogy, targeted instruction) and to follow the science of reading and emerging on math, close gaps between evidence, policy, and implementation practice, encourage use of data and cultivate the political, funding and civic constituencies needed for better learning outcomes and spending. The Hub will:
- Run a white-label, bilingual campaign aligned to the African Union’s Ending Learning Poverty and Born to Learn efforts;
- Steward a public microsite that hosts minister-ready briefs, scorecards, and assets;
- Curate a pool of champions and an evidence-to-advocacy studio to turn data into policy and finance-ready asks and compelling stories;
- Coordinate a Kenya coalition through sub-grants to move Presidential Task Force recommendations to adoption and funding by 2028;
- Collaborate with regional actors (ADEA, CONFEMEN-PASEC, Human Capital Africa PAL Network), civil society, UN agencies, donor advocates and the Global Coalition for Foundational Learning, media to align messages, indicators, and regional, global and national moments;
- Co-design an AU-level accountability mechanism with annual minister-ready scorecards.
- Work with media grantees, identify media opportunities and work with creatives and content creators to get ordinary people talking about foundational learning to indirectly target policy and decision makers – closing gap between polity and the politics.
The Senior Hub Manager will be the Hub’s conductor: the person who holds the strategy, maintains cadence, arbitrates roles, and ensures that continental visibility converts into evidence based and national budget-backed action.