By Benadeta Mwaura - Reporter
Malawi , July 16, 2026 - Governments across Africa are increasingly recognising that improving foundational learning is no longer simply about getting children into classrooms. The bigger challenge is ensuring they actually learn.
As education leaders gathered in Malawi for the ongoing Foundational Learning Exchange (FLEX) 2026, one message emerged consistently: the future of Africa's education reforms depends less on policies announced in capitals and more on the often-overlooked "middle tier" of education systems.
The conversation comes at a critical moment. Across sub-Saharan Africa, millions of children are enrolled in school but continue to struggle with basic literacy, numeracy and reasoning skills.
Education experts warn that unless countries strengthen the systems that support teachers between ministries and classrooms, ambitious reforms will continue to stall before reaching learners.
Kenya's experience featured prominently during discussions on strengthening community leadership and system integration in foundational learning, with officials highlighting how the country is attempting to transform this often invisible layer of education governance.
Director of Early Childhood Education at Kenya's Ministry of Education, Martha Odundo, explained that Kenya's education governance structure extends far beyond the Ministry of Education itself. It incorporates national education officers, quality assurance officers, the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), curriculum support officers and officials within the country's 47 county governments.
"We have national government and county governments," Odundo explained. "In the national government, we have education officers who run from headquarters down to the sub-county level. We also have quality assurance and standards officers from the national level all the way to the sub-county. At the Teachers Service Commission, which is an independent constitutional commission, we also have officers running from headquarters down beyond the sub-county."
She noted that because early childhood education is a shared responsibility between the national and county governments, counties also deploy directors, sub-county education officials and ward administrators who work directly with pre-primary teachers.
Rather than viewing this extensive bureaucracy as a burden, Kenya has deliberately repositioned it as the engine driving its foundational learning reforms.
"Foundational learning reform is a priority in Kenya right now," Odundo said. "We have curriculum reform, and in line with that we are capacity building the middle tier and inducting them into the new curriculum design so that they are familiar and able to support teachers."
According to Odundo, all middle-tier officers within the Ministry of Education and the Teachers Service Commission have undergone training on the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC), although she acknowledged that continuous professional development remains necessary.
Recognising that supervision cannot happen without adequate staffing, Kenya has also embarked on the large-scale recruitment of quality assurance officers.
"We have been recruiting even recently. We just recruited 1,500 more quality assurance officers in the last one month," she revealed. "Quality assurance officers are the ones who support teachers at classroom level."
Beyond staffing, Kenya has invested in enabling these officers to perform their duties effectively. The government has increased operational funding to allow field officers to travel to schools that were previously difficult to reach.
"Before, only sub-county directors of education would get operational funds," Odundo explained. "But now we have been able to allocate funds also to quality assurance officers so that they are able to reach schools and undertake the activities they are expected to do."
Technology has also become an important component of Kenya's monitoring strategy. Odundo said education officers initially relied on Tangerine, a digital assessment platform, before transitioning to Kobo Collect, which enables officers to capture classroom data electronically and provide immediate feedback to teachers while still at school.
"We have switched to Kobo whereby they can collect data and process reports instantly and give feedback to teachers while they are still in school," she said.
Kenya has also encouraged collaboration among various education officers, allowing curriculum support officers and quality assurance officers to work jointly in supporting teachers and reducing duplication of effort.
However, Odundo cautioned that significant challenges remain despite the progress.
"We are not saying that we are perfect with the middle tier issue," she admitted. "Resources are never enough. When we recruit officers from classroom teaching, their capacity is not always adequate, so we really need continuous capacity building."
She also highlighted another challenge increasingly confronting African education systems, the growing number of development partners implementing parallel programmes without sufficient coordination.
"You go to some offices and they have five tablets. This one belongs to this organisation, another belongs to another organisation. They have to implement all those programmes while also delivering government programmes," she observed.
The Kenyan experience resonated strongly with delegates because it illustrated a reality confronting many African countries, education reforms succeed or fail not because of policy design, but because of implementation capacity.
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Opening the session, Dr Obiageli 'Oby' Ezekwesili, Founder and CEO of Human Capital Africa and former Nigerian Minister of Education, argued that Africa's greatest education crisis is no longer access to school but learning itself.
"We have been a continent where children go to school, but they are not learning," she said. "If data says that nine out of every ten children go to school every day but finish without minimum proficiency in literacy, numeracy and reasoning, then we have been wasting not only resources but also the future of those children."
Ezekwesili described the Foundational Learning Exchange as a gathering of "warriors for children" and argued that the continent has consistently overlooked those doing the hardest work.
"I can't think of a better description of warriors than the middle-tier people in education," she said. "They are the ones who are hardly seen, yet they are the ones who get a lot of things done."
According to Ezekwesili, scaling successful education reforms across Africa will depend almost entirely on strengthening this middle layer.
"If we're going to get scale in the adoption of what works, it is the middle tier that's going to make it happen," she said. "This session is not just another panel. It is a reckoning with reality."
Reflecting on her experience as Nigeria's Education Minister, she recalled that national reforms only gained traction when competent district-level leadership existed.
"I realised that no matter what I was saying as Minister of Education in Abuja, it was not translated into action at district level and in classrooms without competent, ethical and passionate leadership," she said.
Her remarks come against the backdrop of commitments made by 22 African countries, which have pledged to eliminate learning poverty by 2035. Those commitments have since been incorporated into the African Union's education agenda under Agenda 2063 and the Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA).
Yet Ezekwesili cautioned that declarations alone will not improve learning outcomes.
"We would seem to have much more political will, but commitment is not equivalent to results," she said. "The critical bridge between our continental policy and actual classrooms runs through the sub-national levels."
She warned that the credibility of continental commitments would ultimately be measured not in ministerial conference rooms but in districts, local governments and classrooms.
"It is where teachers are deployed. It is where teaching and learning materials are sourced. It is where community leaders are mobilised. It is where accountability is exercised. It is where resources are actually meant to hit the road."
Perhaps the strongest lesson emerging from Malawi is one that extends beyond education. There is an old saying that "the fish rots from the head." Poor leadership and weak policies at the top inevitably undermine institutions.
Yet the discussions at FLEX 2026 suggest another important truth: if effective systems, capable institutions and accountable leadership are strengthened in the middle, the rot need not spread to the bottom.
In education, that middle tier acts as both a transmission system and a protective barrier. Strong curriculum support officers, well-trained quality assurance officials, adequately funded district education teams and empowered community leaders can ensure that even where national policies face implementation challenges, learning continues to improve in classrooms.
For Kenya, investments in staffing, technology, supervision and county-level coordination demonstrate an understanding that sustainable reform is built through institutions rather than announcements. For Africa, the lesson may be even broader.
The continent's ambition to end learning poverty by 2035 will not ultimately be judged by summit declarations or ministerial speeches. It will be judged by whether the child sitting in a classroom in Kisii, Lilongwe, Kampala or Lagos can read, understand and solve problems by the end of primary school.
As FLEX 2026 continues in Malawi, one conclusion is becoming increasingly difficult to dispute: Africa's education revolution will not be won in ministries; it will be won in the middle tier that connects policy to the classroom.