The Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICESCO) participated in the Regional Workshop on Capacity Building of Teacher Policy Development in Africa that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) held, on Wednesday  (7 July 2021), via videoconferencing, in cooperation with UNESCO International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa (IICBA) and the International Task Force on Teachers.

The workshop aimed to enhance the participants’ knowledge concerning the process of teachers policies development and ways to improve the relevant efforts, provide various useful resources and tools, create a platform for educational specialists in regional offices and other stakeholders to share the best practices and challenges when providing technical support for developing teacher national policies.

During this workshop, Dr. Barry Koumbou, Head of Education Sector at ICESCO, reviewed the experiences and efforts of ICESCO in supporting the African countries to develop their educational systems. She pointed out that education systems in Africa today face challenges of quality, governance, and financing.

Dr. Koumbou called for developing teacher policies in Africa in a gender-sensitive manner, stressing the importance of developing effective mechanisms for collecting information and statistics relevant to teachers, and providing the necessary funding for education while ensuring sound management and commitment to transparency and good governance. Besides, she called for taking care of refugees, women and people with disabilities without bias or discrimination.

Moreover, Dr. Koumbou stressed the need to build the capacity of teachers according to new ICTs methods, taking into account the African cultures, including history, art, poetry, literature, languages ​​and customs.