Foundational learning outcomes across Africa remain far too low. Too many children leave school unable to read a simple sentence or solve a basic math problem. Yet, more than ever, we know what works to improve learning outcomes in languages across Africa. Evidence also shows the economic and social returns to growth, jobs, earnings, health, and other outcomes from improving learning outcomes.

Typical data cited to define Africa’s low learning levels is that nine out of ten Sub-Saharan African children cannot read with comprehension by age 10. This most widely used global indicator, Learning Poverty, served an important purpose. It raised the alarm. But it measures the share of children who cannot read with comprehension by age ten, a single threshold that tells policymakers their system is failing without showing them where, why, or what to do next.

While this information is useful, the data it is based on cannot easily tell us what children are able to do and what can be done about it. In a continent where many children complete primary school without acquiring basic literacy and numeracy skills, impactful data should pinpoint where action is needed. 

Comparing learning outcomes across assessments is difficult, as different assessments:

1. Do not measure the same things, such as skills and content knowledge.
2. Are not comparable over time.
3. Are not comparable between countries.

As African nations strive to meet the ambitions of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the African Union’s Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA) 2026–2035, the demand for actionable and credible data on learning has never been greater. This matters because policymakers already misread the scale of the learning problem. Research from the Centre for Global Development found that policymakers believe 58 per cent of children meet expected reading levels. Actual assessments put the figure closer to 30 per cent. This perception gap partly reflects school systems that benchmark against overambitious international standards rather than curricula tailored to their students' real levels. When global indicators confirm only that a system is underperforming, they reinforce the disconnect rather than closing it. 

It matters because better data alone is not enough — it must translate into concrete policy and budget decisions. We need data that shows whether a low-performing country is making incremental gains at the early-grade level, because seeing those gains is vital for maintaining reform momentum. We need tools that can distinguish between a child who reads haltingly and one who cannot read a single word. And now, we have them!

Two Africa-based data scientists, Dr Martin Gustafsson and Professor Cally Ardington, have developed analytical approaches built specifically for the continent's data landscape. Their work moves beyond static global reporting to offer something more useful: a detailed stocktaking of actual learning levels that points toward action. A webinar convened the broader foundational learning community in Africa and globally to unpack their two approaches, while a new advocacy video on Martin’s approach brought the issue to the forefront with a clear call to action for policymakers and advocates alike.

A harmonised continental baseline

By synthesising data from UNICEF's household surveys, the IEA's Literacy and Numeracy Assessment, and UNESCO's proficiency-level assessments, this baseline now covers 97% of the continent's population. It reveals that African primary proficiency, measured against SDG-aligned standards across subjects, sits at 13 per cent. More critically, it shows that the widest disparities across countries are already present by age seven. This finding redirects attention to the early grades as the most important window for intervention, a conclusion that aggregate end-of-primary indicators.

Consider what this means in practice. A country where 40 per cent of children meet proficiency by the end of primary school and one where only eight per cent do may both register as "failing" under a single global threshold. The harmonised baseline distinguishes between them, allowing governments to benchmark against comparable peers and pinpoint where in the primary cycle learners fall behind.

The zero-word reading indicator

This tool measures the percentage of children in Grades 2 or 3 who cannot read a single word. Its power lies in its clarity. Parents, teachers, and politicians all understand what "zero words" means. Unlike end-of-primary statistics, which arrive too late for remediation, this indicator detects incremental gains in the lowest-performing systems, precisely where progress matters most but is hardest to see through conventional metrics.

These new approaches, developed by Africans for Africans, highlight three critical realities:

• Africa is making more progress on FL than realized but the number of kids still not learning the essential basics of reading and math remains too high
• Countries need to use the data they have to monitor progress, track success and hold governments accountable for reforms that are not delivering impact.
• We need African data that’s comparable between countries and over time

These tools draw additional strength from complementary evidence. PAL Network's citizen-led assessments, released in late 2025, found that only four in ten children could read or perform basic mathematics by age ten. Because trained citizen volunteers conduct these assessments in households, they capture both in-school and out-of-school children, ensuring that the most marginalised learners appear in the data.

Producing better data achieves nothing if governments lack the systems to use it. Four ADEA-led initiatives aim to close this gap.

• The Foundational Learning Initiative for Government-led Transformation (FLIGHT) is a $35 million initiative supporting governments in moving from fragmented projects to coordinated reforms. It provides local expertise to connect data to decisions on teacher training, curriculum design, and textbook provision, an area where only 31 per cent of African countries currently report one-to-one student-textbook ratios.
• The Africa Foundational Learning Assessment Initiative (AFLAI) complements FLIGHT by strengthening the analytical capacity of national education systems, building the teams and processes that allow governments to collect, trust, and act on their own learning assesment data.
• Development of indicators from FLEX 2024 commitments to monitor and track progress and improve accountability to improve foundational learning outcomes at the individual country level that ladders up to the continental level. This is contributing to ongoing efforts by the African Union Commission to develop a continental scorecard for foundational literacy and numeracy, which culminated in a technical workshop in 2025.
• The Education and Skills Data Challenge initiative is a five-year effort to strengthen country capacity to generate and use its data for decision-making. This initiative will headline all efforts to strengthen country capacity to ingrain the use of data for decision-making in its systems and processes. 

The 2025 ADEA Triennale tested these ideas against political reality. Among the strategic recommendations in its outcome document, three deserve particular attention.

1. Governments should embed foundational learning data in routine decision-making rather than treating it as a reporting exercise for international partners. This means clear mandates for data use at the school, district, and ministry levels.
2. Countries should invest in sustained capacity strengthening for the teams that interpret and apply learning data, integrating this into existing professional development rather than relying on external technical assistance.
3. Data collection must deliberately include children with disabilities, out-of-school populations, and learners in non-formal settings. Evidence that excludes the most marginalised learners will produce reforms that overlook them.

By 2050, one in three young people worldwide will live in Africa. Whether they acquire foundational skills depends on decisions governments make now, and those decisions depend on data that is locally owned, practically useful, and designed to track real progress. The tools exist. The political commitment is growing. The task is to connect the two at scale, starting in the earliest grades.