Data-Driven Decision-making in Education: Africa Can Lead

Across Africa, education systems are generating more data than ever. Assessment results, enrolment figures, learning outcome reports, EMIS records. The infrastructure for evidence has grown significantly over the past decade. Yet in Malawi, 78% of learners cannot read a simple word with understanding, and the researchers who documented this said it plainly: the data needed to fix this exists, but most of it is locked away.

I have been watching this pattern for a long time. Data collection has become the goal, when it was always supposed to be the starting point.

The Unlocking Data Initiative published its third newsletter last week, bringing together insights from Malawi, Kenya and Cameroon, and the thread running through it all is this: the problem is not that African education systems lack evidence. The problem is that the evidence they have is not reaching the decisions that matter most.

In Malawi, only 54% of eligible children are enrolled in early childhood education. By Standard 1, 37% of learners are already repeating the grade, and only 19% demonstrate foundational learning skills. These figures exist in reports that have been written and filed. The question is what happens after they are filed.

In Cameroon, education data largely focuses on gender, leaving learners with disabilities and other marginalised groups nearly invisible in the evidence base. Most published research is male-authored. In Kenya, efforts are expanding beyond traditional indicators to include agency and participation, but gaps remain in learning outcomes data and continuous learner support. In Malawi, disability data remains incomplete because of stigma and reliance on parental reporting, and vulnerable groups including children living in poverty are routinely overlooked.

These are not data problems. They are governance problems. And they require governance solutions: leadership that demands that data be used, accountability frameworks that track whether evidence informed decisions, and institutional capacity at the school, zone, and district levels to translate numbers into action.

The Unlocking Data Initiative is doing exactly this work, building a Pan-African community of practice committed to moving education data from collection to use. Their next community of learning convening is on 12 August 2026. I am linking here the full newsletter and details on how to get involved.What is keeping education data from reaching the decisions that matter in your context?