About ECD In Africa
The original ecdinafrica.org website developed out of a growing set of SSA-ECD initiatives emanating from the University of Victoria in Canada, but all based in Africa. As these initiatives were complementary, it was deemed useful to ‘connect’ them through an overarching site: ‘ECD in Africa’. The unifying purpose of the initiatives has been to promote diverse, but systemically inter-related, facets of ECD capacity promotion in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
A brief historical overview of those multi-faceted initiatives includes:
- 1994: The lead for ECD at UNICEF headquarters (Dr. Cyril Dalais) invites Prof. Pence at UVic to take internationally the evidence-based, culturally and contextually supportive ‘generative’ approach he co-developed with First Nations in Canada to Majority (Developing) World locations. Through UNICEF supported 2 and 3 week ECD Seminars, the model that approach attracts the attention of the World Bank and the 3rd Africa-based ECD Seminar morphs, in 1999, into a 1st African International ECD Conference, held in Kampala, Uganda.
- 1999: The very successful 1st African International ECD Conference leads to a 2nd (2002, Asmara, Eritrea); 3rd (2005, Accra Ghana); and 4th (2009, Dakar Senegal).
- 2000: the 1999 Kampala Conference also leads to World Bank support for an Africa-based, primarily online, graduate-level, ECD leadership program. A total of six cohort groups (138 grads from 17 countries) take the program between 2001 and 2015 when it transitions to the University of Ibadan (Nigeria) for deliveries in 2016 and 2018.
- 2008: ECDVU Prof. Kofi Marfo and Pence jointly respond to an RFP from the highly regarded Society for Research on Child Development (SRCD), and a series of African Scholars and Institutions (AS&I) capacity development workshops are led by Profs. Marfo, Pence, Nsamenang and Serpell in various locations in Africa.
Details regarding each of the above capacity promoting initiatives, plus others including the development of ECD Networks in Africa over time, can be found in the Sankofa volume, and information regarding the ECDVU and the AS&I initiatives are included on this ecdinafrica site as well.
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