OREANDA-NEWS. December 01, 2015. Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) will convene the 42nd Session of its Steering Committee in Abidjan at the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) offices, in CCIA Building, from Thursday, December 3, to Saturday, December 5, 2015. This will be the first ADEA Steering Committee meeting to be held in Abidjan since the AfDB, ADEA’s host institution, returned to its Abidjan headquarters in 2014.

Around 50 participants will attend this meeting, including African Ministers of Education, Development Cooperation partners, representatives from member countries, the African Union Commission (AUC) and the Association of African Universities (AAU).

The ADEA Steering Committee plays an important leadership role in leading and steering issues relating to education and training in Africa, which resonates with the priorities of the African continent and relevant to African girls and boys, women and men.

The Steering Committee of ADEA is composed of African Ministers of Education and representatives of multilateral and bilateral development organizations who support education in Africa. It is supported by an Executive Committee (EC) mandated to facilitate decisions on operational matters, leaving the Steering Committee to focus on policy and strategic issues. In addition, the Steering Committee is both ADEA’s governing body as well as ADEA’s primary instance for coordination among Development Cooperation partners.

The Ministers of Education who sit on the ADEA Steering Committee constitute the ADEA Bureau of Ministers (BoM).The Bureau of Ministers constitutes a framework for dialogue and consultation on the challenges and opportunities for the development of education and training in Africa. Moreover, in 2008, ADEA and COMEDAF Bureaus of Ministers were merged, in accordance with the decision endorsed by the 10th African Union Summit in January 2008. Given the new Bureau of the AUC Specialized Technical Committee on Education, Science and Technology (STC EST), recently elected in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this three-day meeting of the Steering Committee will also focus, amongst others, on 1) the key role and mandate of AUC STC EST in governing the Steering Committee and Bureau of Ministers of ADEA; 2) Re-positioning ADEA in the Global Sustainable Development Goals and the African Union Agenda 2063; and 3) the sustainability, transitioning and ownership of ADEA

About ADEA:

The Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) is a forum for policy dialogue, composed of all the 54 Ministers of Education in Africa. Established in 1988 at the instigation of the World Bank, it has evolved into a pan-African institution based within the African Development Bank (AfDB). Since its inception, it has acted on processes that have had a profound impact on policy-making in Africa through evidence-based policy dialogue, capacity building, advocacy and networking. ADEA’s work has expanded to focus more on the development of skills and competencies across all the education sub-sectors. It envisions a “high quality African education and training system that is geared towards the promotion of critical knowledge and skills for accelerated and sustainable development in Africa”.