Lome - Togo — The ECOWAS Director of Education, Culture, Science and Technology, Professor Abdoulaye Maga, has called for "massive" training, sensitization and advocacy on management information systems to all operators in the education sector.
Professor Maga was addressing participants on Wednesday, 16th June 2010 in Lome, the Togolese capital, at the opening of a three-day meeting to kick- start the ECOWAS Education Management Information Systems (EMIS) programme, which will also ensure a comprehensive EMIS policy at the regional level in West Africa.
The Director who was represented by a top official in the department, Mrs. Rachel Ogbe, also emphasized the need for funding and institutionalization of the management of information in West Africa. He expressed satisfaction over the approaches being adopted by the African Union Commission and its partners to build the capacity of experts involved in EMIS in ECOWAS Member States. He advised that capacity building programmes and approaches should begin with simple technologies "that will be progressively adapted to international standards without compromising standards".
While assuring that steps would be taken to demystify the socio-cultural misconceptions associated with EMIS as well as its technologies and approaches, Professor Maga cautioned that issues of statistics and their end use "should be addressed with sincerity so as to optimize the use of EMIS". The Lome meeting is to give direction for the implementation of EMIS at the regional level and sensitize operators towards harmonizing efforts at the national level, considering the different degrees of EMIS implementation in the 15 ECOWAS Member States. More specifically, it will prepare a status report of EMIS across the region, train experts on the use of EMIS assessment tools prepared by the African Union (AU) and other partners as well as develop a mechanism for implementing the EMIS programme by ECOWAS.
The training is expected to better prepare participants as operators in the Member States to help develop a full-fledged EMIS which will enable ECOWAS to collect relevant education data, process and analyze and get them disseminated. Such data and information are to facilitate planning, budgeting, monitoring and evaluation of various programmes, projects and activities within the education sector. EMIS is one of the priority programmes identified for accelerated implementation in the plan of action for the Second Decade of Education for Africa, covering 2006 - 2015.
It seeks to provide a timely and informed basis for planning and management of educational services, establish a set of relevant indicators for data collection and utilization as well as establish or contribute to a national system for collection, processing and utilization of educational data. Operators monitor such indices as adult literacy, youth literacy, primary education, secondary education, human resources, finance, private enrolment and out-of-school children in the implementation of EMIS. Member States represented at the meeting are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.
Also represented are the African Union Commission, the African Development Bank, the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA), the Pan-African Institute for Education and Development (IPED), the Association for the Promotion of Non-formal Education (APENF), the Regional Council for Education and Literacy in Africa (CREAA), UNESCO, UNICEF and civil society organizations, including the Working Group on Non-formal Education of Benin (GTENF).
