The COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated Southern Africa’s education system and demands urgent priority to re-imagine education and learning in the context of global climate change, economic crises, and technological disruption through the 4th industrial revolution (4IR).
Re-imagining education in Southern Africa will require a shift from a narrow focus on ‘jobs’ towards a more holistic understanding and broader framing of economic wellbeing. Economic well-being here refers to the personal and collective ability to mobilise economic, social and material resources to achieve personal and collective wellbeing. When education is reduced to a role that simply services the economy, it leaves the question of meaningful work beyond the formal economy out of the picture, like caring for households, responsible and engaged citizenry that contributes to the common good and creating ecologically resilient lifestyles. Reflecting on broader economic questions like household provisioning, provisioning of the commons, and provisioning of the state, without neglecting paid work in the formal economy, are key to building vibrant well-being economies for human dignity and planetary survival.
The project aims to re-imagine and better anticipate Southern African futures of education and learning with a focus on higher education and TVET in the context of education for sustainability and the fourth industrial revolution. The project will apply a futures literacy and systemic innovation approach. It will explore how to position the Southern African Education and Learning System in the larger context of education for economic well-being that reframes education beyond the single narrative of educating for jobs.
The project objectives are to:
- build capacity among SADC stakeholders within the Post-School Education and Training (PSET) sector to support futures-informed “education for economic well-being” (Facer, 2021);
- provide technical assistance to facilitate futures literacy and systemic innovation among stakeholders by developing alternative futures of education. This includes offering strategic insights into pathways for preferable futures of education and learning in SADC, aligned with the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) agenda;
- benefit primarily the SADC secretariat, the UNESCO Regional Office for Southern Africa’s Education Unit, and ministerial working groups on education to develop futures-informed thinking and anticipatory skills to build education for economic well-being in societies where over 50% of employment is constituted in the informal economy (Sidorkin, 2017); and
- create a strategic and anticipatory framework on SADC Futures of Higher Education and TVET.
