Democratic Republic of the Congo Language of Instruction Country Profile
OTHER DONOR FUNDED READING PROGRAMS
Alongside USAID, several other organizations are involved in implementing projects to
address literacy and language issues across the DRC, which are described below.
GPE'S COVID-19 Response
In 2020, GPE and UNICEF funded a $15 million education sector response to the
COVID-19 pandemic in the DRC.The grant supports the production of learning
materials, capacity building for distance learning and contingency planning, as well as
efforts to provide learning continuity during school closures and disruptions (GPE, n.d.).
Activities to promote learning continuity center around the production of learning
materials for different media types, including radio, television, and digital platforms.
Printed materials are also being developed to ensure learners without access to such
platforms have learning opportunities during the pandemic (GPE, n.d.).
Education Cannot Wait's Education in Emergency Response²
In 2020, Education Cannot Wait announced a $22.2 million, three-year (2020-2023)
resilience initiative to accelerate the education in emergencies response in the DRC.
The initiative also hopes to leverage an additional $45.3 million in co-financing from
other partner organizations to target 200,000 internally displaced, returnee, deported,
and host community children and youth in the provinces of Tanganyika, Ituri, and Kasai
Central. In particular, the initiative aims to improve access to safe and equitable learning
opportunities by constructing and rehabilitating schools, addressing underlying issues
around school dropout such as food security and nutrition, and delivering a package
of educational content that targets learners' academic, physical, and social-emotional
development (Education Cannot Wait, n.d.).
2 For more information, see: https://www.educationcannotwait.org/myrp-drc/
GPE's Education Quality Improvement Project (EQUIP)
EQUIP is a five-year (2017-2021) initiative of GPE to improve the quality of primary
education and enhance governance of the education system in the DRC. To improve
education quality, the project focuses on teacher training and the provision of learning
materials in the four national languages for Grades 1 to 4. In particular, EQUIP is working
to construct four teacher training institutions to create more training opportunities
and enhance teacher effectiveness. The project has also developed training modules
for in-service teachers around reading and writing in the national languages. As of July
2019, 13,230 teachers and principals had received these trainings (Meysonnat & Torrano,
2020).
The World Bank's Emergency Equity and System Strengthening in
Education Project (EESSE)³
The EESSE project is a four-year (2020-2024), $800 million initiative of the World Bank
to support the provision of free primary schooling across the DRC. With a focus on ten
provinces, EESSE will work to reduce household spending on education and improve
enrollment and retention in primary school. Further, the project will work to strengthen
government systems that support the provision of free primary schooling, including
teacher payment systems and education management systems (World Bank, 2020).
Initial estimates from the World Bank reveal that the project will support as many as
1.28 million low-income children of primary school age to enter the education system
(World Bank, 2020).
3 For more information, see: https://projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/project-detail/P172341
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