Ghana education sector to benefit from $10.5m COVID-19 recovery programme
The education sector in Ghana will benefit from a partnership between Education to Employment (IP2E) and Mastercard Foundation COVID-19 recovery programme for three countries in Africa.
In a press release copied to ghanabusinessnews.com, the partnership will support businesses in the education sector to recover from the impact of COVID-19, by accelerating the work of edupreneurs and SMEs in the education space, with $10.5 million programme aimed to impact 95,000 beneficiaries, including students, trainees, and ed-tech platform users served by these businesses, out of which 55 per cent will be women and 33 per cent disadvantaged youth. The programme will be in Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal.
The release indicates that the three-year programme will accelerate 30 education entrepreneurs (edupreneurs) in the three countries by addressing key challenges related to access, quality, and relevance faced within the sector, including:
- Funding for education businesses in recovery phase seeking to adapt and expand;
- Skills development through technical assistance to accelerate SMEs’ digital transformation;
- Education opportunities through innovative social inclusion mechanisms; and
- Data and advocacy through robust impact management systems and policy dialogue.
The education start-ups and SMEs will be selected based on their capacity to offer quality education and training, while promoting employability and youth empowerment within their countries of operations, the release added.
With support from the Mastercard Foundation COVID-19 Recovery and Resilience Program, IP2E will be able to deploy its Access Facility, a grant-based facility aimed at increasing access to quality education in Africa, to support SMEs in the education sector that have been severely hit by the pandemic, it added.