Why Do 鈥淕ood Policies鈥� Seem to Fail in Sub-Saharan Africa? Comparing Curriculum Reform Processes in Botswana and South Africa

A lecture on curriculum reform in Southern Africa by Nii A. Addy, doctoral candidate, Stanford University and graduate trainee, Institute for the Study of International Development.

In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), billions of dollars have been invested in education policy reforms that seem to have failed. Despite a perception of general failure in SSA, there are differences in the extent to which policies 鈥渟ucceed鈥� or 鈥渇ail.鈥� Achieving success in SSA is most urgent now, even as cycles of failed education reforms have resulted in increased cynicism, demoralization, and donor fatigue. Often, teachers are blamed for not implementing 鈥済ood policies.鈥� Yet, the policies themselves, and the processes of their development are hardly questioned. Motivated by questions about differences in policy outcomes, this presentation compares upper primary mathematics curriculum reform processes in Botswana and South Africa, adjacent sub-Saharan African countries with relatively different educational outcomes. 聽The presentation highlights how divergent contexts shaped different curriculum development processes in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and led to a relatively ambitious, yet vague curriculum in South Africa, and a more specified curriculum in Botswana, where teacher capacity had also been built over time, resulting in relatively smaller policy-practice gaps.