Projects

In 2021, NBA developed a strategy for the Moleskine Foundation's WikiAfrica Education initiative. WikiAfrica Education is a platform of empowerment that amplifies voices from Africa to reflect the rich and valuable history, languages, people, and communities of the continent. The vision of WikiAfrica Education is to inspire a new generation of African creative thinkers and doers by increasing production, access, and awareness of contextually and linguistically relevant knowledge resources from Africa. WikiAfrica Education hosts AfroCuration events to achieve this vision.

NBA has developed and implemented a course based on the Guidelines on Open and Distance Learning for Youth and Adult Literacy for the Commonwealth of Learning and Unesco Institute for Lifelong Learning. The six-week course was developed on the UIL Learning Hub platform.

Funded by the Manufacturing, Engineering and Related Services Sector Education and Training Authority (merSETA), the Eco-vehicles Skills Programme seeks to use an innovative skills development approach that enables students to develop basic knowledge and skills related to sustainable energy. Students work together in groups to build an eco-vehicle, learning about sustainability and related concepts in the process. NBA collaborated with the University of the Free State (UFS) to develop two skills courses, which were offered via Blackboard, the UFS learning management system.

NBA designed, developed and are hosting the Vula Bula African language graded reading series repository. Vula Bula offers carefully structured graded texts for early, emergent and fluent readers in the form of beautifully illustrated stories, contextualised to the young reader’s inner world and life experiences. The books are short and simple, and contain predictable text to facilitate and encourage reading for enjoyment. Simple sentence structures and familiar vocabulary enable rapid reading progress. Clear and detailed illustrations help understanding. 

NBA is providing ongoing consulting support to the Ministry of Education in Guyana in support of implementation of its ICT Master Plan. This started, though UNESCO, with support in the development of an EMIS Masterplan, with support now being provided beyond that to develop an EMIS Operational Manual and Data Management Framework as OpenEMIS is rolled out by the Community Services Foundation in the country. 

In addition, NBA is supporting the development of various related ICT Frameworks for the education system. These are:

NBA was commissioned by the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) and the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) to develop Guidelines on open and distance learning for youth and adult literacy. These guidelines support literacy providers around the world in planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating their open and distance learning-based (ODL) literacy programmes. 

NBA has provided extensive research and technical expertise to support the design and implementation of Training Assessment Project (TAP) surveys for Eastern European countries (Romania, Ukraine, and Belarus) and East Asian Pacific countries (Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Tonga, and Lao PDR) for the World Bank. These surveys have focused on assessing the extent of alignment of TVET systems in participating countries to international best practices in TVET systems identified through desktop research.

NBA reviewed the impact of the 2014-2019 Seychelles ICT in Education and Training Policy, worked with stakeholders to develop the 2022-27 policy and then worked collaboratively with the Ministry of Education to devise a implementation master plan. 

Using action research, NBA evaluated the effectiveness and potential for scaling the African Leadership Academy’s (ALA) Africa Careers Network (ACN) Expansion Pilot Programme. ACN is a platform that connects young African talent from ALA and the MasterCard Foundation Scholars Programme to internships and job opportunities across Africa. The pilot programme ran in South Africa, Uganda, Rwanda, and Ethiopia and aimed to enhance the career trajectory of students. 

Arizona State University (ASU) developed and implements Baobab on behalf of the Mastercard Foundation. Baobab is a digital social, professional, learning community for young African leaders and participants and alumni of Mastercard Foundation programmes.