Muhammad Sanusi II SDG Challenge Spurs Education Reform Across Africa

• A become a beacon of hope to raise future leaders in Africa
• Provides mentorship support to scale up education initiatives for underserved communities in Africa

With inclusive, equitable quality education and gender equity as key areas, focusing on SDG’s 4 and 5, His Highness Muhammad Sanusi, a former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria in partnership with Canada’s 1Million Teachers has launched the Muhammad Sanusi II SDG Innovation Challenge. The Challenge is to empower teachers with innovative solutions to bridge the gender gap.

The HH MS-II challenge is designed starting with the objective of improved equitable cost-effective, safe and coordinated provision of innovative, quality, gender-responsive education, especially for girls and to empower teachers in sub-Saharan Africa to experiment with innovative, scalable educational programme and practices by providing funding, training and incubation and exposure.

The potential of the innovation challenge in opening up opportunities for access to qualitative education was highlighted at the initiative’s April fire-side chat which had Co-UN SDG advocates including the President of Ghana, One Million Teachers Board of Trustees, other stakeholders, policymakers and world leaders in attendance.

The need to upscale the initiative to accommodate more entries in consecutive cohorts was also expounded by HH Muhammad Sanusi, with an acknowledgement from President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana.

Still grooming its first cohort of 10 teachers with 10 projects, the project was established as a call to action for teachers – especially female teachers across Africa. Together with 1 million Teachers and partners, particularly Queens University in Kingston Ontario Canada.

”It is designed to create a supportive environment that helps accelerate the development of their solutions and spread the benefits of the broader community to ensure greater and wider impact and access greater funding to enable development at scale,” HH Sanusi explained.

President Akudo-Addo echoed his personal belief that: We cannot develop our continent, nor achieve the Africa we want with an uneducated population; we cannot eliminate poverty on our continent if people are uneducated.

The HH MS-II Innovation Challenge hopes to use the ideas of the pilot cohort as proof of concept, to show how with these innovations qualitative education can be delivered to the less-privileged segments of the society.

Some of the benefits of participation includes: an initial grant, showcasing and testing of their concepts and an initial 8-month incubator programme along with follow-up individual and group coaching and mentorship led by 1Million Teachers.