XUNICEF News and Views

by Jim Ackers  It’s very difficult to even imagine what education and UNICEF will look like in 25 years given the pace and unpredictability of change over the last 25. Existential threats like climate change, armed conflict, and global pandemics are huge challenges to be addressed. Reductions in demographic growth also offer new challenges, but also optimism that low income countries will not have to continue to divide fewer resources between more children. Development partners seldom acknowledge how pitifully small expenditure per capita on education is in low income countries: $48 per child compared to $8,501 in high income countries. More investment is needed if all children are to achieve minimum learning. Another increasing threat to the future of humanity is the denial of scientific evidence. This is a huge challenge going forward as misinformation and disinformation are so prevalent and have dangerously polarized public opinion around critical issues like COVID vaccine ...

  by Jim Ackers Jim Ackers, Regional Education Adviser, UNICEF ROSA I joined UNICEF on a full-time basis in May 2003, just before the Iraq war – the source of so many of our current problems. But I had my first taste as a consultant in 2001 in Kenya after working for DFID there. When invited to join UNICEF as a consultant I jumped at the chance. My task was to assess the impact of the drought on Northern Kenya - before global warming was seen as an existential threat. I loved the work, not least the field visits and long conversations with the UNICEF drivers – always bringing contextual realities to external perspectives. With DFID I had been based in the inspectorate working directly with Kenyan government colleagues. DFID was an exemplary development agency at that time – work was well planned, well-resourced and rigorous, and the aim was to achieve results at scale through what was emerging as a ‘sector wide approach’. In Kenya this included constructing national teacher traini...