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Monaco partners I&P to launch education fund for Africa
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The fund also aims to promote the employability of African youths by aligning university and professional training more closely with the needs of local employers.
The Government of Monaco and Investisseurs & Partenaires (I&P), an impact investing group, have signed an agreement to create an impact fund dedicated to education in Africa. The objective of the fund is to address the challenges of access, equity, quality and adequacy of education on the continent.
According to a statement released by the Paris-based I&P on Tuesday, African education systems face a number of critical challenges, especially schooling for the most vulnerable populations and the training of young people.
“African governments have only limited resources to solve these problems, and as a result, the private sector is increasingly seen as a complementary actor in the education sector,” said Jean-Michael Severino, President of I&P.
Through the fund, the Government of Monaco and I&P aim to promote accessible, equitable and quality education in Africa. With 50 per cent of Africa’s population under the age of 20 and 450 million young people expected to enter the labour market by 2050, the fund also aims to promote the employability of African youths by aligning university and professional training more closely with the needs of local employers.
Under the partnership agreement, the Government of Monaco will invest a grant of €1 million in the fund.
According to the statement, the fund will be launched next year after the feasibility study conducted by the Foundation for Studies and Research on International Development (FERDI). The feasibility study will provide a better understanding of African educational challenges and identify good practices in education that can be developed and expanded by the private sector.
A strategic council composed of experts from the African and international education sectors has been selected to guide the project team. The council members include Stéphanie Cohn-Rupp, General Manager of Tiedemann Wealth Management; David de Ferranti, President of the R4D Foundation; Ramata Ly Bakayoko, former Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Côte d'Ivoire; and Dzingai Mutumbuka, President of the Association for Education Development in Africa and former Minister of Education in Zimbabwe.
Others are Jean-Michel Severino, President of I&P; Martina Viarengo, Professor of International Development at the Graduate Institute of Geneva; and Patrick Guillaumont, President of FERDI, who is also the Chairman of the Council.
“Education is a weapon of mass construction,” said Gilles Tonelli, Monaco’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation. “Without it, there can be no sustainable development. That is why Monaco invests as much as possible, especially internationally, in the education of children, and in particular girls, in order to break the cycles of poverty and ignorance.”
Founded in 2002, the I&P team comprises about twenty collaborators in Paris and in its six African offices in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Madagascar and Senegal. The goal of the team is to support the development of responsible and profitable African small and medium enterprises.
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