South Africa

The Regional Teachers Initiative for Africa supports teacher professional development and teacher governance in Sub-Saharan Africa to ensure that schools have enough skilled and motivated teachers to deliver quality education. The initiative will contribute to regional and national objectives by supporting and complementing national education and teacher reforms, offering opportunities for countries to work together, supporting partnerships and peer learning for teachers in the region, and also to work with Europe. Within the RTIA, the Regional Facility for Teachers in Africa, supports regional and national initiatives aimed at providing quality education by operating through a multifaceted approach, which includes three complementary components. The RTIA Facility is supported by France, Finland and Belgium. It complements the other two components of the RTIA, which focus on enhancing teacher professional development, support, and collaboration across Africa, and facilitating policy research, exchange and peer learning to ensure consistency between global, regional, and national efforts and are which are led by the African Union Commission and UNESCO respectively.

The MAPS Project is a three-year initiative aiming at strengthening policy-making and programming on migration and forced displacement in Sub-Saharan Africa. With a €10 million budget funded primarily by the European Commission, MAPS brings together a multidisciplinary network of African and European partners—including Sapienza University of Rome, five Italian universities with UNESCO Chairs, and universities in Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, and Spain. It is supported by advisory bodies such as the IOM Regional Data Hub and the University of the Witwatersrand.

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) presents significant investment opportunities across multiple sectors. However, matching these opportunities with the employment aspirations of a fast-growing youth population remains a challenge. Many young people struggle to find decent jobs, while investors face a shortage of relevant skills in the labour force. To help close this gap, the Team Europe Initiative on Opportunity-driven Skills and Vocational Education and Training in Africa (TEI OP-VET) was launched in April 2024 under the Global Gateway strategy. The initiative aims to strengthen vocational education and training systems in SSA by aligning them with concrete employment opportunities emerging from public and private investments, making skills development a core enabler of sustainable growth and job creation.