Experts from across West and Central Africa will gather in Senegal this month to chart an ambitious course for the region’s youngest children.
The Delegate from Cameroon’s early childhood development Association (ECDC) will travel to Dakar next week as part of a groundbreaking regional effort to transform care and education for children under eight across West and Central Africa. The gathering, running from 19th to 22nd January, brings together roughly 100 education and health officials, researchers, and civil society representatives from across the region. It’s a technical prelude to a larger ministerial conference planned for mid-2026, where governments will be asked to make binding commitments on early childhood investment.
The timing couldn’t be more urgent. Across West and Central Africa, the statistics paint a sobering picture: nearly three-quarters of young children face developmental risks, whilst stunting affects a third of under-fives. School enrollment figures tell a similarly troubling story, with 70% of children missing out on pre-primary education entirely.
“We’re talking about the foundation of everything,” explains Mr Kotodjio Mawussi, Founder of ECD Cameroon and an education specialist familiar with the convening.
The expert meeting, hosted by Senegal’s Ministry of National Education and co-organised by UNESCO, the African Early Childhood Network, and the World Health Organisation, aims to move beyond rhetoric. Participants will learn to use diagnostic tools that assess where their countries stand and identify concrete gaps in policy and practice.
Country teams -typically comprising representatives from education and health ministries- will spend much of the three days working together, comparing notes, and beginning to sketch out national action plans. The approach emphasises peer learning, with nations sharing what’s worked and what hasn’t.
For ECDC, it is an opportunity to both contribute and learn. We will join counterparts from across the region in examining challenges that transcend borders: how to finance early childhood programmes when budgets are stretched thin, how to train and retain qualified educators, how to reach children in crisis situations.
What makes this gathering different from previous conferences is its explicit focus on accountability. Participants will be introduced to monitoring frameworks aligned with the 2022 Tashkent Declaration, which committed UNESCO member states to ensuring at least one year of free pre-primary education and dedicating a minimum of 10% of education budgets to early childhood.
Most West and Central African nations currently allocate between 1.5% and 2.4% of education spending to pre-primary provision -nowhere near the target. Meanwhile, many early childhood educators receive lower pay and less professional recognition than their primary school colleagues.
The meeting’s agenda tackles these uncomfortable realities head-on, with sessions devoted to financing, governance, and workforce development sitting alongside discussions of access, quality, and inclusion.
Side events will showcase innovative projects already underway, including a learning assessment initiative spanning five countries and a health sector-led push to improve developmental outcomes for young children.
Once the Dakar meeting concludes, the real work begins. Countries will refine their baseline assessments and develop them into full situation analyses, validated through national processes. Technical working groups—some existing, others newly formed—will maintain momentum between now and the ministerial conference, ensuring that momentum doesn’t dissipate once delegates return home.
The ultimate goal is a regional roadmap that acknowledges both the scale of the challenge and the transformative potential of getting early childhood right. As the African Union’s Agenda 2063 makes clear, investing in young children isn’t simply a moral imperative—it’s essential for breaking cycles of poverty, strengthening human capital, and building more equitable societies.
