From 28 October to 1 November 2019, IICBA organized and hosted a training of trainers workshop for higher education in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with facilitators from Arigatou International and the Institute for Peace and Security Studies at Addis Ababa University for 21 participants from Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, South Sudan and Somalia, including university lecturers and representatives from the Ministry of Higher Education. Representatives from UNESCO Dakar and One African Child also participated.

The workshop was opened on Monday 28 October with remarks from Dr. Yumiko Yokozeki, Director of IICBA, H. E. Mr. Daisuke Matsunaga, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan to Ethiopia, and H.E. Dr. Samuel Kifle, State Minister, Ministry of Science and Higher Education, Ethiopia. After opening remarks, an understanding of the context in the Horn of Africa and Sahel Region was presented along with an overview of violent extremism and building peace and resilience, and the role of a teacher in doing so.

Days two and three of the workshop dove into training the participants on IICBA’s transformative pedagogy for peacebuilding guide. A version was developed for the Horn of Africa in 2017 (accessible here) and for the Sahel region in 2019 (accessible here). Participants learned about transformative pedagogies, building competencies for peace and resilience, ethics, learning assessments and learner-led actions, involving how to engage with the community. The workshop was very interactive as participants took part in games, activities and roleplays found in the guides.

Day four was used for participants to put their new knowledge to practice. The participants were divided into six groups and each was given a chapter of the guide for which they had to create a lesson plan and then present it to the group. This allowed the participants to get creative and showcase the knowledge and skills they acquired earlier in the week. After each “lesson” groups received feedback from their “learners”, the participants, on what went well and what could be improved.

During the final day of the workshop, participants were divided by country to brainstorm and outline country plans for how they plan to cascade the training and incorporate aspects of peace and resilience building and the prevention of violent extremism into their education sector plans. H.E. Mr. Fumio Shimizu, Ambassador of Japan to the AU and Representative of the Ministry of Education, Ethiopia, came to give the closing remarks.

The workshop is part of the “Peace and Resilience Building and Prevention of Violent Extremism in Africa through Teacher Development” project, supported by the Government of Japan. The project builds upon lessons learned from the “Teacher Training and Development for Peace Building’’ projects implemented in the Horn of Africa in 2017 and in the Sahel region in 2018, also with the support of the Government of Japan. More than 6,500 teacher educators and teachers have been trained on transformative pedagogy for peacebuilding thus far. This project focuses on sharing and scaling up best practices in the target countries.

The project targets teachers in 16 countries in Africa, namely Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda and their cross-border areas. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), African Union (AU) Commission's Human Resources and Science and Technology Department and Peace and Security Department along with the UNICEF Liaison Office to the AU are strategic partners in the project.

The one-year project aims to instil peace, build resilience and prevent violent extremism through education with an emphasis on teacher development. Specifically, the training targets faculty of education and peace institutes in universities on the peace and resilience building and prevention of violent extremism guide and its activities with emphasis on pedagogy, curriculum and assessment integration and practice. This training was organized for Anglophone countries in the project and is the first in a series of three trainings. The following two, scheduled for 2020, will target French and Arabic-speaking countries.