On 4 June 2024 at Rwanda Basic Education Board hosted a two-day policy dialogue forum with a purpose of harmonizing the interpretation and understanding of integration of STEM education and play-based pedagogies.

The forum which has been organized by Association of Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) in partnership with the Ministry of Education targets policy makers, stakeholders and development cooperation partners with interest in STEM education.

In his welcoming remarks, Director General of Rwanda Basic Education Board, Dr. Nelson Mbarushimana expressed his gratitude for the choice of Rwanda to host this Policy Dialogue, an indication that the country is committed to spearhead STEM education for the socio-economic development of its citizens.

“Thank you once again to ADEA for conducting two studies on the status of STEM education in primary and secondary schools. The studies revealed divergence in the conceptualization of STEM Education in African countries.” DG REB said.

“Results from these studies discovered that there is a growing interest in the continent in integration of STEM subjects at the basic education level.” He continued.

However, Director of Rwanda Basic Education Board highlighted challenges which the integration of STEM education in Africa whereby it is still experiencing such as limited interest among students, gender gap, insufficient, STEM teaching learning materials, insufficient qualified teachers, inadequate teaching and learning methodologies and limited technology integration in Education.

Though, DG REB hinted at several actions that have been taken with regards to STEM Education Integration in Rwanda Education system which are;

The teaching of STEM has been promoted at all levels of Education through identification and attraction of the most excellent and suitable students, the provision of science kits and lab equipment, the ICT in education policy which was developed in 2016 that is being reviewed to be replaced by the Rwanda Edu Tech Policy aiming at integrating ICT into classroom learning, equipping schools with the necessary infrastructure and hardware to use.

Dr. Nelson added that to overcome some of the common challenges discovered by the two ADEA studies, the Government of Rwanda is striving to overcome them through different interventions which have produced achievements such as presence of science kits at Primary school level, Smart classrooms at both primary and secondary school level, internet connectivity in schools and an increase of STEM students.

DG REB continued by saying that to reach where we want to be with regards to STEM education, the Government of Rwanda will continue:

“To mobilize funds for science corners and kits which may be made locally by local companies or our technical schools, to train more teachers in SET (Science Elementary Technology) to improve Pre-service and In-service teacher training in TTCs especially for SET, to avail water, electricity and other infrastructure that enable or enhance STEM teaching and learning and to increase the number of computers with internet connectivity in schools.”

Executive Secretary of ADEA, Albert Nsengiyumva shown why time and money has to be spent for the sake of promoting STEM as a continent of “Africa which is still behind particularly when it comes to quality education at the level of basic education.” He said

“Digitalization is not an option anymore, we need to adapt our education to the current trend of digital. This is why we are calling for resilience as part of our strategy, to be able to create opportunity for hybrid education and here is where by technology becomes actually so important.”  Executive Secretary, Nsengiyumva added

Nsengiyumva also hinted that teachers are provided with training and students are also provided with support so that they can be able to cope with any model of learning and remarked that by putting more investment in STEM we will be able to create a mass number of young people that will be moving towards Science, Technology and Computer-related skills on the continent.

STEM is all about enabling all these young to engage and increase creativity to become more innovative. Unless we fix education, continent will still be left behind and we cannot be competitive if each country stays on its own. Executive Secretary continued.

Mrs. Mary Sichangi who is coordinator at ADEA stated that one of the solutions that ADEA has proposed to make is consolidating for a STEM tool kit for Africa in order to enhance STEM education.

“We have a strategic frame work that is going to enable us achieve help countries to what they have committed and being sure that we are tracking the development of STEM education.” She continued

“We also have a proposed outline that will enable us think through a policy framework that will enable us to advance STEM education.

There are also outputs which we will request that after these two days, we will agree on a commitment for the resolutions and desire to come out with an action plan which will enable us to not just speaking and move on.” Sichangi continued.

This policy dialogue forum has had different participants and partners respectively such as the Ministry of Education which facilitated it, Rwanda Basic Education Board, FAWE, UNESCO, UNICEF, African Development Bank (ADB), among others.

Previously referred to as SMET in the early 1990’s, STEM was created with an objective of teaching students to think critically, prepare them for careers and create professionals that work across scientific disciplines to solve challenging problems.

The African Union’s Agenda 2063 on the “Africa we want” faces an incapacity challenge to attain her Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA 16-25)’s aspiration on improving STEM education quality outcomes. In the year 2020, a situational analysis study conducted under the partnership between ADEA and MasterCard Foundation. Accordingly, the studies discovered that there is a growing interest in the continent in integration STEM subjects at the basic learning level and gaps in use of innovative learner-centered pedagogies such as play-based approaches.