UNESCO & KIX Africa 21 -- National AI Competency Frameworks for Teachers in Francophone Africa

In October 2025, UNESCO and the KIX Africa 21 Hub — an initiative that strengthens education systems across the Global South — launched a programme to develop national AI-competency frameworks and translate digital learning resources into local languages across four pilot countries: Côte d'Ivoire, Benin, Burundi and Senegal.

The programme aims to define AI-competency standards for teachers, administrators and learners in each pilot country, and to expand access to mother-tongue learning content, responding to UNESCO's finding that eight in ten children in Africa start school in a language different from the one spoken at home.

A workshop held 15–17 September 2025 in Abidjan brought together more than 40 participants from Côte d'Ivoire and a delegation from Benin to begin drafting an AI competency framework, building on Côte d'Ivoire's existing digital-education policy and strategy documents; in parallel, the programme is translating digital learning resources via the Global Digital Library and UNESCO's Translate a Story initiative, supported by Norad and Sopra Steria.

Benin's Ministry of Early Childhood and Primary Education has separately committed to developing an aligned national AI and digital competency framework under its own National Strategy for AI and Big Data; beyond this and the Abidjan workshop, no completion dates, teacher-reach figures, or evaluation data have yet been published for any of the four pilot countries.

UNESCO and reporting outlets explicitly describe the initiative as 'pioneering work in progress,' meaning it should be read as an early-stage policy and capacity-building programme rather than a completed or evaluated intervention.