Uwezo, the program that has transformed into “Usawa Agenda”, has an impeccable record of achievement in education. We are a founder member and co-chair of the Education Evidence for Action (EE4A), a platform that brings together select CSOs in education and Ministry of Education for Kenya to co-create and share evidence to enhance evidence-based decision-making in the sector. EE4A has organised three successful biennial national conferences on education in 2015, 2017 and 2019. The planning for the fourth is already underway. Uwezo is also an active member of the Regional Education Learning Initiative that is supported by Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, and has members across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

We sit on the board of the SDGs Kenya Forum, which brings together leading CSOs in the country to partner with the government in monitoring implementations of the SDGs. We also sit on the board of the Elimu Yetu Coalition, which is the national coalition of CSOs and Community Based Organizations (CBOs) working in the education sector under the Global Campaign for Education (GCE). We are a founder member and sit on the board of the Pal Network, an advocacy coalition of 14 countries in the global south (from Asia, Africa and South America) pushing for global action to improve learning outcomes for all children. We have also established partnerships with 158 community level organizations across the country, whose capacity we have contributed to developing over the years, and through whom we have extensive reach across the country. We have established and maintained extensive networks in the media and in government, which support our work.

Specific achievements as far as our work is concerned can be summarized as follows:

1. Through annual assessments, we have generated and published sufficient and robust evidence on learning levels and the factors associated with the low and inequitable learning outcomes;
2. We have significantly contributed to the academic and public discourses on the issues of learning outcomes through academic publications, media articles and annual reports;
3. We have contributed to initiation of two nationwide early grade interventions: Tusome, a literacy program funded by DFID and USAID and implemented by RTI International, and PRIEDE, a numeracy program funded by GPE and implemented by the Ministry of Education;
4. We have contributed to the shift in government policy from focusing on inputs into education to learning outcomes resulting in the curriculum reforms that are currently underway;
5. We have contributed to the global debate on learning outcomes and how to measure them, referenced in the opening of 2018 World Development Report and our learning assessments acknowledged in UNESCO Institute for Statistics. We have helped to shape the agenda for Sustainable Development Goal 4 on inclusive, quality education; and
6. We have through the Pal Network advocacy work, in which Uwezo participated directly at some stage of the process, contributed to the upgrading of indicator 4.1.1 (a) of SDG 4 from Tier III to Tier I indicator by the Unesco Institute of Statistics (UIS).

Other than the government and the multinational agencies, we have also influenced Safaricom, the largest corporation in East and Central Africa, through its philanthropic arm, Safaricom Foundation, to invest in an intervention to improve learning outcomes on a pilot basis, in three counties of Bungoma, Turkana and Tana River. The intervention, which commenced in 2018 is to run for three years. Indeed the Safaricom Foundation’s education pillar in their current strategy (2018-2021) is informed by Uwezo findings has evidenced by its heavy reference to Uwezo data. In their already underway intervention, Safaricom Foundation specifies that they will use Uwezo’s data as a means of verification of the effectiveness or otherwise of their activities.