Kwame Akyeampong

Kwame Akyeampong is Professor of International Education and Development at the Open University, UK. He has had an academic career spanning over 30 years, starting at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana in 1991. He has held international academic posts at Hiroshima University in Japan and Georgia State University in the US as a senior fulbright scholar. He was professor of international education and development at the University of Sussex in the UK for about 17 years before joining the Open University, UK in 2020. He served as a Senior Policy Analyst at UNESCO, Paris for two years where he worked with a team to produce two of the organisation’s Global Education Monitoring Reports. At the Open University he founded the interdisciplinary Centre for the Study of Global Development (CSGD). As Director of CSGD, he has overseen research engagement in global development aimed at improving human wellbeing and advance aspects of the sustainable development goals that relate to poverty, health, wellbeing, education, decent jobs, and employment. He has published widely and his recent book, Reconceptualising the Learning Crisis in Africa: What Accelerated Learning Programmes teach us“ (Routledge publishers 2025) addresses a core problem in the framing of the learning crisis experienced  by African children. It critiques the assumptions underlying this international agenda which offer deficit, diminishing and decontextualised framings of African children, their families and communities.

Kwame co-chairs the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel (GEEAP), convened by the World Bank, UNICEF, USAID and the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).  He is a director on the board of the US based Luminos Fund providing second chance education programmes to improve educational opportunities for out of school children and is also a board member of Teaching at the Right Level (TARL) Africa.

Last updated: 2024