Sierra Leone’s minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education Dr. David Moinina Sengeh has received an award from Education Outcomes Fund (EOF) in New York for successfully launching the Sierra Leone Education Innovation Challenge.
The award was presented to the minister during an event hosted by the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution.

“I don’t think I can grasp all the things that have happened to and for Sierra Leone in the last week at the global level but all I can say is I am grateful. To get an award from EOF today is one thing, but the real deal is how we expand the DSTI Education Innovation Challenge by 10 times from $1.5 million in 2019 to $18 million in 2022. But the real deal is that I expect the next outcomes fund to be $180 million. And the scarf part is that I believe it will happen”, according to the minister after receiving the award.

The Education Outcomes Fund (EOF) launched the Sierra Leone Education Innovation Challenge (SLEIC) on the 1st of September 2022, which is the largest ever outcomes fund for education-focused giving, helping 134,000 children in 325 public primary schools in Sierra Leone.

The Sierra Leone Education Innovation Challenge is an $18 million program, co-financed by the government of Sierra Leone and international donors that will find five child and education-focused organizations to improve children’s literacy and numeracy outcomes in state primary schools, with a particular focus on improving girls’ education outcomes.

Sierra Leone Education minister Dr. David Sengeh joined Madam Emma Spicer of the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) in launching SL EIC at a ceremony in Freetown announcing the start of the program.

Using an outcomes-based approach organizations involved will be paid once their interventions have shown improvements in children’s literacy and numeracy. They are a mix of local and global providers, including National Youth Awareness Forum, Riding Academies, Street Child, EducAid, and Save the Children. The program will be rigorously evaluated to understand their impact on learning, enabling evaluators to identify the approaches that are most effective.