Innovative locally led childcare implementation models in the Africa region
| Model (organisation) | Description |
| Community-based childcare centres in Ethiopia (ChildFund Ethiopia) | ChildFund Ethiopia, with partners Children Believe and Tesfa Berhan Child and Family Development, is piloting a scalable solution for affordable, quality and sustainable community-based childcare. Childcare services target mothers of young children in urban centres of Addis Ababa, Adama and Debre Birhan with the objective of encouraging their engagement in paid work, income generation and overall economic well-being. In collaboration with the Addis Ababa University, the project will generate evidence for revising Early Childhood Development (ECD) policies, frameworks and implementation in Ethiopia, showcasing holistic impacts on children, women and families. Each childcare centre, of around 20 children, is managed and run by a facilitator selected from the community and supported by parents on a rotational basis. Facilitators and parents receive intensive training by project field coordinators and ECD specialists from ChildFund Ethiopia, on holistic ECD and management of daily facility activities. Field coordinators conduct regular supportive supervision visits at each childcare centre and provide coaching to community facilitators to ascertain the quality of the childcare centres and improve interaction with the children. The project also includes an economic empowerment component for mothers, through the organisation of self-help groups, which include a savings and loans and backstopped by a women economic empowerment specialist from ChildFund Ethiopia. The pilot builds on ChildFund’s experience of establishing childcare centres for the government-run flagship social protection programme, the rural and urban Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in collaboration with the World Bank and UNICEF, whereby centres provide holistic ECD services to children while parents are engaged in public work activities. |
| Market-based daycare in Ghana and South Africa (Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising, WIEGO) | In Accra, Ghana, Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising (WIEGO) established a multi-stakeholder forum including the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, local municipal officials from the Social Development Department responsible for ECD regulation and provision, city planners, market trader and street vendors organisations, and ECD providers to co-create guidelines for childcare provision in and around markets. Street vending and market trading represents 44% of women’s employment in the Greater Accra area as compared with 11% of men’s employment.24 It is a highly feminised sector and women face specific childcare challenges due to their place of work and commuting time, including obstacles to breastfeeding young children. Markets and city streets also present many hazards for young children. The co-created guidelines are intended to outline these challenges and propose solutions that will be included in the revised national ECD policy to provide a set of principles for childcare provision in markets. Clearer guidelines set the foundation for the expansion of childcare services in markets for street vendors and market traders’ children. In Durban, South Africa, Asiye e Tafuleni is piloting childcare spaces for 6–8 children each in a market and street vending zone following negotiations with street vendors and market traders associations and municipal officials. The childcare centres apply the ECD municipal by-laws and are an innovative approach of creating safe spaces for young children in and around markets. The lack of government subsidies for childcare services is an important obstacle for street vendors and market traders to register their children as they cannot afford the user fees. The pandemic coupled with the cost-of-living crisis led to a significant drop in earnings among these workers. However, recent regulatory changes in South Africa are now making it easier for childcare service providers to benefit from the existing ECD subsidy. This can expand uptake of these services among women in informal employment whose earnings tend to be lower than the minimum wage. Across Africa, street vending and market trading represent an important source of employment for women, and many bring their young children to work with them as no viable childcare alternatives exist. Both examples demonstrate how it is possible to extend childcare services in or near informal economy workers’ place of work, including city markets and streets. They emphasise the need for broad consultations with local and national government officials alongside women workers who are the primary users of these services. |
| ‘Mamaprenuers’ social enterprising in Kenya (Kidogo) | Kidogo is a social enterprise operating an innovative ‘Hub and Spoke’ model for low-income communities in Kenya and the Africa region. ECD best-practice hubs are established with trained caregivers using a holistic play-based curriculum, nurturing the growth and development of children—referred to as ‘The Kidogo Way’. In addition, Kidogo micro-franchises ‘mamapreneurs’ or local women running informal childcare centres within the community as ‘spokes’. Mamapreneurs receive a business-in-a-box, including relevant training materials, resources and support. The Kidogo hubs operate as model centres of excellence for the spokes, continually testing and innovating to improve the quality and availability of childcare in the community. Kidogo hubs also offer ongoing training for mamapreneurs. Since 2014, Kidogo has supported over 130 centres serving approximately 2900 children daily in 12 different informal settlements across Nairobi. Preliminary findings from an ongoing quasi-experimental study in Nakuru County, in western Kenya showed that improving the quality of childcare services can improve labour outcomes for women in resource-poor settings, thereby improving their families’ economic prospects.25 The results also demonstrated that the training and mentorship components of the Kidogo model were transferable, acceptable and feasible. These two aspects could form the basis for the development of a peer-to-peer mentorship model where centre providers, trained as ‘champions’, would support others through a community of practice model to achieve and maintain quality of childcare provision and enhance sustainability of the programme. |