Uganda Case Study

This is a case study of a high-quality program in Uganda, a largely rural country of 36 million people in which 20 percent of people in the country are under 5 years old. The Madrasa Early Childhood Program was started in 1986 by the Aga Khan Foundation but now has been transferred to the communities that now run the program. It is a play-based program for 3 to 6 year olds that integrates what we know from the research on how children learn and combines that with attention to local cultural norms and values as well as Muslim values. Children who participate in this program have higher scores on reasoning, visual and spatial cognition and other skills. This chapter also includes an nterview with Hajji Nasser Kiwanuka, General Country Director of the Uganda program, as he talks about an ideal ECD center and Florence Candiru as she talks about the challenge of promoting home languages.

This video is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA license.