On 6 March 2018, H.E. Mr. Shinichi Saida, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan to the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and Permanent Representative to African Union and IGAD, together with Dr. Yumiko Yokozeki, Director of the UNESCO International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa (IICBA), signed a project agreement between the Government of Japan and UNESCO IICBA.

The main objective of the project is peace and resilience building for youth through teacher development in order to instil the embrace of peace values and prevent violent extremism.

On the occasion, H.E. Ambassador Saida said that the Government of Japan is pleased to support this project, once again in partnership with UNESCO IICBA, after the success of the peace education project in the Horn of Africa last year, and wished for a success of this project in the Sahel region as well. “We hope that this project will be received as a token of friendship and goodwill between Africa and Japan by our African friends”, Ambassador Saida said.

This project, initiated by UNESCO IICBA intends to formulate teaching materials working closely with the Ministry of Education, Universities and Teacher Training Institutions in each Sahel country and to send selected teachers to Japan for further training in collaboration with Hiroshima University, Sophia University and Tokyo University.

This project capitalizes upon lessons learned from the “Teacher Training and Development for Peace Building in the Horn of Africa and Surrounding Countries’’ implemented in 2017 with the support of Japan. Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, and Uganda were the beneficiaries.

So far, more than 6,000 teachers have been trained in transformative pedagogy for peace building.

Embassy of Japan
6 March 2018
Addis Ababa