Zebra Trust give £1.2m gift to strengthen teacher education in Kenya and Zambia

Posted on 22 April 2026 • University news

The Open University has received a £1.2 million gift from The Zebra Trust for a major new initiative to enhance pre-service teacher education in Kenya and Zambia, helping thousands of new teachers enter classrooms better prepared to support children’s learning.

The four-and-a-half-year programme will be led by Dr Jennifer Agbaire, Prof Tom Power and Olivier Biard through the University’s Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) initiative, which has already reached an estimated two million teachers across the continent.

The new project will focus on improving the practical elements of teacher training, ensuring that student teachers develop the classroom skills, mentoring relationships and reflective practices needed to succeed from the start of their careers.

Developing a sustainable programme that can expand

It will do this by working with three key groups of people: tutors, mentors and student teachers, focusing on what they do and how they work together.

The programme will work with Egerton University in Kenya and with Colleges of Education in Zambia – supported by World Vision Zambia to develop a sustainable programme that can be expanded nationally and internationally. Monitoring and evaluation will be led by Dr Chris Yaw Kwaah at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana.

Dr Kris Stutchbury, Director of TESSA at The Open University, said:

“Teachers are the single most important factor in the quality of education that learners experience in classrooms.

“This programme focuses on the beginning of a teacher’s professional journey—ensuring that new teachers develop the practical skills, confidence and reflective capacity they need to help every child learn.”

The new programme aims to address this challenge at its root: pre-service teacher education, where future teachers develop the foundational skills that shape their professional practice.

Over the lifetime of the programme, the initiative will directly support at least 4,000 student teachers through enhanced teaching practice, mentoring and supervision. By enabling new teachers to enter the profession with the practical skills they need to teach effectively in the classroom, the programme is expected to benefit more than 50,000 children every year.

Bridget Cass, chair of The Zebra Trust said:

“For over 60 years the Zebra Trust has been working to improve the access to education for people in East and Central Africa, mainly by paying for secondary school fees in the area, prioritising young women and girls.   We were aware with the increases in costs and the need to ensure the effectiveness of our grants it would be better if we focussed on improving the quality of teaching through supporting teacher training.  We were delighted that TESSA has taken this up, and are confident that together we have the potential to make a real difference to the education of people for many years, through training teachers, and enriching the teacher training community within the region.”

Professor David Phoenix, Vice-Chancellor at The Open University, said:

“The Open University has worked and learned alongside African education colleagues for more than two decades through the TESSA network. This generous support from The Zebra Trust allows us to deepen that collaboration and focus on one of the most powerful opportunities for change: how teachers are trained before they enter the profession.”

Main image: Ribbon cutting at the launch ceremony.