In May 2024, high-level delegations from four countries—Kenya, Sierra Leone, Zambia, and Tanzania—visited Addis Ababa to explore the city’s transformative early childhood development initiatives. Led by Mayor Adanech Abiebie, Addis Ababa’s ambitious program aims for 95% of children under six to be developmentally on-track by 2026. Addis Ababa spearheaded this initiative in response to a baseline survey that showed that almost 14 percent of the city’s children were failing to meet their age-appropriate developmental milestones associated with health, learning, emotional and/or social progress.
Addis Ababa shared how it gleaned key learnings about why children were failing to thrive from its baseline, and subsequently responded with a broad-set of interventions to reach all young children in the city, with a particular focus on the 330,000 most vulnerable households. Central components of Addis’s response involved hiring, training and deploying 5,000 parental coaches; creating 12,000 new playgrounds and closed streets to ensure the city provides safe and developmentally appropriate outdoor play spaces for children; integrating early childhood development touchpoints in all health centers; providing universal quality, play-based pre-school; and increasing accessibility to affordable and quality childcare.
Since the Addis Ababa Leadership Exchange, Zambia, Nairobi and Zanzibar have all undertaken baseline studies and launched their own early childhood development programs.
