The World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), in partnership with the office of the President of Ghana Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, recently held WISE@Accra, a forum to engage education stakeholders from across Africa. 
The one-day forum, which took place in Ghana’s capital, Accra, was held under the theme ‘Unlocking the World’s Potential: Leading and Innovating for Quality Education in Africa’. 
The event explored a number of topics, including quality education, ethical leadership, teacher training, teaching 21st century skills, funding, partnership accountability and regional collaboration to tackle development challenges.
WISE is an initiative of Qatar Foundation. Stavros Yiannouka, CEO of WISE, said: “With almost half of the world’s youth living in Africa, the international community stands to benefit from empowering the leaders and change-makers of tomorrow.”  
The forum also served to highlight the engagement of WISE with African policy-makers, thought leaders, business leaders, entrepreneurs and educators. 
During the WISE 2017 summit, President Akufo-Addo underscored 
the importance of education to achieve prosperity, saying: “Education creates social mobility and it’s the hope of every parent that their children may have access to education to alleviate them from poverty and offer an opportunity of an improved quality of life.” 
Dr Patrick Awuah, founder and president of Ashesi University and the 2017 WISE Prize Laureate, re-imagined the future of higher education during his keynote address: “The work that we do as educators is to make the world a more hopeful place for generations to come.” 
Ashesi University is empowering Ghanaian youth by equipping them with entrepreneurship, ethics and leadership skills to build the future of the continent.
By showcasing education enterprises and projects from its global programmes – the WISE Prize, Awards and the WISE Accelerator – WISE@Accra demonstrated the positive role innovation plays in enhancing access to education and improving learning outcomes, a press statement noted.
Participating projects from the WISE Accelerator initiative were present at the forum, including Kepler, Make Ghanaian Girls Great and Green Shoots, a South African initiative that improves the quality of mathematics education through ICT.  The director of Green Shoots, Jo Besford, said: “The urgency to deliver quality education for all is driving an ‘innovation explosion’ in Africa.” 
The mentorship, network and visibility provided by the WISE Accelerator has had a significant impact on GreenShoots, recently featured by the Blended Learning Universe, an initiative of the Clayton Christensen Institute.