Policy Analysis

As part of the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Fellowship, I was paired with a team from the Ministry of Higher Education in Zambia including his excellency the Minister and his advising team. In a team of 4 consultants, we were tasked with conducting a year long process leading up to a policy recommendation paper to be presented to the Ministry. The central question around which the consultancy process was designed is: Assess how Zambia can avoid backsliding on past progress in education and invest for future progress with diminished financial resources and other limitations resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

I closely worked with the advisors to the Minister of Education to understand their needs and fine tune the focus of the consultancy. After several conversations, readings and needs assessment, the question we decided to focus on as a Ministry team and consultants t on became: Assess how Zambia can increase enrollment in TVET centers in rural areas with a focus on enhancing access, equity and quality. Our research specifically focused on analyzing the challenges that students in rural Zambia face when enrolling into TVET centers and offered concrete recommendations to increase enrollment while improving quality, equity and access.

This work involved me doing the following:

• conducting literature reviews

• designing research methods

• compiling, reviewing and analyzing primary and secondary data (qualitative and quantitative)

• conducting a root cause analysis of the problem

• stakeholder mapping

• conducting stakeholder interviews with Ministry personnel, directors of TVET institutions, teachers and students

• continuous iterations and regular reporting and checking in with the Ministry team to make sure we are on track, update with progress and refine the scope of the project to take into account findings during every step of the process

• creating a policy matrix (including cost-benefit analysis)

• converting analysis into recommendations for actions that are communicable in non-technical ways

• writing a policy report with an executive summary, a short policy memo and presentation to both the Ministry team in Zambia and the deans of colleges at Harvard university

• Wrote an analytical 2000-word policy memo of education reforms in Egypt

• Collaborated with the Research and Documentation Project (RDP) at the American University in Cairo as well as Harvard Policy Analysis classrooms to produce an 7,500-word policy analysis paper of the Egyptian education reform policies 2018-2030. I presented the latter in a global education development conference organized annually by the Graduate School of Education at Harvard inviting 100+ policy makers and international development professionals. The paper is now in press for publication as part of a volume on education reforms around the world.

• Egypt Youth Ambassador advocating on youth-related policy issues with Arab Statesmen, FIKR 11th: Youth and Economic Participation & 12th Conference: Citizens and Governments, Arab Thought Foundation, United Arab Emirates, 2012 & 2013