Education Coalition Of Zimbabwe (ECOZI)

ECOZI was established in June 2009 and is registered in Zimbabwe as a Private Voluntary Organisation. It brings together Non-Governmental Organisations, International Non-Governmental Organisations, Teacher Unions, Faith Based Organisations, Community Based Organisations and Civil Society Organisations, all sharing a common interest in Zimbabwe's education sector. ECOZI is deliberately apolitical and non-partisan, uniting this diverse membership around one common pursuit: the right to quality, free basic education for all, with particular emphasis on public-funded education.

ECOZI's vision is a society with access to quality, inclusive, equitable, lifelong and resilient education, delivered in a safe environment. Its mission is to coordinate and facilitate civil society organisations and all education actors in advocating for education policy making, implementation and review, so that access to quality, equitable and lifelong learning opportunities genuinely reaches everyone.

ECOZI is a membership-driven organisation currently made up of 75 member organisations working in the education sector, spread across all ten of Zimbabwe's provinces. The coalition is democratically governed, with an annual General Assembly serving as its highest decision-making body, giving mandate to a nine-member National Executive Committee elected every two years from among the membership. A secretariat based in Harare, headed by an Executive Director, coordinates the coalition's day-to-day work.

Members are organised into six thematic committees, each member belonging to at least one: Gender Equality and Inclusive Education, Education Financing, Education-in-Emergencies, Quality and Transformative Education, Lifelong Learning, and Foundational Learning. ECOZI also maintains active provincial chapters in Bulawayo, Manicaland, Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland West, Masvingo, Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South, Mashonaland East and Midlands, ensuring the coalition's advocacy is genuinely grounded in the realities of communities across the entire country, not concentrated only in Harare.

Zimbabwe's education sector faces a range of persistent challenges that make coordinated civil society advocacy essential. Chronic underinvestment in public education financing has left schools and learners without the resources needed to guarantee genuinely free and equitable basic education, despite this being a constitutional and international commitment. Vulnerable, hard-to-reach and marginalised children, including those in rural and remote provinces, children with disabilities, and girls facing particular barriers to staying in school, are consistently at the greatest risk of falling through the gaps in policy implementation.

Menstrual poverty remains a significant, often under-discussed barrier to girls' education in Zimbabwe, directly affecting school attendance, participation and dignity for adolescent girls across the country. Meanwhile, education financing dialogues convened by ECOZI have highlighted a broader structural issue: the persistent gap between the education financing commitments made by government and international partners, and the funding that is actually and reliably disbursed to schools and learners on the ground.

Advocacy for Education Policy: ECOZI's core strength lies in coordinating the civil society voice on education policy, participating directly in government policy and programme formulation, and reviewing government policies and interventions to ensure they genuinely benefit all learners, especially the vulnerable, hard-to-reach and marginalised.

Championing Education Financing: The coalition advocates for increased, innovative and more efficient education financing, from both the Government of Zimbabwe and donor partners, working to ensure that funding commitments translate into real resources reaching real classrooms, so that no child is left behind for lack of funding.

Research and Evidence-Based Lobbying: ECOZI carries out policy research as a foundation for its advocacy, using evidence rather than assumption to lobby government on policy gaps, formulation and implementation, and to hold the education system accountable to its own stated commitments.

Joint Sector Planning and Monitoring: ECOZI works directly with the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education and the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development, alongside donor partners and international agencies, participating in joint sector planning, joint monitoring and sector reviews that shape the direction of Zimbabwean education policy.

Advancing Gender and Inclusive Education: Drawing on the diverse expertise of its membership, ECOZI brings dedicated focus to gender and disability issues within the education sector, including recent work establishing Zimbabwe's National Menstrual Health Management Network to tackle the barriers menstrual poverty creates for girls' school attendance.

Commemorating and Championing Global Education Days: ECOZI actively marks key international education dates, including International Day of Education, World Teachers' Day, World Literacy Day, the Day of the African Child, and the International Day of the Girl Child, using each as a platform to spotlight specific gaps and successes in Zimbabwe's education system.

ECOZI's influence extends well beyond Zimbabwe's borders through its memberships in key regional and global education networks. It holds full voting rights within the Africa Network Campaign for Education for All (ANCEFA), a regional coalition uniting 35 national education coalitions across Africa, and within the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), a worldwide coalition of more than 100 national education coalitions spanning three regional networks. ECOZI is also a member of the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations in Zimbabwe (NANGO), the International Parliamentary Network for Education, the Scholars at Risk Network, which works to protect threatened scholars and defend academic freedom worldwide, and the Collective Consultation of NGOs on Education 2030 Forum, a key global mechanism for dialogue between NGOs and education policymakers. Having previously worked on the Education for All goals and the Millennium Development Goals, ECOZI's current advocacy is oriented around the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4, to ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning.

ECOZI's work has been made possible through the support of a range of international funding partners. The German Backup Initiative – Education in Africa, delivered through GIZ, has supported ECOZI's coalition work, alongside the Africa Network Campaign on Education for All (ANCEFA) and the Global Campaign for Education. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is both a funding partner and a direct collaborator on joint sector planning and monitoring. World Vision UK, the Roger Federer Foundation, and Education Out Loud, a mechanism of the Global Partnership for Education focused on advocacy and accountability, have each supported ECOZI's programming. The Norwegian Students' and Academics International Assistance Fund (SAIH) and Oxfam IBIS, through Oxfam's Zimbabwe country programme, round out ECOZI's core funding partnerships, together enabling a coalition that keeps education policy advocacy running consistently across all ten of Zimbabwe's provinces.

Every contribution channelled through Fonseca to ECOZI helps sustain the coordinated, evidence-based advocacy that keeps education policy honest in Zimbabwe, pushing government and donors alike to turn financing commitments into real resources for real classrooms, and ensuring that vulnerable, hard-to-reach and marginalised children are never an afterthought in national education planning. Supporting ECOZI means investing not in a single school or programme, but in the coalition holding the entire system accountable, so that the right to quality education reaches every Zimbabwean child, in every province, regardless of where they were born or what challenges they face.