Make Room for the Lion at the Writing Table
Why the people closest to the problem are still the furthest from the pen
There is an African proverb that captures a familiar problem:
“Until a lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.”
When a delegate shared it at the KIX-SEEDS closing ceremony in Kampala, Uganda, in April 2026, the room went quiet. It was the kind of remark that seemed to resonate immediately with those listening.
KIX-SEEDS, or Strengthening and Enhancing Education Data Systems, focuses on a challenge facing many education systems: how to move beyond collecting and reporting data towards using it to inform decisions.
The proverb raises a deceptively simple question. What would the story look like if the lion were holding the pen?
But there may be another way to think about it. What if the lion already knows how to tell its story? What if the problem is not an inability to write, but too few opportunities to influence what gets written?
In education systems across Africa, that distinction matters.
The People Closest to the Problem
In a ministry of education, decision-makers may work with charts, frameworks, administrative data and policy documents. In a rural primary school, a teacher may be managing a crowded classroom, limited teaching materials and the reporting requirements that come with the job.
Both see the education system, but from very different positions.
A teacher may know which children regularly miss school and understand some of the circumstances behind their absence. Responsibilities at home, distance from school or other local factors can provide context that an attendance figure alone cannot capture.
Yet completing a data form does not necessarily give that teacher a role in deciding which questions are asked, what is measured or how the information is eventually interpreted.
In 1980, political scientist Michael Lipsky introduced the term “street-level bureaucrats” to describe frontline public servants, including teachers and health workers, whose everyday decisions influence how public policy is implemented.
Their experience can provide valuable knowledge about what happens when policy meets practice. Yet that knowledge does not always travel through the system as readily as administrative data, research reports or policy briefs.
The people closest to implementation can therefore be among those with the least influence over how their experience is eventually represented.
The Gap Between the Map and the Territory
Anyone who has worked with education data knows that a number rarely tells the whole story.
Administrative data move through systems shaped by reporting requirements, institutional priorities, available resources and the capacity of those collecting and interpreting them. As information travels from schools to districts and eventually to national decision-makers, some of the context behind those numbers can be lost.
The frontline worker knows the territory, while the policymaker sees the map. A useful evidence system needs both perspectives.
The difficulty comes when information moves mainly in one direction. Schools provide data to districts, districts report upwards and national systems aggregate the information, but those who generated the data may have limited opportunities to interrogate or use what comes back.
A functioning evidence system therefore needs to do more than collect information from the frontline. It also needs to create opportunities for local actors to access evidence, question it, interpret it and bring their knowledge of implementation into the decisions that follow.
Providing data is one form of participation. Having a role in determining what those data mean is another.
What Changes When the Lion Helps Shape the Story?
The question is beginning to be explored through initiatives working on education data across the continent.
The GPE KIX-funded Unlocking Data Initiative works in Cameroon, Kenya and Malawi to understand how existing data on foundational learning can be accessed, shared and used more effectively. The initiative brings together ESSA, eBASE Africa, EdTech Hub and Mizizi Elimu Afrika, alongside country partners.
The work takes different forms in each country.
In Cameroon, regional Communities of Learning and Practice bring together education actors around foundational learning data and evidence. They provide spaces for researchers, policymakers and other actors to examine evidence, identify questions and learn from one another.
In Kenya, the initiative is examining the use of education data within subnational systems, including the actors and structures involved in moving from available data to information that can support decisions.
In Malawi, the work also extends to the subnational level, with attention to how education systems can strengthen the use of existing data in decision-making.
These approaches are different and the work is still underway. But they raise a common question about who participates in an evidence system and what that participation looks like.
Collecting information from local actors brings their data into the system. Bringing those actors into the interpretation and use of evidence creates a different relationship with that system.
They become part not only of where information comes from, but also of the discussion about what it means.
Who Gets to Shape the Evidence?
Greater participation does not mean asking every teacher, district officer or community member to produce research papers or technical reports. Nor does it mean replacing research evidence and administrative data with experience.
Different actors bring different forms of knowledge to an education system. Researchers contribute methodological expertise, while policymakers understand institutional and policy processes. Teachers and district actors see how implementation works in practice, and communities, parents and learners can bring experiences that may not be visible through administrative or research data alone.
The challenge is to create ways for those different forms of knowledge to inform one another.
That can mean involving people in framing questions, interpreting findings, explaining what the numbers cannot show and contributing their experience to discussions about what happens next.
Seen this way, the pen is not simply about who writes the final report. It is about who has an opportunity to influence the knowledge on which decisions are based.
The Lion May Already Know How to Write
Education systems across sub-Saharan Africa are making decisions about curricula, learning assessment, data infrastructure, digital technology and the ways in which evidence reaches decision-makers.
What informs those choices depends partly on what becomes visible: what is measured and documented, what is published and whose interpretation reaches the decision-making table.
When people close to implementation have little involvement in producing and interpreting knowledge, part of their understanding of how policies work in practice can be missing from that picture.
This brings us back to the proverb.
Perhaps the lion does not need someone to teach it how to write. It may already have knowledge, experience and a perspective that can contribute to the story.
The question is whether our evidence systems create enough room for that contribution: room to shape questions, interpret evidence, bring implementation experience into the discussion and influence the decisions that follow.
The lion has always known things worth knowing. Perhaps it is time to make room for it at the writing table.
About the author.
Claude Fotso is a researcher in the Department of Education at eBASE Africa, Cameroon, specializing in foundational learning, education in emergencies, and evidence-informed policy. He is the lead author of a recent Frontiers in Education paper on learning conditions in the Lake Chad Basin and serves as Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Lead for Cameroon under the Unlocking Data Initiative, translating research into actionable policy and practice.
