Mwanza, Tanzania, 28 May 2026 — The Agency for the Development of Educational Management (ADEM) and the African Centre for School Leadership (ACSL) on Thursday May 28th, delivered three interconnected milestones, including the official launch of the LiT-LEAD Programme for Tanzania, the commencement of school leadership training with regional and District Education Officers from six Lake Zone regions and the introduction of the school leadership training manual that will underpin the training programme. Together, these three outputs represent Tanzania’s most comprehensive single-day investment in school leadership development, and a concrete demonstration that the country is poised to build a solid school leadership system.
Implemented through a partnership between ACSL and ADEM under the Leaders in Teaching (LiT-LEAD) initiative, the LiT-LEAD programme will train 12,000 secondary school head teachers and deputy head teachers across Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar, improving learning outcomes for more than 2.8 million learners.
The launch was officiated by Prof. Carolyne Nombo, Permanent Secretary in Tanzania’s Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, and brought together representatives from government institutions, development partners, faith-based organisations, civil society, and secondary school students — a reflection of the broad national ownership the programme has earned before its first cohort completes training.
In her remarks to launch the programme, Prof. Nombo set the standard the programme is designed to meet: “It is essential for school leaders to have the ability to manage their institutions with efficiency, accountability and academic integrity to ensure that every learner has access to quality education and improved learning outcomes.”
The training programme will combine face-to-face and online learning, equipping school leaders with practical skills in instructional coaching, school improvement planning, and evidence-based leadership. Crucially, it is not a standalone initiative. Through a Memorandum of Understanding signed between VVOB — under the ACSL partnership — and ADEM in May 2025, the programme is formally embedded in ADEM’s national professional development portfolio and aligned with leadership appointment standards. Certified school leadership training will become a permanent part of how Tanzania selects, prepares, and recognises its secondary school leaders — independent of any single project cycle.
The launch comes at a pivotal moment for Tanzania’s education reform agenda. As the country advances competency-based curriculum reforms placing learner-centred teaching and critical thinking at the heart of classroom practice, effective school leadership has been identified not as an administrative function but as the primary driver of whether reform reaches learners. LiT-LEAD is Tanzania’s institutional response to that recognition.
For ACSL, the launch represents the kind of systems-strengthening outcome its continental mandate is built on. But for ADEM, it reflect the sort of partnership the agency craves, to ensure it can achieve its mandate to Tanzanians. “This partnership marks a significant step forward in our national efforts to professionalise school leadership,” said Dr. Maulid J. Maulid, Chief Executive of ADEM. “By providing structured, high-quality training aligned with national priorities, we are laying a foundation for sustainable improvements in teaching and learning.”
Alongside the programme, ACSL officially launched the school leadership training manual — the curriculum resource developed by ACSL to drive the LiT-LEAD training across Tanzania. The manual provides school leaders with a structured, evidence-based learning pathway covering instructional leadership, school improvement planning, professional learning communities, and leadership within the context of Tanzania’s competency-based curriculum reforms.
The manual is an ACSL intellectual product — designed to be contextualised for Tanzania while drawing on the comparative school leadership evidence that ACSL has generated across multiple African countries through its continental mapping exercises. It will serve as the primary training resource for the 12,000 school leaders the programme will reach, and as a lasting curriculum asset within ADEM’s professional development system beyond the LiT-LEAD programme itself.
Its launch on the same day as the programme’s formal inauguration is significant: the curriculum and the system that will deliver it are being introduced together, signalling that Tanzania is not waiting for infrastructure to catch up with ambition.
Within hours of the launch ceremony, the transition from launch to implementation began. ACSL and ADEM convened Regional Education Officers and District Education Officers from six Lake Zone regions — Mwanza, Shinyanga, Simiyu, Mara, Geita, and Kagera — for the first formal training session under the LiT-LEAD Programme.
As the first regions to implement the programme, the Lake Zone cohort will generate early evidence on delivery modalities, participant uptake, and system readiness that will directly shape the national rollout across all regions of Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar. The sequencing is intentional: by beginning in the Lake Zone before scaling nationally, LiT-LEAD builds in the learning loop that large-scale education programmes so often skip.
With 12,000 school leaders to be reached and more than 2.8 million learners standing to benefit, LiT-LEAD is among the most ambitious school leadership programmes on the African continent, and Tanzania’s most significant investment in school leadership to date. It contributes to a growing continental movement — one that ACSL is helping to lead — to reposition school leadership as a professional field with its own preparation standards, career pathways, and accountability systems. This shift is being built — in Tanzania, by Tanzanians, with the technical partnership of ACSL and the institutional commitment of ADEM. The programme, the curriculum, and the first trained cohort now exist. The work of reaching 12,000 leaders has begun.
