Short Abstract

This panel explores leadership and innovation in African primary and secondary schools, foregrounding locally grounded practices, diverse linguistic traditions and African knowledge production to rethink how educational change is understood and implemented.

Long Abstract

Research on educational leadership and management in Africa has expanded considerably over the past two decades, yet its contribution to international debates remains comparatively limited. Dominant theories and reviews continue to draw disproportionately on research produced in Anglophone contexts and the Global North, while African scholarship in French, Portuguese, Arabic, Spanish languages remains less visible. This imbalance not only limits what enters the global knowledge base but can also obscure locally grounded understandings of leadership, innovation and educational change. This panel shifts attention to primary and secondary schools across diverse African contexts, asking how educational actors exercise leadership and generate innovation within specific institutional, social, linguistic and historical environments. It is particularly interested in practices that emerge in response to constraints—including limited resources, inequalities, rapid demographic change and the enduring effects of colonial educational structures—but also in initiatives that challenge established models of schooling and school management. The panel invites comparative and context-sensitive contributions examining school leaders, teachers, communities and other educational actors as agents of change. Particular attention will be given to locally generated innovations, distributed and community-based forms of leadership, and the relationship between formal policy and everyday school practices. By bringing together research across African regions, the panel seeks to make visible forms of knowledge often absent from mainstream educational leadership scholarship and to explore what African experiences can contribute to rethinking educational leadership and innovation more broadly.

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