5 . A c o n t i n e n t a l t e a c h e r r e c r u i t m e n t p r o t o c o l i n A f r i c a : K e y c o n s i d e r a t i o n s f r o m t h e C o m m o n w e a l t h T e a c h e r R e c r u i t m e n t P r o t o c o l James Keevy Director, International Liaison, South African Qualifications Authority: jkeevy@saqa.co.za Abstract The recent review of the impact of the Commonwealth Teacher Recruitment Protocol (CTRP) by Ochs and Jackson (2009) has pointed out that the active international recruitment of teachers is a global issue that is not limited to Commonwealth countries. The review also found that, despite the recognition of the protocol, particularly at the ‘highest international level’, the majority of Commonwealth teachers remain uninformed and, as a result, are open to exploitation and unfair labour practices. This paper draws on the literature identifying the challenges and lessons in implementing the CTRP to initiate and explore the important debate on the development of a continental teacher mobility protocol for Africa. Taking note that the development of a recruitment protocol for Africa has recently been initiated by the African Union (Kaluba, 2010), this paper argues for the consideration of key issues to ensure that the recruitment protocol is uniquely African and addresses the unique challenges of the recruitment of teachers in Africa. The key issues include consideration of: the African identity, which is constituted by both geographical and cultural criteria, as well as rethinking the indigenised African situation beyond the confines of Eurocentric concepts and categories (Higgs and Keevy, 2009); moving from ‘policy borrowing’ to ‘policy learning’ as the mobility protocol is developed (Chakroun, 2010); gathering accurate data on teacher recruitment in Africa to inform the mobility protocol; recognising qualifications through qualifications frameworks in Africa (Samuels and Keevy, 2008); and increasing the professionalisation of teachers in Africa (Ochs, 2011). Key words Teacher, Recruitment, Migration, Commonwealth, Africa 5.1 Introduction 1 Teacher migration is recognised as an increasing global phenomenon, including on the African continent. As was emphasised in the Symposium Statement of the Fifth Commonwealth Teachers’ Research Symposium held in South Africa in 2010, ‘many countries across the globe face severe current and future shortages and changes in teacher supply and demand’ (Ochs, 2011: 5). This stark fact is confirmed by the recent review of the global demand for primary teachers conducted by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS, 2010), which finds that to replace teachers leaving the profession, 7.2 million new teachers are needed globally between 2008 and 2015. Among 99 countries that need to expand their teaching forces, 5.5 million teachers need to be recruited to cover not only 1.9 million additional posts to reach universal primary education (UPE), but also 3.6 million teachers in order to fill the posts of teachers leaving the profession (assuming an annual attrition rate of 5 per cent). According to the UIS, sub-Saharan African countries alone will need to recruit more than 2 million teachers in total to maintain today’s teaching force and to make the extra effort to meet UPE. In North America and Western Europe, countries will need to replace about 1 million of today’s teachers. In order to address these shortages many countries are actively recruiting teachers, in many cases from more vulnerable small and developing states, either through bilateral 33