During the 11th Francophone Summit in Bucharest in 2006, heads of state and government requested the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF) and the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) to pool means of support for national policies for modernization of the member states’ educational systems. This request led AUF and OIF to develop IFADEM, a Francophone initiative for open-distance teacher training. Support by heads of state was confirmed at summits in Quebec (2008), Montreux (2010), and Kinshasa (2012).

IFADEM offers a training programme, in part open-distance, adapted to the needs of each country, using information and communication technologies, jointly developed and implemented with the ministry in charge of basic education.

Participating countries:  Benin, Burundi, Haiti, Lebanon, Niger and Democratic Republic of the Congo.

New countries in 2013: Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Togo.

The IFADEM initiative’s main objectives:

• Apply mixed training methods, partly open-distance, progressively introducing the use of information and communications technologies for education (ICTs);
• Improve educational methods through innovation, the use of new teaching tools and techniques;
• Professionalize local training structures;
• Define continuous training strategies for primary teachers;
• Analyse results and cost-effectiveness of these structures.