The Laboratoire pour l’Éducation (Ed Lab), housed within the Directorate of Studies, Strategies, Planning, and Statistics (DESPS) of Côte d’Ivoire’s Ministry of National Education and Literacy (MENA), with the technical support of Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and the financial support of the Jacobs Foundation, continues its efforts to strengthen the technical capacities of education stakeholders and promote evidence-informed decision-making.

As part of its 2025 work plan, the Ed Lab launched a series of interactive capacity-building sessions designed to strengthen the technical skills of Ed Lab members and key technical actors within MENA. These sessions, organized under a “Coffee Chat” format, provide a collaborative and informal learning space to explore practical tools and methodologies relevant to education research and data use.

On February 26, 2026, the Ed Lab held the third session of this series at the DESPS in Abidjan. The session focused on data management and analysis using Excel, with the objective of strengthening participants’ practical skills in preparing and analyzing datasets generated through education statistics and surveys.

The session opened with welcoming remarks from Mr. Bomi Foueulo, Head of Service at DESPS, representing the Director of DESPS. In his remarks, he encouraged participants to actively engage in the session and highlighted the importance of strengthening data analysis capacities to support evidence-based decision-making within the education sector.

The training was facilitated by Jean-Luc Yao, RFE Advisor at IPA. Through an interactive presentation and practical exercises, participants were introduced to key steps in data management following data collection, including data preparation, recording and standardization of variables, management of missing values, and documentation of data processing steps to ensure transparency and reliability.

This third Coffee Chat builds upon the previous sessions held in November 2025 and January 2026, which focused respectively on the key stages of conducting high-quality research projects and on data quality control protocols. Together, these sessions contribute to strengthening participants’ understanding of the research and data management cycle and the importance of reliable data for informed decision-making in the education sector.

The Coffee Chat series will continue over the coming months, covering additional topics such as evidence synthesis and key components of Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) plans. Through this initiative, IPA and its partners reaffirm their commitment to strengthening institutional capacity and promoting the systematic use of evidence in Côte d’Ivoire’s education sector.