Minimum Education Floors and education as social protection: scaling education-employment pathways in Eastern and Southern Africa

As the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals enter their final phase, learning poverty and youth unemployment across sub-Saharan Africa signal a rupture in the social contract between states and citizens. This article introduces Minimum Education Floors (MEFs) as an extension of the ILO’s Social Protection Floors framework, repositioning education as a rights-based entitlement, bridging the gap between social protection and human development scholarship. Drawing on Sen’s Capability Approach, the framework prioritises converting resources into freedoms rather than provision or access. Its five dimensions, universality, quality, continuity, integration, and inclusion, are derived by mapping Sen’s protective-promotive distinction onto guaranteed principles in ILO Recommendation No. 202, with inclusion addressing intersecting inequalities. Through comparative case study analysis of education-social protection initiatives in Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Africa, the study assesses alignment with MEF principles and education-to-employment transitions. Findings reveal partial alignment, with gaps in financing, institutional coordination, data infrastructure, and legal accountability, amid power asymmetries among ministries, donors, and sub-national authorities. Gender, racial, and socioeconomic inequalities shape outcomes, although secondary sources capture these partially, highlighting intersectional analysis as a research priority. The analysis identifies conditions for transforming fragmented initiatives into scalable systems, contributing to post-2030 debates by treating education as infrastructure for intergenerational cohesion.