Lesson 2.2: QCP’s Role in Supporting ACQF Implementation

Description: Explains how the QCP serves as a digital tool to operationalise the ACQF, focusing on how it enhances transparency, comparability, and recognition of qualifications.

By the end of this Lesson, you will be able to:

• Explain how the QCP operationalises the ACQF to enhance transparency, comparability, and recognition of qualifications.
• Describe how the QCP supports all countries, whether through database integration or manual data entry.
• Recognise the value of structured, standardised data for policy-making and future-ready qualifications systems.

Today’s learners, workers, and employers face barriers when qualifications are hard to compare across borders. The African Union with the support of its European Partners has developed the ACQF to overcome this challenge, fostering a more integrated, mobile, and competitive continent.

ACQF provides the policy framework for qualifications comparability. But achieving real, cross-border recognition and mobility requires more than agreements. It needs reliable, accessible, structured qualifications data. That’s where the QCP comes in.

The QCP, the Qualifications and Credentials Platform, is ACQF’s primary digital tool. It provides a structured space for countries to store, access, and compare qualifications, using the African Learning Model to ensure data is standardised and interoperable.

The QCP is inclusive by design. Countries with structured qualifications databases can connect directly through automated systems. Those without an NQD can use the QCP’s Curator Portal to manually enter and manage qualifications data. This ensures no country is left behind.

By providing structured, reliable data, the QCP directly supports ACQF objectives – building transparency, comparability, mobility, and trust. It enables qualifications to be recognised across borders and helps policy-makers align systems for continental integration.

But the QCP is so much more – it also allows countries to organise their own data following international standards and set themselves up for a future-proof and modern qualifications system. Having structured and standardizes qualifications data is the basis for advanced activities, such as policy forecasting, analysing skills gaps and needs and ultimately to create useful qualifications and employment data to be used by various stakeholders beyond the government e.g. citizens, education providers, employers and society at large.