A Japanese woman has devoted herself to improving the quality of education in Africa for more than three decades.

After a long career on the continent, Yumiko Yokozeki, 58, was chosen last April to lead the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's International Institute for Capacity Building based in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa.

Yokozeki is the first non-African director of the institute, whose mission is to lay the groundwork for teacher education in Africa, since it was established in 1999, when Japanese diplomat Koichiro Matsuura was director-general of UNESCO.