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AfricaFocus Bulletin
Editor's Note
"Many more girls are in school and enrolment rates are on the rise,
due to higher-quality aid and to political commitment in developing
countries. However, these achievements could be derailed by the
global economic crisis ... With 72 million children still out of
school, the world's poorest countries urgently need a global
financing initiative that can deliver the resources to scale up to
Education For All." - Oxfam
Education - particularly the education of girls - is fundamental to
development, and is increasingly recognized as not only a national
but also a global responsibility. The recent international effort
called the Fast Track Initiative has significantly expanded basic
education, notes Oxfam International in a new report. But it still
lacks necessary support from many rich countries, particularly the
United States, and is threatened by the global recession. Essential
changes, says Oxfam, require not only more money but also changes
in transparency, governance, and flexibility for different national
conditions, following the example of initiatives such as the Global
Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excerpts from the Oxfam briefing
note. The full briefing note, as well as a more extensive report on
Resourcing Global Education, is available at
For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins related to education, see
http://www.africafocus.org/educexp.php
Ray Almeida, one of the leading American Cape Verdean activists for
Cape Verde and Africa at large, died on January 30 in Boston, aged
66. He was one of two American Cape Verdeans awarded the Ordem
Amilcar Cabral in 2005. See http://www.africafocus.org/docs09/cv0908.php
An obituary from the Cape Verdean web site FORCV
An obituary appeared in the Washington Post
A memorial service will be held in Washington, DC, on Saturday,
March 6, at 11 a.m., at Unity of Washington (formerly Metropolitan
Baptist Church), at 1225 R. St. NW.
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++++++++
How reform of the Fast Track Initiative should lead to a Global
Fund for Education
Oxfam Briefing Note 19 January 2010
[Excerpts only. Full text available at
Remarkable progress has been made in the last ten years toward
achieving the education-related Millennium Development Goals. Many
more girls are in school and enrolment rates are on the rise, due
to higher-quality aid and to political commitment in developing
countries. However, these achievements could be derailed by the
global economic crisis, newly falling aid levels, and educational
challenges. With 72 million children still out of school, the
world's poorest countries urgently need a global financing
initiative that can deliver the resources to scale up to Education
For All.
Based on a new research report by Oxfam, this note examines the
EFA-Fast Track Initiative (FTI) - both its positive contributions
and its current limitations. It argues for the reform of the FTI
into a more ambitious, effective Global Fund for Education. This
redesigned initiative must feature autonomous management and
inclusive governance; greater country ownership through better
quality aid; improved accountability structures; and more
flexibility to respond to the needs of children in
conflict-affected and fragile states. Donors must prioritize such
a transformation in 2010.
Education: An unfinished success story
The first decade of our new millennium was poised to go down in
history as a hopeful turning point for the world"s children.
Remarkable progress was being forged across the developing world,
spurred by a new global commitment to the Education For All (EFA)
goals. These goals were answered by substantial increases in aid
during the first half of the decade, extensive debt relief, and a
growing political commitment to education in developing countries.
The EFA Fast Track Initiative was also established in 2002 as a
global partnership to support national efforts to reach universal
primary education.
Results soon followed. The number of children out of school
worldwide fell by 33 million to a total of 72 million in 2007. The
primary school net enrolment rate for all developing countries
increased twice as fast in the years after 1999 as it did in the
1990s. Aid increases enabled many African countries to abolish
primary school tuition fees, leading to substantial enrolment
increases. The gender gap began to narrow, and gender parity at
the primary level was achieved in two-thirds of countries with
data.
However, things took a less promising turn in the middle of the
decade. By 2005, global aid commitments for basic education had
begun to stagnate, followed by an alarming 22 per cent decline
between 2006 and 2007.
In addition to this slowdown, the quality of aid for education has
been unacceptably poor: it is too often uncoordinated, fragmented,
and driven by donor priorities. For example, in 2006, Cambodia had
16 donors implementing 57 projects in the education sector alone.
Some donors continue to bypass national systems, to provide their
aid programs in isolation from national strategies, and to use
short-term trajectories, undermining the longer-term impact of
their aid.
Big challenges have also remained in meeting the Education for All
goals. Despite the upward enrolment trend, there were still more
children out of school globally in 2007 than primary school-aged
children in the entire developed world. In spite of strong evidence
that educating girls delivers powerful economic and public health
benefits, girls' enrolment has continued to lag behind that of
boys, especially at the secondary level.
Then in 2008, the global economic crisis hit. The long-term impact
on education is predicted to be severe, as it has been in past
recessions. Some of the world's poorest families may be forced to
pull their children out of school for economic reasons. With
malnutrition on the rise, the education of many more children will
suffer due to hunger and stunted growth. And sub-Saharan Africa
alone could see a reduction of $4.6bn per year in the total
resources available for education over 2009 and 2010.
At a moment when it is needed the most, the world's education
financing initiative - the FTI - is failing to deliver. Lack of
consistent donor commitment, as well as structural and technical
issues, have meant that the FTI has not managed to galvanize a
substantial increase in education resources, and has been unable
to quickly and effectively deploy its existing resources.
The FTI has developed a truly innovative model. First, committed
developing countries take the lead in designing national education
strategies that reflect their own unique priorities. Then, these
plans are endorsed by in-country donors based on agreed standards,
signaling investment-worthiness. Finally, donors fund the
remainder of the plan that cannot be financed domestically, both
by aligning their bilateral aid and by contributing to a
multi-donor trust fund for FTI-endorsed countries known as the
Catalytic Fund.
This approach is designed to stimulate increased resources through
a "catalytic effect", whereby new and existing donors will have
the confidence to increase their support to endorsed countries
based on the high quality of these Education Sector Plans. It is
also designed to improve aid effectiveness, by stimulating
country-level donor coordination, harmonization of processes, and
alignment of aid programs with country priorities.
While it is difficult to attribute positive results solely to the
FTI, there is an apparent association between FTI support and
positive educational results. Impressively, FTI countries in
sub-Saharan Africa achieved enrolment increases of 64 per cent
from 2000 to 2007, double the rate of non-FTI countries. Sixteen
FTI countries have already achieved gender parity in primary
school. In most FTI countries, bilateral donors have also made
important progress on many of the aid effectiveness indicators
agreed in Paris in 2005, improving the efficiency and impact of
aid.
Specific elements of the FTI's design have been key to the progress
it has achieved:
Despite its accomplishments, the impact of the Fast Track
Initiative has been limited by structural constraints and
political problems. ...
The following areas of particular concern, discussed in more detail
in the Oxfam research report, are related less to the FTI's
overall approach or model, than to how it has been implemented:
The structural and political limitations of the Fast Track
Initiative have seriously hampered its ability to scale up aid for
basic education, and current piecemeal reform attempts are failing
to address adequately the fundamental problems identified by
Oxfam's research and by the external evaluation. However, the
solutions are straightforward and achievable.
Rather than starting from scratch with a new initiative, we should
build upon the considerable progress and investments that have
already been made in the FTI. Likewise we must avoid fragmenting
the global work for EFA by allowing a new initiative to be created
in parallel to the FTI. This would only reduce the impact of our
collective efforts.
The next-generation education financing initiative must learn the
lessons - both positive and negative - from the experience of the
global health funds, including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM); and it must build upon the
excellent recommendations of the FTI's recent external evaluation.
In this paper, we will refer to a reformed, redesigned FTI as a
Global Fund for Education. A new name is needed to recharge the
energy and as an outward sign of the improvements within. The term
"Global Fund for Education" is favored by advocates because it
clearly communicates a purpose. However, the name is less
important than the substance.
The right kind of leadership
A Global Fund for Education must begin with the kind of leadership
and management that will enable its success:
Real country ownership
A strengthened education financing initiative would lead best
practice in aid effectiveness by helping to transfer ownership of
the task of delivering education from donors to the developing
countries themselves. To do this, it should provide aid in a way
that gives recipient countries more information, capacity, and
control. This means communicating transparently about the details
and timing of incoming resources; building country capacity by
using government systems and investing in civil society oversight;
and ultimately turning over control by allowing countries to
manage for themselves both their development agenda and the aid
resources.
A Global Fund for Education should:
Expanded scope
Achieving Education For All will require a global education
initiative with scaled up ambition. A Global Fund for Education
should therefore:
The international community must now band together in partnership
to tackle one of the most pressing human rights challenges of our
day: the denial of a basic education to millions of girls and
boys, as well as youths and adults, in the poorest countries.
Seventy-two million children are depending on a transformation of
the FTI into an ambitious, effective, Global Fund for Education.
How US leadership could turn the tide
Although a Global Fund for Education should not be the project of
any one donor, the US is well-placed to provide strong political
leadership.
The US is currently behind the curve in supporting the Education
for All goals, and has not actively participated in the Fast Track
Initiative. However, President Obama made a commitment as a
presidential candidate to create a $2bn global education fund, and
this promise has been reiterated by Secretary of State Clinton,
who has a strong track record of support for global education
programs. Also, in 2008 the US committed to make its foreign aid
more effective when it signed on to the Accra Agenda for Action at
the High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness.
The Global Fund for Education could become a model for broader US
development reform - not only improving the impact of aid for
education, but also piloting broader US efforts to make its aid
more effective.
Why all donors must engage now
Education For All will not be achieved without immediate, concerted
action by all donor governments and institutions. The reality is
that reform of the education financing architecture is worthless
without high-level political leadership from a critical mass of
donors. The first formal combined G8–G20 Summit in Canada mid-2010
provides the perfect opportunity to launch this collaboration.
Developing country governments have demonstrated their commitment
to education and have appealed for urgent support. The Global Fund
for Education must be the answer to that call.
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