[Back to index] [To Volume11#4 -- full graphics]

From Africa Recovery, Vol.11#4 (March 1998), page 8 (part of Special Feature on the 2-year review of UNSIA)

Boosting basic education in Africa

Special Initiative seeks to reverse declining enrolment

By Margaret A. Novicki

While school enrolment has expanded dramatically over the past 40 years in most of the developing world, this has not been the case in many African countries. Unable to stem the steep downward enrolment trends that became manifest in the economic crisis years of the 1980s, these countries in the late 1990s have disturbing educational profiles: only half of their children are going to primary school, adult literacy rates are below 40 per cent, and over 50 per cent of women are illiterate. Such a profile has grave implications for Africa's development. "Only through education," President Abdou Diouf of Senegal told an October 1997 meeting of the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA), "will the continent and its sons and daughters be able to meet the demands and challenges of the 21st century."

As a first step toward a long-term solution to the continent's education problems, the UN System-wide Special Initiative on Africa is placing a major emphasis on facilitating basic education for all African children over a 10-year period. It has identified 15 countries with enrolment rates of less than 50 per cent (Angola, Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal and Somalia) as the targets of its initial focus. In these countries, enrolment of boys ranges from 23 to 49 per cent, but of girls, from only 13 to 31 per cent.

Action plans are being prepared for each country, analyzing the fundamental constraints on expanding access to basic education. The lead agencies of the Initiative's education component -- the World Bank and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) -- along with the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) as cooperating agencies, will then help the countries prepare sector investment programmes (SIPs) with ambitious targets for progress toward universal primary education. The countries will also be supported in efforts to mobilize resources for the implementation of these programmes.

The Special Initiative is also working at the sub-regional level to identify the major impediments to achieving basic education for all. Workshops on constraints, such as the financing of teachers' salaries (see page 13) and languages of instruction, are being organized with a view to devising sustainable solutions.

Impediments to progress

The objectives of the Special Initiative's education component are directly linked to the outcome of the 1990 World Conference on Education for All, held in Jomtien, Thailand. There, countries pledged to take the necessary steps to provide primary education for all children and to massively reduce adult illiteracy. While the record since Jomtien has been uneven across sub-Saharan Africa, the region in fact had made faster progress over the 1960s and 1970s in increasing primary enrolment than Asia and Latin America, tripling the number of children in primary school.

But this progress was reversed in the 1980s under the weight of structural adjustment. Net and gross enrolment ratios fell to such an extent that in 1992, only about half of sub-Saharan Africa's primary school-age population was in school. According to a study prepared by Professor Christopher Colclough of the University of Sussex for the ADEA meeting in Dakar last October, a majority of sub-Saharan African countries -- "uniquely among developing nations" -- now have a smaller proportion of their children in school than they did in 1980.

"If you don't have educated people, you cannot develop," says Mr. Henri Lopes, UNESCO's Deputy Director-General for External Relations. "Basic education is necessary even to make progress in such areas as health and population."

Among the myriad problems plaguing education in Africa is the low quality of schooling in much of the region, with overly large class sizes and the average number of students per teacher higher than in any other world region except South Asia. "Teachers are often unqualified, teaching aids are few and textbook provision is desperately poor," says Professor Colclough. As a result, learning achievement is low. There are unequal opportunities for rural children and the urban poor, and the gender gap yawns ever wider, with female literacy rates of below 30 per cent in 19 sub-Saharan countries.

In an interview with Africa Recovery, Mr. Mamadou Ndoye, Senegal's deputy minister for basic education and national languages, also pointed to financial constraints. "In today's context of structural adjustment, insufficient material and financial resources" have had a "very severe impact" on improving basic education. He added that the cost of the educational model which Senegal inherited from the French "has not been adjusted to our resources." And given the rate of population growth, schools have been adapted neither to the demand for education, nor to the needs of developing societies, Mr. Ndoye commented.

But according to Mr. Jean-Louis Sarbib, World Bank Vice-President for Africa (see box), inefficient use of existing resources is more of a problem than an absolute shortage of funds. External partners will never be able to supply more than 10 to 15 per cent of the education budget in any country, he told Africa Recovery.

"It is clear the needs in the education field in Africa are enormous, but it is also clear that [resources] need to come from the countries themselves," he said. "For a very long time, African governments have been saying education is a priority. Yet their budgets were in such disarray that they were not able to allocate the resources to education."

Better performance and better management of African economies as a whole means that more resources can be devoted to education and health than has been the case in the past, Mr. Sarbib argued. Absorptive capacities have to improve, and in terms of gaining better budgetary allocations for education, it helps if the ministries of finance and education become "allies." There is also a widely acknowledged need for greater donor coordination and for African government "ownership" of educational development, said Mr. Richard Sack, executive secretary of the Paris-based ADEA. Founded in 1988 as Donors to African Education, ADEA now is led by a steering committee of 10 African education ministers and 18 donor agency representatives.

"The best way of working together to improve education is under the eyes and impetus" of African ministers of education, said Mr. Sack. ADEA has been working to foster a process which empowers African ministries of education and strengthens the policy dialogue with donors to gain agreement on the need for country-led coordination of donor assistance.

Mr. Sack noted there has been an evolution in African governments' approach to basic education. In the past, he said, "politicians didn't have a lot of incentive" to favour basic education because "primary school students don't riot if you cut their scholarships." But such views have changed in the post-Jomtien period, helped by a "professionalization" of the ministerial corps and the priority placed on the sector by donors. The ADEA mechanism, which has been used for "real live coordination" among donors, has provided a useful forum for the Special Initiative on Africa to present and mobilize support for its education component from African ministers.

As the lead agencies of the Initiative's education component, the World Bank and UNESCO are working with other external partners on helping African countries achieve a consensus on the reforms required to boost low enrolment rates by defining the major constraints on basic education.

Sector investment programmes under way

The Initiative is also working to identify what kinds of support can be provided by donors to help develop sustainable sector investment programmes (SIPs) at the country level. Alongside a special $7 mn trust fund set up by Norway to support the formulation of SIPs, the Bank has allocated resources under its administrative budget for this purpose and UNDP is also providing support.

Several countries, meanwhile, are moving ahead with formulation of education SIPs.

-- Ethiopia launched an Education Sector Development Programme in 1997/98 with assistance from UNESCO and the World Bank in the Special Initiative framework. With strong government leadership a critical ingredient, the country was able to earmark 74 per cent of the $1.3 bn needed to finance the SIP, and 15 multilateral and bilateral donors contributed $500 mn to complete it.

-- Through its lead agencies and UNDP, the Special Initiative helped the government of Senegal to prepare a 10-year programme for basic education. A Consultative Group meeting of donors is scheduled for April 1998 to mobilize resources for the SIP.

-- In Mozambique, a five-year national education strategy is under preparation, as well as a SIP financing plan. A donor consultation meeting was held in July 1997 (see box, page 12).

-- Zimbabwe's government has requested UNESCO and the UN country team to help organize a consultative meeting on education similar to that held for Mozambique.

-- Burkina Faso's preparation of a 10-year plan for basic education began in January 1997. The Initiative is helping support a policy dialogue to resolve issues of sustainability and the budgetary implications of teacher recruitment.

Education SIPs are also under way or in preparation in Guinea, Ghana, Mauritius, and Malawi.

Partnerships needed

In addition to encouraging national leadership and a coordinated donor approach, stronger partnerships with "all the key players" -- including parents, students, civil society and teachers unions -- need to be built in support of education, says Mr. Armoogum Parsuramen, former Minister of Education of Mauritius and now an education policy specialist and basic education coordinator of the Initiative for the World Bank.

Representatives of these groups and ministries of education and finance took part in a workshop organized by the Bank within the framework of the Special Initiative in January in Dakar, Senegal, on the financing of primary teachers' salaries -- an issue identified as one of the key constraints to improving basic education (see page 13).

Other future sub-regional workshops will focus on:

-- the role of teachers' unions (to be organized with Education Internationale in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in March);

-- the role of parent-teacher organizations (to be organized with the Regional Federation of Pupil-Teacher Associations in the first half of 1998);

-- language of instruction in primary schools, to sensitize policy-makers on the positive impact of using national languages;

-- the content of primary education, addressing how it can be made relevant to the majority of children who do not go beyond primary education and also equip those who go on to secondary schools with the necessary skills;

-- curriculum development for basic education, to examine content, pedagogical method and use of local languages in Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, and Senegal;

-- girls' education, to promote their enrolment and completion of school; and

-- adult education/literacy, to identify successful programmes and develop prototypes to be tested in Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia and Mozambique.

"Under the joint leadership of the World Bank and UNESCO," says Mr. K.Y. Amoako, Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa and one of the co-chairs of the Initiative steering committee, "substantial progress and synergy" have been demonstrated in the education component of the Initiative. UN system agencies agree, however, that the real test of the Initiative's impact is on the ground, at the country level.

Commenting on his own country's experience, Minister Ndoye of Senegal said, "We never shared the views of those who looked at the Initiative with pessimism or skepticism, and wondered where the resources would come from. We rather asked what we could make of this opportunity provided by the UN to mobilize people around the priority of basic education. And that is what we tried to do, to take the ideas at the root of the Initiative -- a strong mobilization behind the development of education, and donor coordination -- and see how they could be applied in support of our own nationally defined policies."

"Donors had a habit of defining our priorities for us, but more and more we have achieved a better sharing of roles and responsibilities," Mr. Ndoye said.

This is a key point, adds Mr. Parsuramen. "We cannot substitute for national leadership -- we can only work as full-fledged partners. The challenge is for the governments to take the lead and get it done, and the UN Special Initiative on Africa can be considered a good opportunity for that."

------------------

See related articles UN Programmes/UNSIA

-------------------

[Back to index] [To Volume11#4 -- full graphics]

Material from this article may be freely reproduced, with attribution to "Africa Recovery, United Nations".
We would appreciate a copy of the reproduction.

Africa Recovery
Room S-931
United Nations
New York, NY 10017 USA

Tel: (212) 963-6857
Fax: (212) 963-4556
Email: africa_recovery@un.org

Website: www.africarecovery.org
Contact us by email: africa_recovery@un.org