Political and Structural Conditions of Education Sector Programs and Demands for Education

Abstract

There are two major trends in the discourse of educational development in Africa after the 1990s: The internationally agreed goal of Education for All (EFA) and the aid modalities framed by the Poverty Reduction Strategic Paper (PRSP). For the last few years, international aid community promoted programapproach, which would coordinate financial and technical assistance from external agencies under the framework of PRSP developed by the respective aid receiving countries, instead of each agency implementing projects separately. In the education sector, education sector programs have been started in many countries as sector-level efforts of aid coordination. A characteristic of education sector programs is that they are driven by two different mandates set internationally. Namely, they have to align themselves with both the goal of universal primary education (EFA) and poverty reduction framework. Because of the strong external force, education sector programs are dragged to give a heavy weight on basic (primary and lower secondary) education, while reducing the funds for other sub-sectors such as vocational, higher, and non-formal education. While the philosophy of the recent aid modality is to shift authority from aid agencies to the government, education sector programs are remarkably similar across countries, regardless of the diversity of conditions and educational demands in respective countries. Primarily, the sector program approach is devised as a mechanism to better utilize the internationally assisted resources. The issue here is how much this aid approach can be flexible to meet the educational demands of specific countries, while, at the same time, aligning with the EFA goal.

In this paper, the author reviews three education sector programs: those of Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Zambia. Using these cases, she will examine the possibility of balancing international and local demands in planning and implementing education sector programs.