Many low and middle income countries in sub-Saharan Africa face an education financing crisis. This financing challenge exacerbates the ongoing learning crisis, itself deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic and myriad conflicts. Education spending in many African countries is inadequate, inefficient, and inequitably invested, leaving schools and students struggling to provide basic schooling to an adequate standard.
Adequacy: demand for good quality education is growing at a much faster rate than the resources available. The number of school-age children in Africa is set to increase by 63 million (14 percent) by 2030, and if countries are to achieve universal education, approximately another 100 million children currently out of school must also be brought into the system. Furthermore, per-student expenditure remains too low, meaning that further investment is needed if countries are to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 by providing quality education to all children.
Efficiency: much of the existing expenditure on education is wasted. Inefficient procurement methods and poor allocation of resources mean that much public expenditure is not directed in such a way as to maximize learning. The ongoing learning crisis means that resources are invested in teaching without students actually learning, and high rates of repetition mean that money is spent teaching the same students the same curricula again and again. Rough estimates suggest that Africa’s education spending is much less efficient than those in other regions, with as much as 30-40 percent spending effectively wasted.
Equity: poor targeting of resources means that students do not benefit from existing spending. Expenditure on basic education is inadequate compared to tertiary levels, despite basic education having vastly larger enrollment. Investment in teachers, infrastructure, and teaching and learning materials are all frequently unfairly distributed between schools and regions, and inequitable formulas for school grants mean that finance is not well matched to need.
These challenges require not just careful analysis, but practical solutions. Analyses such as the World Bank’s Public Expenditure Reviews routinely identify the scale and dimension of these challenges, but often struggle to provide specific and feasible recommendations or practical examples of how challenges have been tackled successfully in other countries.
How can countries address these challenges? A new series of case studies, written by a team at the World Bank with the support of the Education Finance Research Grants from Africa trust fund, provides concrete examples of countries which have effectively addressed severe financing challenges. The case studies are intended to provide country-level policymakers with positive examples of solutions to some of the most pervasive problems in education finance. Although not every example will be replicable in all other countries, the case studies demonstrate the potential for significant improvement in the adequacy, efficiency, and equity of education financing through concerted effort and policy reform.
In Sierra Leone, we report on the Government’s success in raising education expenditure to fund a rapid expansion of free education. Through increased public expenditure and a reallocation of funding from defense and other sectors towards education, the Government achieved a 50 percent increase in real education expenditure in four years, supporting a 58 percent increase in enrollment.
In Cote d’Ivoire, we report on an alternative method of increasing the adequacy of education funding – mobilization of private sector finance. Through an innovative partnership with philanthropic foundations and the cocoa industry, the Government has mobilized more than US$100 million – equivalent to more than five percent additional education expenditure – to test and scale up a series of interventions to improve enrollment and learning outcomes in primary schools.
In Democratic Republic of Congo, we report on the Government’s efforts to introduce reliable and equitable school grants, often a challenge in countries with a history of conflict, fragility and violence (FCV). By 2010, following multiple conflicts, the education system was debilitated and severely underfunded, leaving households carrying much of the cost burden of education. The Government introduced a simple block grant, available to both state and non-state schools, as part of a doubling of public spending on education. Having been successfully embedded in the system, the grant is now being expanded and reformed with a more equitable formula.
In Mozambique, we explore the Government’s success in driving down the cost of teaching and learning materials. In 2011, uncompetitive procurement practices led to low quality and high-cost workbooks and textbooks, with high distribution furthering the cost challenge. With the support of the World Bank and Global Partnership for Education-supported Education Sector Support Project, the Government moved to acquire the licenses for its workbooks and textbooks, gradually bringing production in-house to prevent the payment of annual licensing fees for additional books, and reformed the distribution system, leading to a decrease of more than one-third in unit costs and two-thirds in distribution costs.
Finally, in Tanzania, we report on the Government’s success in using results-based finance to drive improvements in the distribution of teachers between schools. Teachers account for the majority of spending on basic education, but in many African countries this expensive resource is inequitably distributed with teachers clustered in schools close to towns and large villages. Results-based incentives as part of the World Bank-supported Education Program for Results, gave incentives to Local Authorities to rationalize the distribution of teachers between schools, leading to a rapid decline in clustering of teachers and an increase in the share of schools with adequate staffing, crucial during a period of rapid expansion of enrollment.
The case studies provide valuable insights into how carefully designed reforms, backed by political leadership, can address some of the most chronic challenges in education finance – helping ensure all Africa’s children can fulfil their potential.
Ensuring Equitable Financing of Schools in FCV Contexts : The Case of Democratic Republic of Congo
Ensuring Efficient Provision of Teaching and Learning Materials : The Case of Mozambique
Ravinder Casley Gera 