UNESCO lauds payoff from education investments in Africa

Apr 27, 2011, 13:24 GMT

Paris - Africa has made enormous progress by increasing investments in education over the last decade, with more children in school than ever, UNESCO said in a report published Wednesday.

Sub-Saharan African countries increased their spending on education by more than 6 per cent each year over the last 10 years, according to the report entitled, Financing Education in Sub-Saharan Africa, published by UNESCO's Montreal-based Institute for Statistics (UIS).

In Burundi and Mozambique expenditure rose by an average of 12 per cent each year. Of the 26 countries for which data was available, only the Central African Republic reduced spending on education.

However, despite these gains, many countries had a long way to go in providing each child with good primary education, the report said.

Between 2000-08, the number of children in primary schools increased from 87 million to 129 million - a 48-per-cent jump.

On an average, education makes up more than 18 per cent of all public spending in sub-Saharan Africa and the region overall allocates 5 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) to education. North America and Europe devote 5.3 per cent of GDP to education.

'The 'education for all' message has not fallen on deaf years,' said UIS director Hendrik van der Pol. 'Now we need to protect these investments from the current economic storms.'

Much remains to be done: the report cites latest data that reveals in one-third of the countries, half of all children do not complete primary education, and that 32 million children of primary school age are out of school.

The report said the international community was also a major source of funding, providing 2.6 billion dollars for education in sub-Saharan Africa in 2008.

But it highlighted a gap between commitments and the actual disbursement of funds. Between 2002-08, about 9 per cent of aid was never disbursed because countries didn't have programmes in place. So, an average of 221 million dollars went unspent each year - enough money to fund all the primary schools in Burundi, Cape Verde, Comoros, Guinea and Rwanda.

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