[11.09.09] Aid and Education
The Norwegian Institute of International Affairs [NUPI] has the great pleasure of inviting you a the seminar with World Bank advisor Birger Fredriksen:
External Aid for Education: The Challenge of Enhancing its Catalytic Impact
Tid:
Fredag 11.09.09, kl.10:00
Sted:
NUPI
,
C.J. Hambros plass 2 D
The presentation discusses how aid during the current crisis can help maintain the strong education momentum in Sub-Saharan Africa since year 2000. It further:
- Summarises the education growth momentum since 2000
- Argues that a sharp growth in education funding in support of better education policies was the key factor breaking the cycle of education stagnation of the 1980s and early 1990s, and that stagnation in education budgets resulting from the crisis could result in a return to education stagnation
- Suggests that aid can help maintain the momentum during the crisis by:
- Counter-cyclic use to mitigate impact of crisis on domestic funding
- Improving the catalytic impact of aid on total resource use in the sector
- Discusses ways the catalytic impact of aid can be enhanced by changing the allocation of any given volume of aid within countries, among countries and between country-specific and "global public good education functions". It argues that such functions are currently severely underfinanced by donors, and discusses the negative impact on the quality of education aid by the declining technical capacity of aid agencies, partly caused by the switch to general budget support;
- Proposes that more strategic thinking is needed on the allocative efficiency of aid and suggests that this is not done by existing mechanisms"