Aid and education
The external agenda of educational reform: a challenge to educational self-reliance and dependency in sub-Saharan Africa
Self-reliance or aid?: shifts in the donor agenda for education
Authors:
K. King
Publisher:
Journal of International Cooperation in Education, 2004
This paper examines, the way in which the donor agenda has shifted over the years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, with particular reference to education.
Two of the key elements in the shift have been the adoption by the development community of the international targets and millennium goals, as well as new modalities for delivering aid through sector-wide approaches and direct support to national budgets. These developments on the donor side have coincided with a powerful discourse about country ownership of their own national agenda, and the critical importance of the government being in the driver’s seat.
The author argues that what is missing or much less evident in the debates about targets, aid modalities and country ownership is an analysis of sustainability, and especially in those countries where dependency on external aid in the recurrent budget is running at 50%. The author concludes by questioning whether there is an emergence of states that will be dependent on the world’s welfare for years to come. [adapted from author]
