More Time or Money? The World Education Forum Beyond 2030

by Albert Bangirana

This week, The CIHA Blog is presenting a series of posts on interventions in education, both in Africa and the United States. Today’s, by Albert Bangirana, illustrates an ongoing paternalism in educational efforts. Later this week, we will be showcasing examples of interventions in education in Malawi and in the United States, which are perceived to be at polar opposites of educational privilege but which ultimately face the same issues of corruption and inequality.

The year 2015 has set the agenda for the World Education Forum which was held in Incheon, South Korea from 19 to 22 May. The WEF was informed by the theme “Equitable and inclusive quality education and lifelong learning for all by 2030.” The participating country representatives committed to transforming lives through education, which is also a fundamental factor to the development matrix, though not totally new to existing policy frameworks and national development plans of many African countries and beyond. But as it stands, few of these countries may claim an unquestioned symbiotic connection between educational output and desirable employment. In other words, even where such education exists, huge gaps still taint the cause for quality learning. Evident in many African countries is the lack of critical skills to fuel sustainable development processes; hence the need for this forum.

The #WorldEducationForum UNESCO propaganda reverberates as yet the five-theme ‘assegai’ poised to fight for a common universal education agenda finds its target. These five spearheading themes are: promoting and sustaining the right to education, equity in education, inclusive education, quality education, and lifelong learning. Ambitious as they sound, propounding viable ways through which such goals can be met remains a challenge to both developing and developed nations. The Dakar Forum in 2000 only served to reemphasize the Millennium Development Goals 2 and 3 – notably, the universal access to primary education and the attainment of gender parity. Despite the strides earned since then, their attainment continues to positively challenge the hugely militarised budgets of most African states, a reckonable antidote to sustainable development (UNESCO Report 2015).

Remarkably, the Incheon Forum saw the need to “build a powerful new education agenda that will transform lives” (UNESCO Report 2015). However, the burgeoning challenge remains the endemic poverty partially sustained by bad governance and poor management of available funding. Such ills persistently constrain the benefits of such a project. Despite recall to this, the international community at the Dakar Forum in 2000 dedicated substantial financial resources to the Education for All programme (EFA).

It was stated:

Progress in education requires an augmentation in external resources. Donors need to raise an additional $16 billion annually to achieve some of the EFA goals in low-income countries by 2015. There is also need to improve the effectiveness of aid by better aligning with national priorities and harmonizing and coordinating diverse financial resources.

It is from this backdrop that the global Partnership for Education, a hybrid of the Education for All Fast Track Initiative, reiterated its commitment to support low-income countries to fast track the attainment of the EFA goals by 2015. It was highlighted that “the hard-won gains in education will not be preserved without improving resources for vulnerable populations especially in African countries and conflict areas” (UNESCO Report 2000).

The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005) and the Accra Agenda for Action (2008) were further devoted to improving aid effectiveness based on ownership, alignment, harmonization, managing results and mutual accountability principles. These would be materialised by strengthening country ownership over development, building more effective and inclusive partnerships for development and delivering and accounting for development results.

The post 2015 Development Agenda factored in the need for broader consultations with governments, civil society, private sector, academia and research institutions in order to shape the way forward. Going beyond the MDGs and building on the RIO+ 20 Conference[1] served as the framework for global development efforts beyond 2015.

A courtesy call to this debate conspicuously spells unease. We are past the Millennium Development Goals and have stopped at Sustainable Development Goals, probably beyond failure to attain all the goals but in acceptance that we need more resources to make it happen – an overt insight to fathom. Talk of more time or money? I guess the answer lies beyond 2030.

[1] The Rio+20 conference (the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development) in Rio de Janeiro, June 2012, galvanized a process to develop a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which will carry on the momentum generated by the MDGs.

Albert Bangirana is a PhD candidate in the School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.