The heads of state of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) will be meeting in South Africa on August 16-20, 2017. Civil society is maximizing this opportunity to engage in pre-SADC solidarity actions and, encourage Southern African leaders to lead the call for increased and sustained financing for education at the summit. The actions have been undertaken by Southern African national education coalitions, coordinated and supported by the Global Campaign for Education, in collaboration with the Africa Network Campaign on Education for All (ANCEFA), and ActionAid International.
Domestic financing for education is key
Domestic financing is – by far – the most critical element in national education budgets: over 97% of resources for education must come from the domestic budgets of low- and lower middle-income countries themselves. While donor funding remains important, serious efforts must be made to encourage and support developing country partners to be able to make credible pledges to financing education.
The call to fund education is urgent. 264 million of the world’s children are out of school, and over half the world’s children, around 800 million, will not have the basic skills needed to find decent work to support their families and build their communities when they grow up.
Yet financing for education remains far too low, owing to weak or regressive tax systems to generate sufficient domestic income, lack of prioritization of education from domestic resources, and insufficient support from donors and the international community – with the share of aid to education declining over the past decade.
While several developing countries – particularly across Africa – made impressive pledges to fund education during the last GPE replenishment conference, many have fallen short of meeting them: some have stagnated, and very few have made progress in their ability to increase their budgets to education 1.
Business as usual is not enough
A radical shift is needed. Donors must recognize the fundamental importance of education to achieving sustainable development and prioritize funding accordingly. Developing countries must allocate enough resources to achieve universal, quality education systems. And international, collaborative efforts must be made to deliver tax justice, which is the key to unlocking financing for education and other public services worldwide.
The upcoming SADC Summit represents an important opportunity for Southern African leaders to commit to increasing or sustaining their domestic expenditure on education to 20% or more, which is a vital step towards countries reaching their global and continental goals on education. Civil society is looking to the SADC leaders to place education – as an underpinning, enabling goal – at the centre of attaining the Sustainable Development Goals. This is a goal too important to miss.
Education activists in the Southern Africa region have come together to remind leaders of the need to make bold and credible pledges, in a transparent and accountable way, including at the Global Partnership for Education replenishment conference in 2018. Many Southern African countries are partners of the Global Partnership for Education. The SADC summit will be preceded by a civil society forum, and we are hopeful that this will generate a communiqué which has financing education at its heart, and will be delivered to the summit.
The campaign to encourage SADC leaders to stand up and support education with bold commitments has been running in Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Malawi, and in South Africa, which is hosting the SADC Summit in 2017. National education coalitions will be calling on SADC leaders to prioritize education, with national events taking place between now and the summit. The Mozambique national education coalition, Movimento de Educação para Todos (MEPT), has already held a meeting with key political figures, with two school children handing over a lobby letter during the event.
It is no exaggeration to say that the world risks missing Sustainable Development Goal 4, to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, unless leaders make a radical shift in their approaches and commitment to finance it.
The SADC summit presents one of several opportunities for civil society to remind leaders of their commitments, and to mobilise them to act on them.
1 From Increasing Global Education Financing: Bold and Credible Pledges To Achieve Sustainable Change: A briefing for Developing Country Partners on the Replenishment of the Global Partnership for Education Global Campaign for Education, May 2017.