In her piece on Devpolicy Blog, Alice Albright, CEO of the Global Partnership for Education, lays out challenges and opportunities for financing global education. In a time when foreign aid is under considerable scrutiny, she argues that the international community should not lose sight of the fact that investing in education is still worth; it is central to ending extreme poverty. One of the main reasons GPE exists is to support the most vulnerable. Without immediate and radical action to invest more in education, over half of the world’s upcoming youth generation – 825 million of the 1.6 billion young people who will be alive in 2030 – will simply not be equipped to work and thrive in the 21st century.
Focused investment in human potential is also an investment in prosperity and security for all because Inequality of opportunity drives discontent and conflict, which in turn can spill over national and regional borders. GPE's mission is to confront this by looking for opportunities to innovate and to disrupt. A full replenishment of GPE in February will enable the partnership to support 89 countries, which are home to 870 million children and adolescents and 78 per cent of the world’s out-of-school children.