Reaching the Marginalized: Investing in Education
Intervention by
Her Excellency: Mrs Chinwe Nora Obaji
- at the
Mr. Chairman
My intervention will be directed at answering two questions:
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for Rural People to Achieve EFA [Education for All]
Goals; and the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals]
Nigeria's Honourable Minister of Education
Fifth High-Level Group Meeting on
Education For All [EFA]
Beijing: China, 28 to 30 November, 2005
The Director-General of UNESCO:
Mr. Koïchiro Matsuura
Honourable Ministers
Heads of United Nations Agencies
and Multilateral; plus Bilateral Agencies
Representatives of Civil Society
Organisations and the Private Sector
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen:
1:
What does it take to exercise effective national leadership in coordinating
external assistance and facilitating harmonisation of donors’ procedures?
2:
What can or should donors do to facilitate this process?
With regard to the first question on exercising effective national leadership
in donor coordination, I should exemplify with the Nigerian case where steps
have been taken to ensure that donors constructively buy-in-to nationally-defined
policies and agenda on EFA and insistence that donor support be applied in
a manner that duplication is avoided. A Donor Coordination Unit is about to be set
up in the Office of the Minister of Education. The Unit will take responsibility,
among others, of harmonising all donor input into the Nigerian education
system. In this wise, support for our EFA process by donors becomes
systematic and intensely focused rather than sporadic and diffuse.
While donor input is essential, it should of course complement the
resources deployed for EFA by the national government. In this wise,
Nigeria is happy to report that 2% of annual gross national earnings
are ploughed into basic education as first charge. In addition, our social
sector is the major beneficiary of the debt relief granted to Nigeria;
thus in the 2006 budget, the sum of N21 billion has been earmarked for
spending on MDGs related programmes - within the Education sector.
The Ministry of Water Resources has also taken responsibility for the
provision of water - in the schools - in support of the implementation
of our Home-Grown School Feeding and Health Programme:
Only last week, Nigeria made firm commitment to the purchase of at
least one million units of the $100 - one lap per child [OLPC] - laptop
to boost the learning of children in our basic education system. These
are some of the numerous efforts that the Nigerian government is
undertaking to ensure that we are on track towards meeting EFA goals.
Sustainable self-help is clearly the best service.
Mr. Chairman, Honourable Ministers,
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Since increased funding for EFA will only make a difference if it is
strategically targeted and efficiently used, deliberate efforts should
be made to promote the mobilisation and effective use of domestic
resources as well as improve aid effectiveness as the Nigerian example
has shown. It is, therefore, necessary for governments to:
* Put in place sound nationally-owned policies, including increased
involvement of local governments, civil society, the private sector
and the communities in the delivery of basic education.
* Ensure close alignment of funding-agency support with the priorities
of national governments.
* Facilitate harmonisation of donor procedures and actions. Donors and
partners should be willing and ready to collaborate with each other
through the use of joint mechanisms.
* Strengthen in-country institutional arrangements for the organisation
of the EFA process.
On the second question of what donors should do, I must state that donors
would have to improve efficiency of funding by abolishing parallel or isolated
aid structures leading to multiple project implementation units by different
donors on the same project. Furthermore, donors would have to make a long-term
commitment to ensure predictability and sustainability of funding basic education.
Finally, it is necessary for donors and partners to ensure that aid should go
to regions where the EFA challenge is greatest. At the Dakar World Education
Forum, the international community clearly stated that funding EFA is primarily
a responsibility of national governments. By and large, the bulk of financing
for EFA in most African countries and, particularly Nigeria comes from national
budgets although the level of aid dependence in education may rise up to 50 per
cent in certain countries. Surely, the flow of aid to education has increased
in recent years.
Despite this upward trend, the financial gap to meet the EFA goals by 2015 remains
considerable. Thus, resource mobilisation still needs to expand significantly to
meet the financing needs of EFA. It is, therefore, pertinent to urge donors to
scale up aid, increase their investments and support - in order to accelerate
progress towards EFA goals. This applies particularly to sub-Saharan Africa,
where currently, only one out of two children on average complete primary school.
There are also large numbers of children out of school in some countries in South
and West Asia. In addition, we know that the goal of eliminating gender disparity
in primary and secondary education by the end of 2005 will not be met in these
regions, and that sub-Saharan Africa requires a significant amount of external
assistance in order to achieve the EFA target by 2015.
We must move donor commitments on EFA from rhetoric to action. If we move in this
direction as a deliverable - from this High-Level Group meeting, then, the meeting
would have been worthwhile and a huge success.
I thank you for your attention.