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Our Future at Stake: Young Voices on Education Funding

With projected cuts that could halve education aid to some low-income countries, it is time to consider what we can do better and more efficiently to improve education outcomes despite limited budgets.
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The most dangerous thing in many African communities isn’t violence or disease—it’s the silence of empty classrooms. Right now, 272 million children and youth are out of school.

In Africa, the place where I was born, for every 100 children and youth, 28 are out of school- almost twice the rate as in the rest of the world; for every ten children on the continent, only two emerge at the end of primary school able to read and understand what they are reading.

Despite this bleak outlook, there are signs of improvement. Countries have committed to reducing the number of out-of-school children to 165 million by 2030.  Completion rates have been growing steadily at almost one percentage point per year throughout the past 20 years. Learning has improved faster in Africa than in the rest of the world, and even access to technology in education is on the rise. However, much of this progress depends heavily on external financial support. In the poorest countries, aid to education corresponds to 17% of their public education spending, rising to half in some cases.

Countries can, of course, step up, look at improving domestic resource mobilization, prioritizing education and reducing inefficiencies in spending, but the fact remains that sharp shocks in aid for the countries that rely on it the most will hurt. This week, the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report showed that aid to education fell sharply in 2024. This trend is expected to accelerate in line with several donors’ announcements of cuts at a scale unseen since the 1990s. Based on current donor portfolios and announced reductions, aid to education could fall by one-third in Madagascar and Mali and by one-half in Chad and Liberia.  These cuts will shrink some countries’ education budgets by half.

In my role as Chairperson of the Commonwealth Youth Council, I represent over 1.5 billion young people from 56 countries across the Commonwealth, and I also work with numerous young people through other networks. We are calling for external financing to be protected for supporting education in the poorest countries.

For every ten dollars that is spent on aid at present, only two go to the poorest countries. Currently, not much less than that (14% of aid) is being spent on scholarships for individuals to study in donor countries; aid which does not directly develop or strengthen the education systems of the countries from which those students come.

With less than five years remaining for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, ineffective education financing has left a $97 billion annual financing gap for low- and lower-middle-income countries to achieve their national SDG 4 targets by 2030. Looking just at low-income countries, half of the cost of reaching their targets is unfunded.

This gap didn’t happen by accident. The latest SDG 4 Scorecard indicates that countries are deviating from their education finance targets, which specify the share of their budgets that should be allocated to education, for example. And donors are not fulfilling their promises either. If donor countries had met their targets of allocating 0.7% of their gross national income (GNI) to official development assistance (ODA) and prioritized education, and in particular basic education, it would have mobilized an additional USD 29 billion per year for education, helping to bridge almost one third of this gap.

These cuts are within a context of growing geopolitical tensions and shifts in the global landscape, which are overshadowing the importance of education as a safe bet for our common future. Educated communities are thriving communities, which I can testify to from the members of the youth councils I represent. When we educate a child, we unlock their potential. When we invest in a young person’s future through their education, we build a stronger world for everyone; a more peaceful world for us to depend on.

As political leaders gather in Seville this month for the IV Conference on Financing for Development, let’s call not only for more robust and sustainable funding for education but also for stronger support to countries, especially the poorest ones, in achieving their education targets. With projected cuts that could halve education aid to some low-income countries, it is time to consider what we can do better and more efficiently to improve education outcomes despite limited budgets.

Young people, particularly those in Africa, will be the most severely affected by these cuts. We stand ready to support in advocating for stronger education systems to be protected. It is time to carefully shift more resources towards multilateral channels and through national budgets for ownership and alignment with countries’ plans. It is also time to shift resources towards system and institutional development programmes and to lower the cost of living, while simultaneously supporting global public goods in education.

It is time to act; our future is at stake.

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