Key Findings on the Role of NGOs in Basic Education in Africapdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNACS082.pdf ·...

Key Findings on the Role of NGOs in Basic Education in Africa

United States Agency for International Development,Bureau for Africa, Office of Sustainable Development

Résultats de l'étude sur le rôle des ONG en éducation de base en Afrique

USAID's Bureau for Africa funded a study to understand how government, donor, NGO, and civil society

representatives view the increasing role of NGOs in basic education in Africa. The study was carried out in

Ethiopia, Guinea, Malawi, and Mali by the Support for Analysis and Research in Africa (SARA) Project and

American Institutes for Research (AIR). Through literature reviews, field visits, and interviews, the study

examined NGO interactions with donors and with governments, as well as the role of NGOs in education policy

and in civil society. The research suggests factors in all these areas that should be considered to ensure that

NGOs contribute most effectively to education development on the continent. The full study by Yolande Miller-

Grandvaux, Michel Welmond and Joy Wolf, is available from the SARA Project, http://sara.aed.org.

CREATING EFFECTIVE PARTNERSHIP: INTERACTIONS BETWEEN GOVERNMENTS ANDNGOS IN BASIC EDUCATION IN AFRICA

INVOLVING CIVIL SOCIETY IN BASIC EDUCATION IMPROVEMENT IN AFRICA: THEROLE OF NGOS

DIALOGUE AND NEGOTIATION: NGO-DONOR RELATIONSHIPS IN BASICEDUCATION IN AFRICA

IMPROVING EDUCATION POLICY: THE GROWING ROLE OF NGOS IN EDUCATION INAFRICA

USAID/AFR/SD January 2003 SARA Project, AED

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Tension and mistrust often mark relations betweengovernments and NGOs, even though they recognizethat each has a role to improve basic education inAfrica and can provide services that the other cannot.Government and NGOs have different, oftenconflicting, perspectives of each other’s legitimaterights, role, capacity, and motivation, which oftenimpede the development of a productive partnership.

This study of government-NGO relations in Ethiopia,Guinea, Malawi, and Mali* analyzes these conflictingperspectives and makes it clear that they will notdisappear or be magically bridged. However,interviews with government officials and NGOrepresentatives indicate that recognizing thedifferences and dealing with them can lead toimproved partnership.

The Issue of Legitimacy: HowGovernments and NGOs ViewThemselves and Each Other

On the one hand, governments consider that it is theirlegitimate right and responsibility to control andregulate NGOs’ role in education. The amount ofspace allowed to NGOs is determined by politicalconsiderations and by the contribution of NGOs tosocial and economic development. Governmentsattempt to regulate NGO work and legitimacy in basiceducation through three primary means:

! They require NGOs to register with thegovernment. If an NGO becomes “legitimate”only through government approval, then thegovernment can restrict or even prohibit NGOsfrom functioning. In Ethiopia and Malawi, NGOsreport that the registration process is slow, difficult

and expensive and thus favors larger and more-established NGOs. In contrast, the process is morestreamlined in Mali, where the government mustcomplete the registration within three months oran NGO is automatically registered.

! They define NGOs’ areas of intervention. It couldbe by geographical area, with disadvantaged orremote sites likely to be where governmentsauthorize NGOs to operate. Or it could by thescope or type of intervention. Governments in allfour countries expressed preferences that NGOsconduct social mobilization efforts, train schoolcommittees, and provide supplies, rather thanprovide instruction themselves. They are willingto allow NGOs to grapple with such issues ascommunity governance of schools and girls’education, issues in which the overextended publicsector is sometimes stretched too thin to address.However, the quality of teaching and learningremains preserved on government grounds.

! Governments can set or enforce standards relatedto teacher qualifications, school construction,curriculum development, and other educationalservices that NGOs provide or have proposed toprovide. In setting up community schools, forexample, NGOs report that such standards limitwho they can hire as teachers and what kinds ofschool buildings the government will allow themto construct.

On the other hand, many NGOs claim a legitimateright to provide education because they perceive thatgovernments have failed to provide equitable accessto quality education:

! NGOs supply education to underserved areas andcommunities where government does not reach.

* The Bureau for Africa of the U.S. Agency for International Development funded a study to understand how government,donor, NGO, and civil society representatives view the increasing role of NGOs in basic education in Africa. The study wascarried out in Ethiopia, Guinea, Malawi, and Mali by the Support for Analysis and Research in Africa (SARA) Project. Throughliterature reviews, field visits, and interviews, the study examined NGO interactions with governments (the subject of this brief)and with donors, as well as the role of NGOs in education policy and in civil society (covered in other briefs in this series). Theresearch suggests factors in all these areas that should be considered to ensure that NGOs contribute most effectively toeducation development on the continent. The full study is available from the SARA Project, http://sara.aed.org.

CREATING EFFECTIVE PARTNERSHIP:INTERACTIONS BETWEEN GOVERNMENTS AND

NGOS IN BASIC EDUCATION IN AFRICA

USAID/AFR/SD SARA Project, AED

Study Findings on the Role of NGOs in Education in Africa

! NGOs supply communities and their leaders withresources in the form of leadership, governance, andmanagement skills for improving education, andsupply materials and equipment for schoolinfrastructure and maintenance. NGOs help toestablish school management committees and buildtheir capacity so that communities can gain controlof their own schools.

! NGOs support school teachers by providinglearning materials and pre-service and in-servicetraining.

These different stands on the role of NGOs andgovernment can result in frictions, specifically whenNGOs want to take on other activities that thegovernment does not allow them to do. For instance,government officials expressed their annoyance withNGOs that go beyond the geographic area or type ofactivity that the government had ceded to them. Officialsindicated that they, not NGOs, should determine whatconstitutes a legitimate educational role for NGOs.

Nonetheless, the objectives of governments and NGOscan be legitimate and complementary and lead toconstructive partnership. For example, governmentswant NGOs to work with underserved groups becausegovernments have difficulty doing so, and this is whereNGOs feel the imperative to serve. Governments wantNGOs to engage in community support activities; andmost NGOs choose a community focus anyway.

The examples in the boxes show that partnershipsbetween NGOs and government can be achieved witheach party preserving its own legitimate role.

Capacity: How Governments and NGOsView Each Other’s Strengths andWeaknesses

NGOs’ and governments’ views of each other’scapacities in education also affect their interactions.When NGOs look at government capacity, they say thatgovernments are inefficient in providing access to qualityeducation for all and have thus supported communityschools to bridge this gap. Governments counter thattheir lack of progress stems from insufficient resources.In contrast, when governments look at NGO capacityin education, they state that NGOs cannot meetaccepted educational standards and should not becomeinvolved in supplying education. NGOs respond bysaying that the extreme circumstances in which theyoften work do not lend themselves to more traditional,government-sanctioned approaches.

The capacity issue emerges when NGOs engage indelivering services such as training and coachingteachers and developing curriculum and learningmaterials, as they now have done in all four countries.Government officials, vested in each country’s standardsystem to prepare educators, view local NGOs asunqualified to teach, train others to teach, superviseteaching or develop curricula. Though governments arenot thrilled about any NGO delivering services, theysee international NGOs as having more relevantexperience. However, they express dismay when they

Honoring the Limits

In Malawi, the Centre for Creative CommunityMobilization (CRECCOM) has consciously chosen tooperate in ways that both preserve its legitimacyand will not elicit government opposition. This localNGO began its work with girls’ education. Althoughit has expanded to tackle other issues beyondeducation, it maintains a community focus inkeeping with government preferences. In addition,the NGO very consciously tries to allay governmentconcerns through such tactics as invitinggovernment participation in its events, keepingrelevant ministries informed, and ensuring that itswork complements and does not compete withgovernment activity.

Partnership Perceptions

While recognizing that governments, donors, andNGOs often use the term “partnership” to definetheir mutual dependence, working together canbenefit all. However, the different perceptions of theterm illustrate how groups can work side by sidewith different assumptions. NGOs in Guineadefined partnership as providing technical andother resources to the government to bolster itsparticipation in their programs. In Malawi andEthiopia, government officials thought thatpartnerships imply that the government can definewhat NGOs do for them; NGOs have been able tonegotiate and have allowed governments to takecredit for successes. In Mali, government officialssaid they, not the NGOs, should take the lead inestablishing the terms of a partnership, but forNGOs, partnership means that the government hasaccepted their prominent role in education.



think that the international NGOs are not sufficientlysupervising local programs, thus requiring thegovernment to spend its resources to do so. The examplebelow shows how one NGO, Save the Children, hasadapted to circumstances to overcome the conflictingperceptions over capacity.

Motivation: Government Suspicions,NGO Frustrations

In all four countries, government officials questionedthe motives of NGOs because of the financial

considerations at stake. Malawian officials said thatNGOs shift their areas of emphasis primarily in responseto funding opportunities. Guinean officials stated thatlocal NGOs were nothing more than private companiesin disguise, while officials in Ethiopia worried aboutNGOs’ hidden political agendas and lack of clarity asto whose and what interests NGOs claim to represent.Such suspicions lead government officials to monitorNGO activities through such means as requiring NGOsto prepare and submit reports on their programs andfinances, making unannounced visits or inspections, oreven taking over NGO activities.

Adapting Partnership Modes to Circumstances

Save the Children works in basic education in all four countries and has shaped its programs to adapt to differentgovernment standards and level of capacity. It began in Mali, using private funds to create schools in threecommunities that pioneered many new strategies: hiring local people (without formal teacher training) asteachers, developing curricula to focus on a few key areas of learning, and offering instruction in local languages.The program grew exponentially in Mali, and the NGO tried to apply the model in the other three countries. Ineach case, Save redefined its program in contexts shaped by government regulations as well as its ownexperience, the type of funding received, and the expertise of its local staff; then Save laid the foundation forconstructive partnership to improve education.

In Mali, the community schools were set up to provide access to education in remote areas where no schoolsexisted. In spite of initial government resistance, the program grew from three schools in 1991 to almost 800 by2002. The rapid expansion resulted from pressure on the government to support the schools, on-goingnegotiations with government officials, donor funding, favorable publicity, and finally government recognitionthat these schools could help stretch tight public education budgets. Government standards for communityschools were established as a result of the Save experience and community schools obtained an official legalstatus.

In Malawi, the issue from the start was quality. The model used in Mali to expand access conflicted withgovernment standards regarding curriculum, teacher training, and school construction. Thus, instead ofincreasing access and expanding the number of schools as it did in Mali, Save the Children in Malawi insteadfocused on quality, developed an experimental curriculum and conformed to government standards for teachertraining. Under the government scrutiny, the Save curriculum and teacher training practices are currently beingexamined and tested as a potential means of improving the quality of schooling nationally.

In Guinea, the government rejected the community school model that Save had used in Mali—specifically theuse of untrained teachers, an abridged curriculum, and low cost school construction. After a long period ofnegotiations, the government agreed that Save would adopt a model that provided support to parentsassociations to manage, supply and maintain the schools rather than trespass on government domain (teachertraining and curriculum). Save, however, succeeded in having the Ministry accept and honor some of itspreconditions, such as ensuring that trained teachers be supplied to the schools.

In Ethiopia, Save focuses on supporting innovative approaches to education in areas where the governmenthas not reached out. Rather than try to supply educational services as it has done in the other three countries,Save is strengthening 10 local NGOs to become major education actors in the future. Save offers support andguidance to these NGOs in such areas as capacity building, networking, and negotiating with the government.However the NGOs are classified as providing non-formal education. As a result of this compromise, few conflictsover government standards have arisen.



NGOs consider one of their most importantcontributions to education as their capacity to innovate,identify problems, and test solutions. In turn, theyexpressed frustration with governments’ incapacity todo so. Although governments may say that they wouldexperiment if they had the resources, the fact is thatpolitical and systemic realities are formidable obstaclesto innovation. Education ministries take a nationalapproach; when they pilot new strategies, they mustdisperse test sites to satisfy many constituencies. Incontrast, NGO programs examined in this study usuallybegan as specific experiments in small sites. Althoughgovernment officials both insist upon and complain thatNGOs operate in only a small part of the country, thisactually frees up an NGO to start small.

NGOs and government can find common ground whenboth consider adopting and scaling up an innovation.Going to scale takes a variety of forms, adapting themodel to other sets of circumstances, experimentingwith different strategies, identifying new problems tosolve, or fulfilling donor requests to replicate the modelelsewhere (not always desired, since each site is unique).To have a fighting chance, however, NGOs must devoteresources to evaluate and demonstrate their results inways that resonate with governments and with donors.For instance, when the government is engaged in theevaluation itself, rather than filtered through an NGO,mutual understanding can be achieved and informeducation decisions made collaboratively.

As governments and NGOs learn more about what eachis doing, the mistrust will not magically disappear, butit can be managed. In all four countries, relations werebest between NGOs and local officials with whom theycome in regular contact, rather than with the moredistant central government. The following boxillustrates a successful collaboration between NGOs andMinistry of Education in Ethiopia.

Consider This

Across the four countries, NGOs and governmentsreport a similar evolution in their interactions towardsbuilding partnership: from mutual suspicion toinvestigation and negotiations, to acceptance andsupport.

! Governments and NGOs need to recognize that theyhold different perspectives based on dissimilar setsof beliefs, but that they can build constructivepartnerships to improve access to and quality ofeducation.

Familiarity Breeds Respect

Of the four countries studied, Ethiopia exercises thetightest control over NGO activities. In fact, for manyyears, the only acceptable role for NGOs was intemporary emergency relief. Over time, NGOs inEthiopia have made progress in assuaginggovernment concerns, and the government hastaken steps to improve relations with NGOs.

For example, regional education staff often showedup unannounced to World Learning projects. But,over time, they were always welcomed, they likedwhat they saw, and the NGO also took care toinclude government staff in workshops and otherevents. Local NGOs in different regions reportsimilar experiences. The Rift Valley Children andWomen’s Association, for example, gained theconfidence of their local education bureau bykeeping them well-informed and involved. In somecases, international NGOs have arranged forgovernment staff to visit successful NGO programsand assisted local NGOs in improving theirmonitoring and reporting skills.

Gradually, the government has included NGOs inits planning. Some regional bureaus now take NGOactivities into account when they plan schoolconstruction; another bureau instituted a policy toease the transfer of students from NGO-run topublic schools. On the national level, the Ministryof Education researched alternative educationprograms and found them effective. Conductingthe research itself, rather than relying only on NGOdescriptions, led the Ministry to encourage moreNGO involvement in education.

Ethiopia’s is a story of small but steady steps, inwhich the government has made the effort toexamine NGO experiments and NGOs have workedto demonstrate the value of their activities. Throughcommunication and exposure, a suspicious stand-off evolved to a relationship of greatercollaboration and respect.

! NGOs and government need to develop acollaborative consultative process to outline theroles and responsibilities of NGOs in the educationsector. They can identify, learn from, and pursueeffective partnership mechanisms.

! NGOs and governments need to establish effectivelines of communication. To do so NGOs need to



increase government exposure to innovations andaccomplishments. Familiarity with programs andresults breeds trust, which shows to have a positiveeffect on the interactions between NGOs andgovernments.

! Governments need to incorporate the value-addedof innovations into their policies and practices andencourage the participation of NGOs in policyformulation and change. If governments are onlywilling to accept that NGOs work in areas wherethey cannot or do not want to commit resources,then the result is less effective than a collaborativeeffort that would affect the education system as awhole.


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ica Donors and governments support the role of NGOs

in developing civil society, although for differentreasons than those envisioned by the NGOsthemselves. While NGOs working in education hopethat that their work at the community and schoollevel will have a broad societal influence, donors, andespecially governments, have more limited andpragmatic objectives.

This study of NGOs in Ethiopia, Guinea, Malawi,and Mali* looks at why and how NGOs working ineducation strengthen civil society to improve theprovision and quality of education services. They doso through changing community attitudes andexpectations for more and better education, buildingthe institutional strength of local NGOs, andsupporting NGO networks to engage in advocacy foreducation. For each of these strategies, lessons aredrawn on how NGOs really affect civil society toimprove the delivery and quality of education services.

Why do NGOs Want to Strengthen CivilSociety?

The international NGOs, donors, and governmentswho provided information for this study, all supportthe development of civil society to improve basiceducation, at least at the local level, and thecontribution that NGOs can make to thisdevelopment. But to what end?

International NGOs working in education see thattheir role in strengthening civil society is achievedthrough empowerment, in which people’s abilities toachieve their human rights and exert demands on thestate are enhanced. Some see civil society developmentas the means to achieve the larger goal of establishing

and maintaining democracy; others see it as a meansto the end of improving education. In any event, theynote that building the capacity of citizens to formnetworks of responsibilities and increasing localinvolvement in education institutions will result instronger education systems.

Donors see that NGOs’ role in strengthening civilsociety can lead to democratization, since the natureof democratic systems calls for broad-basedparticipation. In fact, donors have increased theirfunding to NGOs in part because of their sustainablelinks to communities for program implementation,and because of the participatory development processchampioned by NGOs to build a democratic societycapable of providing access to quality education.

Governments see that NGOs’ role in strengtheningcivil society will help citizens take greaterresponsibility for improving their lives and createmodern institutions—media, unions, professionalassociations—which can reduce the burden of the statein providing services and promote economicdevelopment. They believe that NGO activities willincrease community contribution of resources toeducation, which can compensate for low educationsector investments. Governments also assume thatNGO efforts to strengthen civil society should remainat the local level, while international NGOs believethat linking and strengthening local NGOs will givethem a stronger national voice.

INVOLVING CIVIL SOCIETY IN BASIC EDUCATION

IMPROVEMENT IN AFRICA: THE ROLE OF NGOS

* The Bureau for Africa of the U.S. Agency for International Development funded a study to understand how government,donor, NGO, and civil society representatives view the increasing role of NGOs in basic education in Africa. The study wascarried out in Ethiopia, Guinea, Malawi, and Mali by the Support for Analysis and Research in Africa (SARA) Project. Throughliterature reviews, field visits, and interviews, the study examined NGO impacts on civil society (the subject of this brief) and ineducation policy, as well as the interaction that characterize NGO relations with governments and with donors (covered inother briefs in this series). The research suggests factors in all these areas that should be considered to ensure that NGOscontribute most effectively to education development on the continent. The full study is available from the SARA Project, http://sara.aed.org.



What NGOs Are Doing in Education toStrengthen Civil Society

Changing Attitudes

NGOs empower communities to advocate for bettereducational services and to accomplish such goals asincreased access to education, especially for girls, andimproved management of schools, using a variety ofparticipatory approaches. In so doing communitiesrecognize their abilities to identify and solve their ownproblems, to act as an organized social unit and to putin place the basic conditions to deliver better educationservices to their children. However, while NGOs useparticipatory methods to empower communities, theyalso tend to retain decision-making power and useparticipatory methods to achieve their own goals.Nonetheless, all partners agreed that one of the mostimportant successes of NGOs working in education hasbeen increased access to schooling and active localcommunity involvement in the quality of education.

The box illustrates how two NGOs in Ethiopia useddifferent strategies to involve communities in providingeducation. Both were successful, but had differentfocuses: one was on increasing access, the other onquality.

Creating Expectations

Changed attitudes may result in new or increasedexpectations for more or better education. In Mali,where World Education and Save the Children havemade the creation of viable civil society organizationsan objective of their education programs, communityexpectations have proven challenging to meet. WhenSave encouraged communities to take ownership of theircommunity schools, they did to such an extent that theyopposed Save’s plans to move their children out of theschools after four years so that others could attend.World Education’s efforts to build parents’ associationsled to new demands for classrooms, teachers andtextbooks. Successful community mobilization has ledto an increase in demand for better education, whichoutstrips community’s capacity to meet this demand.Community schools have transformed the way citizensrelate to education as their demands coalesce intopressure on the State for better education services.Fundamentally, the vehicle of community schools hashelped create a civil society lobby for education.

Building Organization

Just as education becomes a subject around whichcommunities can organize, the organization that theycreate to accomplish educational tasks can provide asustainable structure through which they make demandsknown to authorities. Through their work with schoolcommittees and parents’ associations, NGOs can givecommunities the skills to run effective organizations.Nevertheless, training school committees or parents’organizations does not necessarily make themcommunity representatives; NGOs express concernsthat the organizations only represent the elite, or are

Building Schools or Building a SchoolCommunity?

Whether an NGO seeks to build communityorganizations as a means to achieve specificeducational outcomes or more long-term capacityof communities to support schools affects how itdesigns and implements its projects. In Ethiopia, alook at two different regions and two differentNGOs illustrates this distinction. In the TigrayRegion, the Tigray Development Association (TDA)worked with school management committees tooffer community financial and labor support togovernment schools. In the Southern Nations,Nationalities and Peoples Region, World Learninglooked upon its work with school managementcommittees as building community participationin decision making and management.

These distinctions in strategies manifestedthemselves in how the two NGOs developedcriteria to award grants to schools. TDA used athree-level grant system, with increased enrollmentrates, reduced dropout rates, and reducedrepetition rates to determine which schools wouldreceive the largest grants. Community participationmeant contribution of money and labor. In contrast,World Learning used grants to motivateorganizations to prepare strategic plans, establishcodes of ethics, and other more qualitativeaccomplishments. Community participation meantinvolvement in school management and decisionmaking.

Ultimately NGOs and communities together needto define their long term goals and thus theirstrategies, for supporting local education services.



gender-biased, or that they are too inclusive ofgovernment staff. Gradually however, local NGOs arelearning to facilitate the establishment of moredemocratic decision making structures withoutupsetting traditional village leadership. As a result, inMali, World Education supported a process of re-election of community representatives, which resolvedthe issue of equitable representation.

Creating Networks

In all four countries, international NGOs have tried tohelp local NGOs build linkages and form networks,although these networks have generally not had thesubstantive impact that perhaps was envisioned at theircreation.

! In Ethiopia, Save the Children and Pact took thelead in creating the Basic Education Network(BEN), a network of NGOs working in education.However, BEN is not registered with thegovernment, which curtails its impact.

! In Mali, the Groupe Pivot is a consortium of NGOsthat was active first in information exchange andthen in policy work. However, its effectivenessdeclined when members strayed from their corepurpose.

! In Malawi, the Civil Society Coalition for QualityBasic Education takes a confrontational stancetoward the government; the NGO-GovernmentAlliance for Basic Education began when someCoalition members wanted a more conciliatorystance and closer relationship with the government.In part as a result of the Coalition’s tactics, thegovernment instituted a third network, the Councilfor Non-Government Organizations, which itcontrols and requires NGOs to join.

This array of different experiences with NGO networksand alliances run from government-created umbrellaorganizations to NGO networks that may or may notinclude government, and they range from confrontationto collaboration. In all cases they aim at making thevoice of civil society heard in the public arena to reachthe same goal of improving education.

Can Community Strengthening “TrickleUp”?

While numerous examples of accomplishment are foundin individual communities, NGOs have not been as

successful in the next step—assisting communities andlocal NGOs to strengthen their links upward or outwardto other organizations so that, together, they can beinfluential at a regional or national level. NGOsgenerally work in communities as if they were isolatedentities to be made self-sufficient, rather than as part ofa network of social organizations. The assumption thatbuilding local capacity will inevitably lead to a strongernational voice for the people does not reflect what hasoccurred to date in the four countries studied.

Nonetheless, changes in participation, expectations, andorganization can generate demands that forcecommunities to construct their own links to the largersociety. In Ethiopia, World Learning has encouragedcommunities to seek funding from other organizationsand Action Aid has organized an education committeeof NGOs to interact with district officials. The benefitsof community strengthening trickle up whenconnections are made to help build civil society fromthe bottom up.

Strengthening Civil Society throughLocal NGOs

The study brought to light the common assumption heldby donors and international NGOs that stronger localNGOs strengthen civil society; that supporting localNGOs’ involvement in education will increase therelevance and sustainability of sector programs. If thiscivil society goal is a priority, then how large NGOsand donors choose to engage local NGOs becomes anissue. International NGOs and donors can either sub-contract with local NGOs to implement smallcomponents of larger projects or can support them asthey develop or continue their own programs andservices. Many of the NGO representatives interviewedin this study felt that funding a local NGO’s ownendeavors more likely increases its capacity and long-term sustainability than hiring an NGO to complete apre-determined task. Staff of CRECCOM, a MalawianNGO that began as part of a USAID project beforebecoming independent, drew attention to theadvantages of setting its own priorities rather than onlyimplementing those of USAID. In Ethiopia, local NGOsare receiving support to carry out their own educationprojects, rather than serving as sub-contractors.

In each country, local NGO support for civil society inthe education sector has taken a different path:



In Mali, except for the Groupe Pivot network, effortshave been focused at the community level. Local NGOshave primarily been tapped as sub-contractors toimplement projects, with little deliberate effort tostrengthen them to be more active players in civil society.The sheer force and numbers of community schools haschanged community expectations, however, which hasturned them into powerful advocates for demandingservices from the government.

In Guinea, too, local NGOs focus on communitystrengthening. However, the government’s decision onhow to implement a large World Bank-financed schoolconstruction project may have long-term implicationsfor the role of NGOs in the country and, more broadly,for civil society. The decision was made to channel thework through national NGOs; as a result, local NGOshave proliferated and successfully carried out theprojects assigned to them. Their numbers and thereputation they are gaining could turn them into a forcefor civil society, bridging the gap between communitiesand government.

In Ethiopia, regional decentralization and governmentcontrols on NGOs encourage small, contained localprograms, rather than pilot projects that can then bescaled up. International NGOs, often operating withprivate, non-donor funding, such as the Banyan TreeFoundation, are working to strengthen local NGOs bothto build civil society and improve education. Save theChildren builds the capacity of local education NGOsto learn about basic education content as well asorganizational skills.

In Malawi, the government has controlled how NGOswork in the education sector and is particularly opposedto the community school models that operate elsewherein Africa. Despite or because of this control, it isnoteworthy that Malawi is the only country studied inwhich some degree of adversarial advocacy by NGOshas emerged.

Finding the resources necessary to build the capacity oflocal NGOs in education has been difficult. In USAIDprograms, these components are financed withdemocracy and governance funds rather than educationfunds.

What emerges as consistent across the four countries isthat local organizations cannot serve only as structuresfor civil society. They must have real reasons to existand tasks to accomplish. For instance, capacity buildingfor local parents associations is successful when theyhave a grant to manage or an agreed upon set of

responsibilities to carry out. Local NGOs become strongwhen they define their own programs rather thanoperate as contractors. NGO networks have gottenstrong when they have advocated for specific policychanges.

Consider This

! Local and international NGOs, as well as donorsand governments need to create a space for sharinginformation, resolving issues, and finding solutionsrelated to shared and respective roles in improvingeducation through civil society strengthening.

! Communication lines need to be identified to ensureon-going dialogue between international NGOs andlocal NGOs, as well as other representative civilgroups on specific roles related to education issues.

! International NGOs need to assist local NGOs todefine their own programs and priorities, not justcarry out the work defined by others as sub-contractors. Similarly, NGO networks need to havespecific missions or causes around which toadvocate to be effective and sustainable.

! NGOs need to be clear as to what and whoseinterests they are representing. They need to assistcommunities to create links and alliances upwardand outward with other civil society organizationsand with governments.

! Donors need to recognize the need to build localNGOs’ capacity and to fund this developmentcomponent as a means to anchor local managementand community ownership of education services,and thus ensure the sustainability of their programs.


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ica Donors are increasing their funding to NGOs to

design and implement basic education programs inAfrica. The advantage to donors is that NGOs oftenoperate in ways that neither they nor hostgovernments can, especially at the community level.For NGOs, the advantage is new or additional fundingto sustain or scale up their programs. However, thedonor-NGO relationship also implies trade-offs andnegotiations, based on the different expectations andparameters under which each operates.

This study of NGO involvement in education inEthiopia, Guinea, Malawi, and Mali* examines whydonors say they increasingly turn to NGOs, howdonors and NGOs interact and negotiate with eachother, and the consequences of these interactions forboth groups. Through dialogue and negotiation,donors and NGOs can find effective strategies tointegrate NGOs’ knowledge of the grassroots anddonor-supported education agenda.

Defining the Agenda in Donor-NGORelationships

Historically, NGOs developed education initiativeswith their own resources and then approached donorsfor resources to maintain or expand them, as occurred,for example, with Save the Children and WorldEducation in Mali, and with Aide et Action in Guinea.When donors recognized the value added of NGOs’innovations in education, they approached the NGOsto expand or develop similar programs. In recentyears, relations between donors and NGOs havebecome more formal and donors have taken morecontrol. In the four countries studied, donors arefound to be more likely to define the educationagenda, have NGOs compete for resources, and usethem as contractors.

NGO programs have been shaped by the type offunding mechanisms set by donors. NGOs are fundedthrough three main mechanisms: (1) a donor issues aRequest for Proposals in which NGOs compete toimplement the donor-specified project; (2) a donorand NGO negotiate a one-on-one contract oragreement because of the NGO’s particular expertise;or (3) a donor finances local NGOs via contracts withinternational or well-established national NGOs.

Because NGOs are more often used by donors ascontractors, most government and other stakeholdersare suspicious of NGO motivations: they may be seento carry out donor agendas that may not be in linewith the government agenda, as is shown by thefollowing example.

Using NGOs to Implement DonorPrograms: The Need for Results

Donors continue to support systemic educationreform in the public sector by funding curriculumdevelopment, teacher training programs, textbookproduction, and other institutional capacity needs.

DIALOGUE AND NEGOTIATION: NGO-DONOR

RELATIONSHIPS IN BASIC EDUCATION IN AFRICA

Who Are They?

Sometimes NGOs’ motivations for undertaking adonor-financed project are viewed suspiciously.In Guinea, for example, government intervieweessaid they thought that the leaders of some localNGOs were involved in these projects for theirown enrichment or political gain. Severalgovernment officials made a distinction betweenNGOs who rely on donor resources and thosewho seek funding elsewhere—and said that theformer were “nothing more than contractors.”

* The Bureau for Africa of the U.S. Agency for International Development funded a study to understand how government,donor, NGO, and civil society representatives view the increasing role of NGOs in basic education in Africa. The study wascarried out in Ethiopia, Guinea, Malawi, and Mali by the Support for Analysis and Research in Africa (SARA) Project. Throughliterature reviews, field visits, and interviews, the study examined NGO interactions with donors (the subject of this brief) andwith governments, as well as the role of NGOs in education policy and in civil society (covered in other briefs in this series). Theresearch suggests factors in all these areas that should be considered to ensure that NGOs contribute most effectively toeducation development on the continent. The full study is available from the SARA Project, http://sara.aed.org.



Yet, in interviews conducted for this study, donors saidthey turn to NGOs to implement education programsfor the following reasons, all of which enhance donors’agendas:

! NGOs achieve more measurable and cost effectiveresults than governments do. Donors feel thatNGOs’ costs tend to be lower than a government’s,and that NGOs can meet deadlines better. In Guinea,for example, local NGOs built twice the number ofschools as the government did with the same budgetand met almost all construction deadlines.

! NGOs can more easily work at a local level tomobilize communities to support schools than cangovernments. Most governments no longer workdirectly with communities in the education sector.Mali’s community schools and Ethiopia’scommunity-focused programs are two examples inwhich NGOs have mobilized support for educationwhere previously no or few educationalopportunities existed.

! NGOs are easier to negotiate with than governmentsand easier to draw up contracts and agreements withthan the private, for-profit sector. NGOs do not haveto contend with the bureaucracy, politics, and otherrealities of the public sector. And both localgovernment’s and the donor’s own laws andregulations often favor dealing with a nonprofitorganization over a for-profit company orconsortium of companies. This preference has givenrise to suspicion of NGO motivations on the partof some government officials, as seen in Guinea.

! NGOs are often already working in other sectorswithin the country or in education programs inother countries in the region. Thus, the donorbenefits from an NGO’s already-establishedpresence and relationships. Save the Children, forexample, works in all four countries included inthis study.

! NGOs have pioneered innovations in education,which donors now regularly incorporate intoprogram design, such as community schools andmore participatory teaching and learningmethodologies.

! NGOs are more closely allied to civil society (forexample, in their work with parents’ associations)than are government or the for-profit sector. Theythus represent an opportunity for synergy as donors

attempt to address simultaneously democracy andgovernance and educational objectives.

Using Donor Funds to Implement NGOPrograms

Donor funding usually comes with restrictions,expectations, or other strings attached (as, from a donorpoint of view, it should). The most important constraintsconcern financial and management requirements. NGOsmust meet donor demands for accountability, oftendefined through donor-required financial andprogrammatic reports. While accountability isimportant, NGO representatives say they expendsignificant resources on reporting, with some estimatingthat they spend from 10 to 25 percent of their time onUSAID reporting requirements alone. Practicallyspeaking, this limits which NGOs can accept funding—smaller or newer ones do not have the capacity orresources to comply with USAID and many otherdonors’ requirements.

Aside from the time and resources involved,programmatic reporting has an impact on a project’sdevelopment or evolution. If a donor is looking for aparticular result for which it will be held accountable(e.g., the number of female school drop-outs), the needto show progress toward achieving this result serves toorient the objectives and resources of the NGO’sprograms. In many instances, donor demands absorbmore resources than those allocated for the specificproject. The box illustrates the impact that donors’administrative requirements have on NGOs programsand how they were addressed.

Unintended Consequences of DonorFunding

In general, donors have already anticipated their resultsbefore the NGO is even selected, much less begins work.While this clarity helps ensure that donors are moreaccountable to their own constituents, it means thatNGOs have less leeway to experiment than in moreflexible funding arrangements.

Donors’ reliance on intermediaries (usually internationalor large national NGOs) to work with small, localNGOs also has pluses and minuses. Donors want tofund on-the-ground organizations, but do not have theadministrative capacity to supervise many local NGOs(nor do these small NGOs have the administrative



capacity to satisfy donor reporting requirements). Thus,economies of scale ease the donors’ management burdenand allow these NGOs to get funding they might notget otherwise. However, it also sets up a structure inwhich an intermediary filters relations between donorsand implementing NGOs.

Working through NGOs raises the question of who willcontinue as donor-financed, NGO-implemented projectsend. Unlike an NGO, a government is essentially apermanent institution. Yet, if the government has notbeen involved in a donor-financed project, it is likelynot invested in the project’s continuation, nor is thecommunity alone likely to shoulder the burden.

As a point of comparison, it is useful to look at NGOs,such as Save the Children, CARE, Plan International,and Action Aid, that get limited donor financing fortheir education activities. NGO programs that are notdonor-financed tend to differ from donor-financed NGOprograms in two ways:

! Because they are not held to an explicit contractwith defined deliverables, independently financedNGOs tend to have more fluid and flexibleprograms, and their field offices have moreautonomy. Although they do have monitoring andevaluation systems and links with their

headquarters, Action Aid and CARE, as just twoexamples, report wide differences and autonomyamong their country programs. As a result, theseNGOs tend to develop more process-orientedprojects that aim to develop relationships or buildinstitutional capacity rather than achieve specificeducational results.

! Because they are not operating under a fixed projecttime frame, independently financed NGOs tend todesign projects without an explicit exit strategy orend point. As they meet one objective, they maywell develop others. These NGOs often seek a long-term presence in a community or region, rather thanthe fixed time limit of a contract. It allows for betterand sustainable collaboration with governments andstakeholders.

Negotiating the Differences

NGOs and donors have tried to find common groundsthrough an on-going process of dialogue, negotiationsand adjustments to each other’s needs. Typically,negotiations revolve around four issues: scope, cost,agenda, and exit strategy.

! Scope: NGOs usually estimate conservatively whatthey can accomplish in terms of the number of sitesserved, locations, or the extent of the intervention.They do not want to stretch themselves too thin. Incontrast, donors want their resources to have thelargest impact possible and may be over-optimisticabout how much can be accomplished. In Mali, forexample, international NGO representatives saidthat donors pressured them to scale up theircommunity programs more than they felt they couldhandle well. However, NGOs did adjust theirprogram to make them go to scale and significantlyincrease access to education resulting in anadditional 160,000 children enrolled in primaryschools.

! Costs: Donors fund the activities and results thatmeet their program objectives, while NGOs arelooking for support of their broader developmentvision. Although donors may share this vision, it’snot one they necessarily want to or can finance withspecific project funds. In addition, NGOs seekfunding to cover overhead and other costs, not justspecific project expenses. International NGOs’ rolein strengthening local NGOs and building theircapacity is often thwarted by donors’ fundingrestrictions: education programs funds usually do

Reporting Realities

USAID reporting requirements tend to favorinternational NGOs over local and most nationalNGOs. The international NGOs have developedsystems to comply with the requirements, whichthey can transfer to their various field offices. Theirexpatriate staff are often already familiar with therequirements and been trained in how to respondto them. In contrast, even well-established nationalNGOs may have difficulty dealing with them. InMalawi, CRECCOM reported that in the early stagesof its relationship with USAID, they received moneyon a monthly basis and could not get the nextmonth’s funding until they had accounted for themoney spent. Because money could not be carriedover from one month to another, CRECCOM fellbehind in its implementation schedule, which ledto more implementation problems and difficultyin reporting. Over time, USAID gathered evidenceabout CRECCOM’s financial management and madethe process easier.



not include a civil society capacity buildingcomponent. Local NGOs, more so thaninternational NGOs, report difficulty in gettingdonor funding in this regard. Representatives ofnational NGOs in Guinea and Mali indicated thatdonor refusal to underwrite development oroverhead costs limited their potential for survival.The issue is still unresolved.

! Agenda: Donors and NGOs may have differingtechnical agendas, even when they share the sameobjectives. For instance World Education in Maliconsistently defined its program as aiming toreinforce civil society while its donor financed thisprogram to improve learning in schools and increaseaccess to education. This led to seriousdisagreements regarding the priorities and contentof the program. The issue was solved with the NGOfinding funds from another source and the donor,USAID in this case, capitalizing on synergiesbetween its democracy and governance andeducation programs. This resulted in a successfulintegrated approach to education.

! Exit Strategy: Donors have a clear end point whenthey budget for and finance a project. NGOs usuallyoperate with an open-ended, long-term presence ina community or region. However, while mostagencies cannot commit funds for a period longerthan five years, both partners in the field have oftenbeen able to dialogue and donors have creativelyused different funding mechanisms to sustain NGO-supported education programs between contracts.

Donor support of NGO programs has made a significantcontribution to basic education in Africa. And, thereality is that most NGOs need donor resources to carryout their educational activities in Africa. An NGO mustbe willing to accept the strings—albeit negotiating withthe donor on terms that will optimally satisfy the needsof both. Local and national NGOs must be willing tolearn the lessons that international NGOs learned sometime ago—to be taken seriously by donors, it is necessaryto be very professional and comply with demands foraccountability.

Consider This

! Donors and NGOs have an unequal relationshipbased on resources. However, most NGOs needdonor resources, and most donors want to supportthe benefits that NGOs can bring to their projects.If an NGO wants to pursue donor resources, it must

be willing to accept the accountability, needs andother demands that donors have tied to theirfunding. If a donor wants to work with an NGO,the pressure for results should not overshadow theexperimentation and potential innovations thatNGOs have brought to the education sector.

! Although they share such broad goals as improvededucational access and quality, donors and NGOsneed to acknowledge their differences in strategyand intermediate objectives and consider them whenthe two groups decide to work toward a commongoal.

! Donors and NGOs need to weigh the cost ofcontractual restrictions against performance of theeducation program.

! Donors should consider supporting capacitybuilding of local NGOs through internationalNGOs.

! When confusion over NGO roles and identity arises,donors can help to identify and use mechanisms toimprove the quality of partnership betweengovernment and NGOs.

! Donors need to work more closely with NGOsbefore determining their own education agenda totake into account the local knowledge of thegrassroots that will inevitably lay the foundationsfor the success of the program.


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programs in Africa often require changes in educationpolicy. This realization has propelled them to try tochange policies that hamper their work or seek newpolicies that would enhance it. In so doing, manyNGOs have gone a step further, from trying to changespecific policies to focusing on the policy process itself.

This study of the role of NGOs in basic education inEthiopia, Guinea, Malawi, and Mali* highlights howinternational and some national NGOs have engagedin concerted and explicit efforts to change educationpolicy. This brief looks at why and how they attemptthis; how governments, donors, and otherstakeholders view their attempts; what hascontributed to their successes and failures; and whatlessons have been learned.

Why do NGOs Want to InfluenceEducation Policy?

NGOs cite two main motivations for their policywork:

Out of necessity: NGOs find that they need specificactions and policies from the government to ensurethe success of their programs. In no case did NGOsstart their programs with the objective of changingeducation policy. In Mali, for example, NGOs didnot plan to get involved in education policy whenthey launched the community school concept. But thegovernment’s refusal to allow community-schoolstudents to transfer into formal primary or secondaryschools threatened the long-term viability of theseNGO-operated schools. After a concerted effort,NGOs were successful in changing policy when thePresident issued a decree that allowed these studentsto take government exams and sanctioned

government officials to supervise quality and provideresources to the community schools.

To promote public participation in educationdecision-making: NGOs are interested in changingthe policy process to ensure that the public is treatedas clients of education services. Policies need to be setwith the involvement of communities andimplemented and assessed with public oversight. Atthe school level, World Education strengthens parents’associations or school committees in Guinea and Maliso that, as democratic grassroots organizations, theycan advocate for more accountability from localauthorities. At the national level, NGOs supportfederations of civil groups so that they can interactdirectly with central authorities on policy.

Although NGOs can point to numerous successes ininfluencing policies and even creating mechanisms toincrease their impact on policy, finding the formulato change the education policy process that can leadto policy change has proven to be difficult.Nonetheless, different approaches have been tried, asshown in the above box, which have led to changingthe policy process.

* The Bureau for Africa of the U.S. Agency for International Development funded a study to understand how government,donor, NGO, and civil society representatives view the increasing role of NGOs in basic education in Africa. The study wascarried out in Ethiopia, Guinea, Malawi, and Mali by the Support for Analysis and Research in Africa (SARA) Project. Throughliterature reviews, field visits, and interviews, the study examined NGO impacts in education policy (the subject of this brief)and on civil society, as well as the interaction that characterize NGO relations with governments and with donors (covered inother briefs in this series). The research suggests factors in all these areas that should be considered to ensure that NGOscontribute most effectively to education development on the continent. The full study is available from the SARA Project, http://sara.aed.org.

IMPROVING EDUCATION POLICY: THE GROWING

ROLE OF NGOS IN EDUCATION IN AFRICA

Defining Policy for This Study

Policy is defined as a set of mandatory directivesthat regulate decisions. This study looked atpolicy in a particular context: the attempts byNGOs to influence education policy above theschool and community level. It looked at policycontent and how it is enforced by governmentofficials, although not how it is interpreted withinschools and communities.



Should NGOs be Education PolicyAdvocates?

Government officials, donors, and other educationstakeholders expressed different perspectives about theincreasing role of NGOs in the policy process. Theseperspectives create both constraints and opportunitiesfor NGOs as they engage in policy change.

Governments

Most government officials interviewed for this studyconsidered policy areas to be off limits for NGOs. InEthiopia, Guinea, and Malawi, government officialsdescribed NGOs as implementers of government policy,not formulators of it. They appreciate the role thatNGOs can play in social mobilization at the communitylevel, but not that NGOs might mobilize communitiesto demand accountability from the government abovethe school level. In Mali however, with ten years of NGOactivity in the education sector, government officialshave accepted that NGOs can and should play a role inpolicy formation.

Most government officials were not aware of NGOefforts to change the policy process, only specificpolicies. They see NGOs’ social mobilization asstrengthening schools and improving educationindeed—but do not connect these efforts with havingan impact on policy above the school level. Furthermore,most government officials do not distinguish between

the policy agenda of donors and that of donor-financedNGOs. Whether it is actually the case or not, NGOsare seen as an extension of donor programs whoadvance donor-preferred policy agendas.

That said, the study shows that government and NGOsare learning to work side by side. In fact, whengovernments claim that NGOs have no role in policy,they de facto are involved. Time plays a role: as NGOsbecome more integrated in the education sector of agiven country, it becomes more difficult to exclude them.In addition, familiarity breeds trust: as NGOs andgovernment officials work together on various issues,they get to know one another and increase theircommunications about policies and other issuesaffecting education. The size of the NGO and itsprograms also plays a role: where NGOs are strong andprovide an essential service and when the governmentis weak, NGOs find that their leverage to influencepolicies increases.

Perceptions are evolving and partnerships are nowforming. Governments in the four countries covered bythis study have all invited NGOs to participate in policydeliberations at some level. In Ethiopia, for example,which exercises the tightest control on NGOs, theMinistry of Education has allowed NGOs to join indiscussions to consider policy changes related to non-formal schooling. Such events provide the space forNGOs to advocate for policy change in collaborationwith government officials.

Donors

In general, donors and NGOs share the sameeducational goals. In fact, when they are aligned tochange a particular policy, they form a powerful alliance.In Guinea, USAID and Save the Children successfullyworked toward changes in teacher deployment thatwould affect NGO-operated rural schools. However,donor representatives interviewed for this study hadlittle tolerance when an NGO pursues a separate policyagenda with their funding. When the issue arises, donorscan easily leverage a re-alignment.

Donors have focused on specific education policyagendas rather than on the NGOs’ efforts to changethe policy process. However, the source of funding caninfluence the nature of the policy work conducted byNGOs. For example, USAID education sectorobligations have only allowed NGOs to work on specificeducation policy agendas that may result in directeducational outcomes. But funding from USAID’sdemocracy and governance program have enabled

Entering from Different Angles

Many approaches to NGOs’ policy work exist, asseen in the four countries. One decision that NGOstake is at what level of the system they think theirinvolvement will make a difference. In Mali andGuinea, World Education has focused onstrengthening parents’ associations throughtraining and helping to create federations of localassociations. In Malawi, Action Aid, Oxfam, and CAREhave taken a national-level approach, participatingin the Civil Society Coalition for Quality BasicEducation, which is composed of national andinternational NGOs and other civil society groups.Rather than focus on local organizations spreadingtheir influence “up” to the central level, theMalawian example shows a centrally organizedcoalition looking to influence national policy andhow it is implemented on the ground.



World Education in Mali and Pact in Ethiopia, forexample, to engage non-governmental actors in thepolicy process, thus supporting broader, process-oriented policy objectives. The improved policy processhas led to increased local participation in educationdecision making, resulting in better management andperformance of schools.

Local Stakeholders

Although community representatives and local officialsunderstand the role that NGOs play in local decisions,they viewed national-level policy as distant and werenot aware of what NGOs did on a national level.Interestingly, NGOs are seeking changes ostensibly onbehalf of these local stakeholders, but these stakeholdersare not engaged in or even aware of their efforts at thenational level.

This illustrates a weak link in the paradigm that drivesNGO interest in changing both policies and the policyprocess. To what extent do the participatory processesthat NGOs advocate truly engage the public in policydeliberations? Do the different mechanisms put in placereally communicate the preferences of communitymembers and civil society to decision makers—or arethese positions really those of the NGOs that aresponsoring efforts to create the mechanisms? Ultimately,changing policy entails changing the policy process sothat the public understands, participates, and caninfluence education policy. Although NGOs havecreated links will all actors, including grassrootsstakeholders, they have so far failed to developmechanisms that link these actors altogether in aneffective manner. The importance of trying to influencethe policy process is a priority.

Teachers Unions and Other Civil SocietyGroups

Teachers unions, in particular, as well as religiousgroups, political parties, and other organizations arenot usually part of NGOs’ policy change efforts, butthey have views that make them potentially strongopponents or allies.

In Guinea and Mali, teachers’ union representatives viewNGOs as attempting to undo the public educationsystem. They said that NGOs have no legitimacy towork in education and, by extension, in educationpolicy. Although NGO and union representatives attendsome of the same meetings, they have no relations,which leads to misperceptions and distrust. Teachers’union opposition has not affected NGO work in Mali

and Guinea—yet. However, this opposition looms as apotential constraint. In Malawi, on the other hand,NGOs invited the teachers union to enter their coalition,in part because they all share a goal of seeking betterconditions and pay for teachers. Over time, thisrelationship will be interesting to observe in terms ofits affect on policy change.

How NGOs Attempt to Influence Policy

NGOs have used the following policy strategies toinfluence education policy:

Policy dialogue: By engaging in ongoing discussions withpolicy makers to reach a consensus, ideally informedby objective data and analysis, NGOs try to create anatmosphere of partnership to solve a problem or cometo consensus. For example, in Guinea, Aide et Actionhas chosen to engage in policy dialogue by participatingin meetings with donors and with national educationauthorities.

Coalition building: NGOs seek to create coalitions basedon the premise that there is strength in numbers. In Mali,for example, the creation of the Groupe Pivot, aconsortium of NGOs, proved extremely important topush forward the community school policy agenda.However, limitations to the effectiveness of coalitionsmay emerge. After the Groupe Pivot obtained thechanges it sought, it took on a new role as aclearinghouse for donors. But its leadership dispersedafter its original mission was met, and the coalitionwaned in effectiveness. In Malawi, NGOs and othercivil society organizations came together in the CivilSociety Coalition for Quality Basic Education, buteventually disagreed about how adversarial the coalitionshould be in its relations with the government. Thiseventually caused the coalition to split into two.

Using donors to leverage policy: As noted above, NGO-donor convergence on an issue is powerful, in partbecause the donors have resources to support theirpolicy objectives. In Ethiopia, for example, when anNGO received donor funding for education, the regionin which it operated would receive a correspondinglysmaller amount from the government. Regional officials,to guard their allocations, impeded NGOs from gettingfunding. When a World Learning project was held upfor a year, USAID convened a meeting with educationofficials and offered an incentive fund to offset theresources that a regional education bureau would lose.Thus the donor and the NGO joined forces to change apolicy.



Leveraging change through resources: NGO-supportedsponsorship and rural development programs bringadditional human and financial resources to educationthat would not be there otherwise. In Mali and Guinea,where NGOs receive a large percentage of the externalfunds going into education, the size of the NGOprograms results in a powerful voice and policy leverage.In Mali, for example, community schools enrollapproximately 25 percent of all children. In Guinea,Plan International supports schools in every district ofthe N’zérékouré region and provides support to almostevery local government in the region.

Providing an example: Evidence of the effectiveness ofNGO programs has influenced policy, usually inconjunction with one of these other strategies. InEthiopia, for example, Pact organized visits to showeducation officials successful NGO non-formaleducation programs, both in the country and elsewhere.In Malawi, Save the Children and the Malawi Instituteof Education conducted research on instruction in locallanguages to inform the policy debate on this issue.However, these demonstrations can backfire if notpresented diplomatically, as a government can getdefensive if NGO success is contrasted too starkly withgovernment failure.

Partnership: NGOs have actively sought partnershipsin which they and the government pursuecomplementary activities to achieve a common goal. InGuinea, Plan International makes grants to localgovernments to support decentralization and meet localeducation and health needs. Partnerships elsewhere haveaddressed other policy concerns. Yet, because NGOsfinance these partnerships, the term has invariablymeant the transfer of resources from NGOs togovernment.

Public opinion campaigns: Public pressure ongovernment officials, through the media, organizedrallies, and other tactics, are not common in the fourcountries studied, mainly because it has not been shownto change policy. The exception is Malawi, where oneof the first actions of the coalition of NGOs and othergroups was to criticize the government in the press.

Although they have found no tried-and-true recipe,NGOs have learned that they have a better chance ofsuccess if their policy goals are well defined and theydevote sufficient resources to affect education policy.They recognize the power of having multiplestakeholders behind them—but also the balancing actsometimes required in maintaining relations with toobroad or diverse a group. Finally, each situation being

unique, they have learned to analyze each situationbefore determining a course of action. The study showsthat there are some lessons learned from past and currentstrategies to influence education policy.

Consider This

! NGOs need to develop a recognized policycompetency. NGOs need to acquire an improvedcapacity to understand the process of policyformation and implementation. With such a solidunderstanding they will be able to play an effectiverole in education policy in support of nationaleducation goals.

! NGOs need to have well defined policy goals thatare shared and understood by all actors to achievepolicy change in support of successful educationinnovations.

! NGOs and government need to work together todefine their role in education policy. They need toidentify partnership mechanisms so that policyprocess becomes a common strategy to achievesuccessful policy formation and implementation.One strategy could be to incorporate NGOeducation data into the national educationmanagement systems to increase information fedinto policy formation.

! NGOs can be an effective conduit for local voicesto be heard and have an influence on the policyprocess. Public participation and advocacy foreducation need to be strengthened by all partners,international NGOs, government, donors andprivate sector, at the regional and national levels,to ensure all the voices are considered in the policyformation process.

! NGOs need to nurture and maintain relationshipswith different stakeholders. Although confrontationmay have its place, most successful endeavorsreviewed have depended on developing mechanismsto link stakeholders with policy actors. Neglectedstakeholders such as teachers unions can underminepolicies that have resulted from a process in whichthey have not been involved.

! Funding partners need to allocate resources toinfluence the policy process. Successful educationpolicy cannot be accomplished inexpensively.Strategies that can affect policy have significantcosts.

This document was produced by the Support for Analysis and Research in Africa (SARA) Project, operated by the Academy for Educational Development. SARA is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through the Bureau for Africa, Office of Sustainable Development (AFR/SD/HRD), under contract AOT-C-00-99-00237-00.

SARA Project Academy for Educational Development, 1825 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20009 USA Tel: 202-884-8000 Fax: 202-884-8447 E-mail: [email protected]

Fundamentally, the question is no longer whether NGOs should play a role in the education

sector, but how NGOs are most likely to fulfill their promise to improve the quality, equity,

accountability, and pertinence of education in African countries.

These briefs summarize study findings on how NGOs have become involved in the

education sector: how their presence and relationships with governments and donor partners

evolved, what implications their presence has caused for educational systems and civil

society, and which contextual factors have affected NGOs' interventions. The briefs review

four major areas of NGO involvement in the education sector: the relationship between

NGOs and government; the role of NGOs in education policy; the relationship between

NGOs and donors; and the influence of NGOs on civil society.

L'heure n'est plus à se demander si les ONG ont oui ou non un rôle à jouer dans le secteur

de l'éducation mais il s'agit plutôt de savoir comment elles sauront le mieux tenir leur

promesse d'améliorer la qualité, l'équité et la pertinence de l'éducation en Afrique.

Les résumés présentés ici synthétisent les résultats de l'étude sur le rôle que les ONG

jouent dans le secteur de l'éducation. Ils analysent l'évolution des relations des ONG avec

les gouvernements et les bailleurs de fonds, les implications des interventions des ONG au

niveau des systèmes éducatifs et de la société civile ; ils examinent enfin les facteurs

contextuels ayant influencé les programmes des ONG. L'étude circonscrit 4 axes principaux :

les relations entre les ONG et le gouvernement, l'influence des ONG sur les politiques

éducatives, la relation entre les ONG et les bailleurs de fonds et l'influence des ONG sur la

société civile.

Key Findings on the Role of NGOs in Basic Education in Africa Résultats de l'étude sur le rôle des ONG en éducation de base en Afrique

AEDAcademy for Educational Development

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