The Norwegian government set up the Norwegian Education Trust Fund (NETF) in January 1998 in response to a request from the Africa Region of the World Bank to develop a special initiative in order to assist Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries resume growth toward universal primary education (UPE). The Fund would help SSA countries address factors that had caused stagnation in the development of primary education since around 1980. It would do this by strengthening governments’ political, technical, and institutional capacities to prepare and implement high-quality, nationally owned, and financially sustainable education sector development programs that would support the reforms needed to resume growth.

Such programs would also provide the basis for mobilizing the increased external financing, including from the World Bank, needed to accelerate development of education.

At NETF’s launch, SSA’s average gross enrollment ratio (GER) in primary education was about 80 percent. This equaled about the level reached in 1980. The GER was less than 60 percent in sixteen—one-third—of the forty-eight SSA countries. Only about half of SSA’s children of primary school age on average both entered and completed primary education, and SSA’s average female literacy rate was only about 50 percent.

Education plays a key role in poverty reduction through strong positive effects on productivity; health and nutrition; equity, especially for women and the poorest population groups; and social cohesion and democratic institutions. A wide consensus existed, therefore, that major improvement in basic education was a prerequisite for poverty reduction in the majority of SSA countries. This consensus grew even stronger with establishment in April 2000 of the Education for All (EFA) targets by the Dakar World Education Forum and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) established by the United Nations in September 2000.

The establishment of NETF is fully in line with Norway’s traditionally strong support for development aid, especially in SSA, and for the important role education plays in this regard, both as a human right and as a means to promote equity, accelerate economic growth, and reduce poverty. NETF also represents a continuation of Norway’s long-standing support for assisting multilateral institutions, especially the World Bank, to enhance their capacity to help countries develop and implement sustainable pro-poor poverty reduction strategies. More generally, accelerating progress toward EFA through better national policies and stronger support from the international community is an integral part of Norway’s strong support for broader initiatives, such as debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) process, MDGs, and “Fast-Track Initiative” (FTI).