Since
inception in 1998 to June 2003, the NETF has supported
education work in Sub Saharan Africa through the allocation
of $25.2 million in support of the following activities:
Technical and analytical support for
national teams. Since its inception, NETF has contributed
to program preparation, either through preparation of
full-fledged education sector development programs (ESDP)
or through support for preparation of parts of such
programs, in thirty-five countries. This includes nearly
all the SSA countries where the World Bank currently
provides assistance in the education sector. These thirty-five
countries are Angola, Benin, Burkina, Burundi, Cameroon,
Cape Verde, Chad, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire,
Djibouti, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia,
Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho,
Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique,
Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone,
Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. This is the
largest single activity supported by NETF. It includes
direct support to national teams as well as support
for upstream analytical work, such as country status
reports (CSRs) and country-specific analytical work
related to the FTI.
Regional studies and strategies. This
includes support for developing a regional education
strategy for Africa and strategy work in areas such
as early child development, girls education, adult basic
education, textbooks, skill development, secondary education,
school health, and interaction between education and
HIV/AIDS, as well as regional studies related to EFA
and FTI. Altogether, regional as well as country-specific
work related to preparing the country status reports
has resulted in forty-six sector reports published since
June 2000. Several more are in the pipeline, and the
number is expected to reach sixty-six by the end of
2004.
Promoting
activities for knowledge sharing and capacity and consensus
building at the national, subregional, and regional
levels. This includes collaborative activities, including
both framework agreements with other development partners
and agencies to support greater synergy with their work,
and workshops and conferences. NETF has supported the
organization of sixty-five multicountry workshops and
consultation meetings. The objectives range from capacity
building for leaders of teacher unions, parent associations,
and African NGOs working in the field of education to
workshops and conferences for African journalists, staff
of regional institutions, high-level policymakers, and
African parliamentarians to help build stronger political
support for education. Practically all these activities
are organized by other development partners, jointly
with the World Bank, especially UNESCO, UNICEF and the
Association for Development of Education in Africa (ADEA).
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