Education and Training in Ethiopia An Evaluation of Approaching EFA Goals

6 CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS6.1 Lessons for the Education SectorDuring fifteen years of collaboration in the education sector, Ethiopia has proved a reliabledevelopment cooperation partner for Finland because it has committed itself to carryingthe development projects through, seeks ownership of the activities launched incooperation and has shouldered the responsibility for coordinating the delivery of the aidthrough its sector-wide approach in education. The ESDP process has offered theadvantage of providing the donors with a better overview of the developmental needs ofthe sector.However, during the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea many bilateral donors,including Finland, froze their funding to Ethiopia to varying degrees. Doubts about theability of the GoE to monitor the use of funds and report on it in sufficient detail were themajor reason why many donors withdrew. They feared that funds allocated for educationwould instead be channelled into the steeply increased military budget. Now that the waris over, concerns about the misuse of funding for military purposes should also be history.Furthermore, many donors have found it difficult to give up previous practices of theirown planning, agreement, implementation and evaluation models geared to the traditionalproject-based approach.Despite the remarkable progress in the education sector since 1994, substantialproblems exist because of a lack of resources and of the high levels of debt. Initial accessand inherited geographical and gender disparities are still persistent. A rising number ofslum children, children with special needs, AIDS orphans and the rural and urban poor areat risk of dropping out of education and/or any training. Additionally, enrolment rateshave not kept pace with the growth in the relevant age group. A high dropout rate resultsin an unacceptably low proportion of pupils completing primary school. A high rate ofrepetition leads to an inefficient use of resources.As regards the provision of educational resources and access to education, boys arefavoured over girls. There is a tendency to consider female education from twoperspectives, economic and social. From an economic viewpoint, researchers found thatthe education of girls can be translated into growth in the gross domestic product (GDP).However, general economic growth does not often lead to a fair distribution of socialresources, as is indicated by factors such as infant mortality, literacy rate, life expectancy,political stability and women’s status. A rectilinear development of the private sector hasrarely contributed to improvement in women’s status and social development. Duringdevelopment cooperation in Ethiopia, the following approaches have proved valuable:55