On Public Expenditures and Delivery of Education in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Because resources for most governments of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)1 are tight and economic recovery is slow, there is strong interest in assessing what this means for the educational subsector. Moreover, as part of the economic stabilization process, many countries have cut public expenditures. This reduction has important implications since over 80 percent of primary and secondary school students in Africa attend public schools. Although the deceleration does not affect all African countries, the trend in most is sufficient cause for concern. For instance, average annual per capita expenditure growth on education was 2 percent for the period 1975-79 but declined by more than 3 percent per annum between 1980 and 1985. Most recent studies on education in lesser developing countries (LDC) of Africa pertain to resource mobilization for the subsector.2 These examinations stem from a general concern that declining public expenditures (sometimes recurrent) will lead to decreased delivery of education if private resources do not augment public resources. Our concern is that per capita public expenditure alone is not a sufficient index for assessing this. Equally important are the quality of expenditure, as represented by the expenditure mix; system wastage, as represented by process indicators; the performance of students in some standardized examinations; as well as an understanding of internal efficiency mechanisms and community effort. Other studies, such as those of the World Bank, Bruce Fuller, and D. Landau have dealt with similar questions.3 In particular, Landau found, contrary to his expectation, a weak correlation between public expenditures