Grants as a share of government revenue in Africa, usually in the form of official development assistance (ODA), have been plummeting in recent years. Recently announced cuts are putting education financing on shaky grounds in many of the poorer countries in Africa. ODA to Africa is expected to decline rapidly, creating a financial cliff edge for education. These urgent financial constraints force a critical and immediate reassessment of how external financing is used.
The cuts come at a time when the sustainability of aid-backed projects is already in question. The 2025 Spotlight report highlights three key strategies to navigate this transition in Africa: reducing the unit cost of interventions, redirecting aid to support government-led reform implementation (and ultimately from projects to institution building), and developing pathways to absorb formerly aid-financed projects into national budgets.
ODA to education in Africa is expected to decline rapidly in the coming years
African countries’ dependence on aid has been declining quietly but rapidly. In a sample of 20 African countries with data, grants as a share of government revenue fell from 1.9% of GDP in 2010 to 0.9% of GDP in 2022, i.e. more than halved in just 12 years.
This decline is masked by the fact that analysis of ODA is superficially focusing on absolute aid volumes, which increased by 60% between 2015 and 2023. But this perspective ignores the constantly changing relative significance of aid and the fact that most of ODA is not supporting governments directly.
Even in absolute terms, though, new analysis, based on previously unused IATI data, also shows that ODA to education already started decreasing by 7% in 2024. Recent developments will accelerate these trends. Based on announced reductions, ODA to education is expected to fall by one quarter between 2023 and 2027, amounting up to one third in Madagascar and Mali and one half in Chad and Liberia.
These cuts make answers to questions of aid effectiveness and efficiency ever more urgent, especially with respect to the lack of sustainability, as the Spotlight series has been arguing. And they come at a critical moment, as the Global Partnership for Education has launched its replenishment campaign for the implementation of its 2030 strategy. The 2025 Spotlight report points at three areas which could be investigated further.
Government education programmes need sustainable design
Could the costs of donor-backed programmes be reduced? The 2022 Spotlight report had estimated that the typical foundational learning project cost around USD 70 per student per year, an amount that exceeded sometimes what governments spent on primary education per student. A separate review of evaluation studies of USAID early grade reading projects argued that the cost may have been in fact three times as high.
It is surprising that much, if not most, of ODA supported unsustainable initiatives for so long. Moving forward, as governments embark on education reforms, the experience accumulated by past funded programmes can at least be used to focus on what matters: programmes that cut to the core of what government need to improve education in sustainable ways.
The 2025 Spotlight report features an estimate of what such an affordable foundational learning package might cost. It covers in-service training, teaching and learning materials and instructional coaching and would cost an average of USD 4.80 per student per year. This is equivalent to just 2% of the median government expenditure per primary student in the first year, dropping to only 1% thereafter. Such information is critical for government to plan.
Government education programmes need implementation support
However, for governments to implement reforms at scale, financial resources are not enough. Organizational resources are also needed. A background paper for the 2025 Spotlight report focused on Cabo Verde plans to universalize pre-primary education. The reform has been included in the partnership compact with the Global Partnership of Education. Donors will cover only about 4% of the total reform cost, mostly supporting planning and implementation through technical assistance.
There are two major challenges. First, the government had been reducing the share of its budget allocated to pre-primary education. Second, a reform package consisting of not only universalizing provision but also upgrading the skills of educators will have large cost implications that need to be planned for.
As part of the compact, a taskforce was established bringing together the education and finance ministries and the national education coalition as well as development partners. Support from the latter focuses on capacity development, including on data analysis, on professional development and on monitoring.
Government education programmes need to absorb formerly aid-financed projects into national budgets
An additional background paper commissioned for the 2025 Spotlight report looks at the case of school feeding programmes in school feeding programmes in Mali. The government has demonstrated bold ambition by committing to expand its school feeding programme from 13% to 30% of primary school students to boost enrolment in underserved regions. Following other West African countries, the government also plans to expand the Endogenous School Canteens in Mali (PCASEM) programme, a home-grown school feeding approach that prioritizes locally sourced, nutritious meals and active community mobilization and training.
This commitment comes at a critical transition, as the government needs to absorb programmes formerly backed by the United States, through the World Food Programme and the McGovern-Dole Food for Education, into its national budget. This transition also calls for greater efficiency: one of the programmes cost USD 71 per child per year, while the government programme cost was estimated at USD 22.
This ambitious scaling effort presents a massive financial and logistical challenge, which is symbolic of the transitions that many other countries will be facing in the current financial climate. To reach its target, the government faces an estimated total feeding cost of USD 16.1 million, which is more than double its current annual expenditure. Even more concerning is that this calculation only covers the direct cost of meals, excluding investment in infrastructure, staff training and monitoring systems. As external aid declines, Mali will need strategic financial planning.
Focus aid on institution building: Shift from projects to provision of public goods that support foundational learning
The case studies and cost analyses presented here demonstrate a critical, recurring imbalance: past donor projects were often too costly to be scaled or sustained by national governments, with unit costs drastically exceeding affordable government spending. However, this urgency presents a unique moment for radical change. Affordable and effective models exist.
What has been lacking is a focus on the big picture. Countries need support to strengthen their institutions to deliver to their citizens. The single-minded focus of donors over the last 15 years to deliver ‘results’ measured in terms of ‘children served’ through ‘taxpayer dollars’ has been misguided and focused on citizens of donor countries rather than those of developing countries.
The future of foundational learning in Africa depends on a fundamental pivot: shifting from expensive, project-based spending to building robust, low-cost public goods and national institutions. The crucial question for the development community is whether it can successfully transition from funding individual projects to empowering sustainable, government-led education systems.
