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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 8, No. 11
Publication Date: November 25, 2021
DOI:10.14738/assrj.811.11132. Kakupa, P., & Shayo, H. J. (2021). Implementing Sustainable Development Goal on Education (SDG4) amid Donor Fatigue: Challenges
for the Global South. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(11). 20-28.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
Implementing Sustainable Development Goal on Education
(SDG4) amid Donor Fatigue: Challenges for the Global South
Paul Kakupa
Faculty of Education, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, Jilin, China
School of Education, The University of Zambia, Lusaka, Zambia
Happy Joseph Shayo
Faculty of Education, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, Jilin, China
ABSTRACT
This paper critically reflects on the implementation of the Sustainable Development
Goal on education (SDG4) in the Global South amid apparent donor fatigue. It also
highlights international observers’ concerns about a huge funding gap in
implementing SDG4 in the Global South. With the COVID-19 pandemic currently
ravaging the world, this funding gap is expected to widen further. In the face of these
challenges, low-income countries with a high dependency on aid remain at risk of
not meeting most SDG4 targets. While reflecting on what the decline in education
aid might mean for low-income countries, the paper argues that a truly
transformative approach can help these countries achieve SDG4 and its
sustainability agenda despite their funding challenges.
Keywords: COVID-19; Donor fatigue; Education aid; Foreign aid; Least developed
countries; Sustainable Development Goals; SDG4.
INTRODUCTION
In September 2015, the United Nations (UN) member countries ratified and adopted an
ambitious development plan, dubbed: Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development. The 2030 agenda is an international initiative meant to address the
economic, social, and environmental aspects of development through a set of 17 universal
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets (United Nations, 2015). Like the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), SDGs aim to advance sustainable development by
eradicating poverty, hunger, social inequalities, conservation of environmental resources, and
building of just, fair, and peaceful societies, among others, by 2030 (Wils, 2015). However,
unlike MDGs, which were designed by a small team of experts from the developed world
(Hulme, 2009), SDGs were formulated and adopted through a comprehensive consultative
process (United Nations, 2015). A wide range of development stakeholders from all walks of
life directly participated in the design process. These included government representatives,
civil society organizations, academia, think tanks, and non-governmental organizations.
Ordinary individuals worldwide also participated by voting (online) for the issues they wished
to see addressed (Brissett & Mitter, 2017).
To the extent that the process of developing SDGs involved the participation of people from
both the Global North and Global South, it can be argued that these goals are universal and
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Kakupa, P., & Shayo, H. J. (2021). Implementing Sustainable Development Goal on Education (SDG4) amid Donor Fatigue: Challenges for the Global
South. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(11). 20-28.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.811.11132
constitute ideals that apply equally to all countries. Nevertheless, the stark resource disparities
between these two sets of countries make SDGs more attainable in the Global North, where
countries are generally wealthy and better equipped (Ferguson et al., 2018). The
implementation of interventions critical for the achievement of SDGs requires enormous
financial investments (Masaiti et al., 2018). For this reason, the resource-constrained countries
in the Global South may sadly not meet the targets (Ferguson et al., 2018). International
observers have since raised concerns about the challenges that least developed countries
(LDCs), in particular, face in meeting SDGs in general and SDG on education (SDG 4). LDCs
currently have a huge funding gap of US$148 billion for them to implement SDG4 successfully
(UNESCO, 2020). With the current global pandemic (COVID-19) in full swing, UNESCO (2020)
has warned that this funding gap will widen further to reach US$200 billion if no action is taken.
While calls have been made for more education aid to be pumped into LDCs, there is no
guarantee that they will be heeded to, as most donor countries are turning their attention to
more pressing demands at home, such as tax reforms, energy, infrastructure, and emerging
issues such as global warming and climate change (Benavot et al., 2010; UNESCO, 2014). The
current global health and economic crises occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic further
complicate aid mobilization efforts since the world’s major aid donors are among the worst hit
and may have to entirely refocus their resources on rebuilding their economies (World Bank,
2020a), at least in the foreseeable future. In this paper, we reflect on what the decline in
education aid might mean for LDCs that have almost always depended on it. We make a case for
the recontextualization of SDG4 targets to align with LDCs’ unique circumstances and local
contexts. We also challenge the neoliberal pro-growth development model that appears to
undergird some of SDG4 targets and caution that a utilitarian approach to implementing SDG4
cannot work in resource-constrained contexts.
SDG4 Agenda
SDG4 is one of the seventeen global goals adopted by the UN membership to advance
sustainable social and economic growth by eradicating poverty and inequality, creating equal
opportunities for all, and ensuring environmental sustainability (Regmi, 2015; United Nations,
2015). Through ten ambitious targets focusing on children, youth, and adults' needs, the goal
aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning
opportunities for all” (Regmi, 2015, p. 317). SDG4 was formulated to respond to the global
challenge of over 58 million out-of-school children and over 100 million more who were not
completing primary school (United Nations, 2020). Since 2015, the number of out-of-school
children has risen to 250 million (UNESCO, 2019a; United Nations, 2020). Additionally, over
670 million children and adolescents in primary and secondary schools worldwide are not
acquiring minimum proficiency in mathematics and reading. More than half of these problems
occur in LDCs, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (UNESCO, 2017a; Mulenga-Hagane et al.,
2020).
SDG4 aims to achieve inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning through
the following ten targets:
4.1: By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable, and quality primary and
secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes (United Nations, 2015,
p.17).
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4.2: By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development,
care, and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education (United Nations,
2015, p.17).
4.3: By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable quality technical
vocational and tertiary education, including university education (United Nations, 2015, p.17).
4.4: By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills,
including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs, and entrepreneurship
(United Nations, 2015, p.17).
4.5: By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of
education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities,
indigenous peoples, and children in vulnerable situations (United Nations, 2015, p.17).
4.6: By 2030, ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men, and women,
achieve literacy and numeracy (United Nations, 2015, p.17).
4.7: By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote
sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable
development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture
of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of
culture’s contribution to sustainable development (United Nations, 2015, p.17).
4.a: Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability, and gender-sensitive and
provide safe, non-violent, inclusive, and effective learning environments for all (United Nations,
2015, p.17).
4.b: By 2020, substantially expand globally the number of scholarships available to developing
countries, in particular least developed countries, small island developing States, and African
countries, for enrolment in higher education, including vocational training and information and
communications technology, technical, engineering and scientific programs, in developed
countries and other developing countries (United Nations, 2015, pp.17-18).
4.c: By 2030, substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers, including through
international cooperation for teacher training in developing countries, especially least
developed countries, and small island developing States (United Nations, 2015, p.18).
Like the other sixteen SDGs, SDG4 targets are essential to both developing and developed
countries. As a matter of fact, SDG4 has been recognized as a vehicle through which all the other
SDGs can be delivered (Brissett & Mitter, 2017). However, as noted earlier, the implementation
of these targets heavily depends on resource availability. Countries in the Global North that are
comparatively well-off are more likely to achieve them than their needy counterparts in the
South. It has been suggested that for SDG4 targets to be fully attained in the Global South, these
countries will need to increase their educational expenditures by 50 percent of their Gross
Domestic Products (GDPs) (UNESCO, 2015a). While this suggestion sounds good, it is
unattainable in LDCs, whose share of the world’s total wealth is less than one percent (Regmi,
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Kakupa, P., & Shayo, H. J. (2021). Implementing Sustainable Development Goal on Education (SDG4) amid Donor Fatigue: Challenges for the Global
South. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(11). 20-28.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.811.11132
2015). Given these countries’ many challenges, it remains to be seen how they will achieve
SDG4 targets. Sadly, these countries have already missed the 2020 target of 46 percent on
secondary school completion rate (UNESCO, 2020).
DECLINING FOREIGN AID AND THE IMPLEMENTATION OF SDG4 IN LDCS
The world is currently undergoing a challenging period occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic.
National health, economic, and educational systems around the globe have not been spared
from the pandemic’s devastating impact. Ironically, among the most severely hit countries are
the world’s major aid donors, whose economies are projected to shrink to levels unseen since
the 2008 economic recession (World Bank, 2020b). The COVID-19 crisis is taking place at a time
when international aid to education was already experiencing a steady decline. Since 2010, the
share of development and humanitarian aid going to the education sector has been dwindling
(UNESCO, 2017a). Despite LDCs’ heavy dependence on external assistance, aid to education
significantly declined during the latter phase of the MDG implementation. In 2012, for example,
when the financing gap to education stood at US$26 billion, and contrary to their aid pledges
made in 2000, large donors massively cut their spending to education (UNESCO, 2014). The
Netherlands, for instance, cut its assistance to education by about US$200 million (UNESCO,
2014). With COVID-19 in the interplay, the situation will only get worse.
In 2017 UNESCO released a communique with the caption: “Aid to education falls for the sixth
consecutive year.” In the said bulletin, it was noted that education aid had continued to decline
since 2010. With the total value in 2016 standing at $12 billion, education aid had reduced by
four percent from its 2010 value (UNESCO, 2017b). Surprisingly, while development aid, in
general, registered an increase of 24 percent since 2010, the proportion going to basic
education was six percent lower than in 2010 (UNESCO, 2017c). Additionally, the allocations of
the world’s top donors (the United States and the United Kingdom) fell by around 10 percent
between 2014 and 2015 (UNESCO, 2017b). By 2012, the share of aid going to basic education
in LDC was 57 percent —fourteen percent lower than in 2002 (UNESCO, 2014). In terms of the
share of humanitarian aid allocated to education, the picture remains gloomy. Despite marginal
increases since 2013, the level of humanitarian aid to education still falls below the target of
four percent set by the Global Education First Initiative (GEFI) in 2011 (UNESCO, 2014;
UNESCO, 2017c). The closest humanitarian aid has come to achieving this target was 2.7
percent recorded in 2016 (UNESCO, 2017c). As if that were not enough, UNESCO (2014)
observes that, Education is suffering a double disadvantage because it is not only receiving the
smallest proportion of humanitarian appeals, but it is also receiving one of the smallest
proportions of the requests that it makes for funding: in 2013, the sector received 40% of what
it had requested from humanitarian aid. This compares with 86% for the food sector and 57%
for the health sector (p.5).
Unfortunately, the scenario described above has persisted. In 2016, the education sector was
allocated only 48 percent of the total amount requested, when all other sectors received an
average of 57 percent (UNESCO, 2017c). Therefore, notwithstanding the recent formation of
the International Finance Facility for Education (IFFEd) —a new international body uniquely
designed to galvanize support for continued access to low-cost education financing for LDCs
(Alba & Mathiasen, 2020), the task of mobilizing additional donor funds for education will
remain daunting (UNESCO, 2019a, 2019b).
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Alongside the general decline in education assistance, another trend that has been observed is
that aid is no longer flowing to the poorest countries that need it the most. A 2017 United
Nations report revealed that sub-Saharan Africa, a region that hosts “over half of the world’s
out-of-school children, now receives less than half the aid to basic education it obtained in
2002” (UNESCO, 2017b, p.1). To put this into perspective, the aid to basic education allocated
to sub-Saharan Africa was barely four percent higher than that allocated to Northern Africa and
Western Asia, where only 9 percent of the children are not in school (UNESCO, 2017b). What is
more distressing to note is that while educational conditions in LDCs are calling for more aid,
“...donors to education are shifting their attention away from the poorest countries” (UNESCO,
2017b, p.1).
An SOS has since been raised to draw attention to the plight of the world’s poorest countries. In
her 2017 appeal, the UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova noted that “aid remains far short
of what is needed to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4, putting our commitments at risk,”
adding that “aid would need to be multiplied by at least six to achieve our common education
goals...” (UNESCO, 2017b, p.1). Clearly, the low aid priority to education is a sharp departure
from the agreements made at the Dakar Framework for Action in 2000, where governments
and donor agencies swore that “no countries seriously committed to education for all will be
thwarted in their achievement of this goal by a lack of resources” (UNESCO, 2000, p.9). At least
in the foreseeable future, there is no indication that education aid will receive a higher donor
priority.
Therefore, one question begging an answer is what the decline in education aid means for LDCs
that have almost always depended on it. The backtracking of donors on education aid promises
reflects more than the desire to focus resources on their local problems and is striking given
that the same donors have continued to increase funding to other sectors such as food and
health (Benavot et al., 2010; UNESCO, 2017c). One reason that has been advanced for this
decline is that “donors may be questioning its [education aid] importance” (UNESCO, 2014, p.3).
Considering the mass wastage and persistent learning crisis in these countries (UNESCO,
2015a; Wils, 2015), they may be skeptical about the value of education in LDCs. According to
recent reports, about 79 percent of pupils in Nigeria were unable to read even after completing
primary school (Keffenbeger & Pritchet, 2017). In Zambia and Malawi, as many as 89 percent
of all second-graders proceeded to the third grade, unable to read and write (RTI International,
2015). Earlier in 2013, Muralidharan & Zieleniak (2013) reported that over 58 percent of sixth- grade pupils in West and Central Africa were not competent in reading and arithmetic enough
to proceed with schooling. Overall, schooling in LDCs continues to have minimal impact on
learning outcomes for millions of children (Pritchett, 2013). Given these grim statistics, it may
not be an overstatement to suggest that the donors are probably fatigued with the lack of
educational progress in the countries where they spend millions of dollars each year in aid.
WAY FORWARD FOR LDCS
While donors are gradually reneging on their education support commitments, many LDCs
continue to depend on aid (UNESCO, 2017c). For example, about two-fifths of public spending
on education in Afghanistan, Malawi, and Liberia come from external assistance (UNESCO,
2014). What, then, do cuts in foreign aid mean for these and other developing countries? While
calls have been made for LDCs to broaden their tax bases, explore non-traditional sources of
funding, and increase budgetary allocations to education, we argue that in addition to these
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Kakupa, P., & Shayo, H. J. (2021). Implementing Sustainable Development Goal on Education (SDG4) amid Donor Fatigue: Challenges for the Global
South. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(11). 20-28.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.811.11132
initiatives, these countries should critically reflect on what sustainable development should
look like in their local contexts, and decide how they can achieve it given their resources.
Sustainable development ought to be contextually defined by each individual country. To
achieve the anticipated inclusive education, LDCs should adapt SDG4 to their local situations
and devise means for achieving it using local resources while taking “lessons from countries in
the Global North” (Ferguson, 2018, p.4). This will allow them to not only track their own
progress but also make them more accountable and committed to the goal. Currently, it is even
difficult to tell how these countries can be held responsible for non-compliance (King, 2015).
Another critical issue to address concerns the double messages being conveyed in some of the
SDG4 targets. While the goal broadly appears to be transformative and humanistic, by
emphasizing skills, science, and technology (e.g., targets 4.4 and 4.b) to the exclusion of other
forms of knowledge, it is essentially endorsing the very old neoliberal capitalist development
model (Brissett & Mitter, 2017), which has failed to work in the Global South. It is probably for
this reason that some scholars have labeled SDGs in their entirety “ideals set by countries in the
North” (Ferguson, 2018, p.3). If SDG4 continues to be implemented with a utilitarian focus, then
it will not be attained in LDCs. Only a truly transformative approach is needed to actualize the
vision of sustainable development in these resource-needy contexts. There has to be a shift in
approach from the current emphasis on skills for employment (Kakupa, 2017) consistent with
Western notions of knowledge, to one that acknowledges and integrates indigenous forms of
knowledge (Brissett & Mitter, 2017). That way, the implementation of SDG4 will involve the
participation of local communities who will play a critical role in selecting and integrating
indigenous knowledge forms necessary to address the social, economic, and environmental
injustices that the utilitarian approach cannot (Owuor, 2008). In the current setup, SDG4 does
not fully support local models of sustainability. The result is that LDCs will always require
external assistance to achieve any agenda based on external (Western) conceptions of
development.
Some SDG critics have gone further to argue that the very format of the SDG framework point
to a typical Western way of doing things (Brissett & Mitter, 2017; Easterly, 2015). The use of
goals, targets, and indicators “reflects [a] Western obsession with action plans” (Brissett &
Mitter, 2017, p.191). Earlier in 2009, Hulme (2009) criticized this approach of reducing
development to mere statistics, goals, and targets. By privileging a Western scientific way of
planning, it is evident that other non-Western ways of conceptualizing sustainable
development may have been sidelined. Indeed, as Brissett & Mitter (2017) correctly observe,
when these [Western] approaches define the policy initiative and are arrived at in the context
of inequality among stakeholders, certain interests and values are likely to be marginalized
(p.191).
While economic outcomes of education are important, alternative knowledge forms must be
accommodated in formal education circles. Likewise, alternative notions of progress must
begin to be acknowledged and appropriated. Sustainability issues that the SDG movement
speaks to can be better addressed through locally generated approaches.
CONCLUSION
SDG 4 targets will be a significant financial burden for LDCs even in the aftermath of the COVID- 19 pandemic. While SDG4 envisions a transformative and shared aspiration for all, its targets
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appear to be toeing the line between two contrasting dominant approaches to education and
development —one that links education to economic outcomes and another that views
education as a tool for achieving social, economic, and ecological justice. However, the former
(utilitarian) approach to implementing SDG4 does not speak to LDCs’ unique contexts and
circumstances (HLP, 2013) and can, therefore, not work in LDCs. We have argued that by
privileging the Western notion of sustainability and development over others, the SDG agenda
technically absolves LDCs of their responsibility to define sustainability for themselves and
work towards achieving it within the constraints of their resources. These countries will always
require foreign aid to implement policies rooted in discourses that marginalize indigenous or
alternative knowledge forms. This then means that donors' cuts to education aid spell doom for
achieving SDG4 targets in LDCs. However, SDG4 can still be attained in LDCs if a genuinely
transformative approach is adopted; one that will advance curricula that incorporate
alternative forms of knowledge and effectively allow for contextual translations of SDG4.
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