Assessing the effectiveness of foreign aid in the education sector in africa: The case of primary education

Since 2000, Official Development Assistance has played a crucial role in efforts related to the achievement of MDGs. This is especially the case in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) which is the world's largest recipient of foreign aid. This paper assesses the effectiveness of aid and its efficient use in achieving universal primary education in sub-Saharan Africa. The impact of aid is assessed for a sample of 35 SSA countries over the decade 2000–10. The results suggest that higher aid to education significantly increases primary completion rate. This result is robust to the use of various methods of estimation, the inclusion of instrument to account for the endogeneity of aid and the set of control variables included in regressions. Our findings suggest that education aid can be used as a policy instrument to achieve the fourth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) which is to ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning.

_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1467-8268.12276