Decolonise education financing-CSOs tell government

Civil Society Coalition for Education (CSEC) has told government to get away from donor reliance on education financing.

Speaking today at a press briefing held in Lilongwe, chairperson of CSEC, Limbani Nsapato said that as long as education financing is left in the hands of donors, challenges in the sector will not end.

Nsapato gave an example of where the IMF gives a conditionality of government wage bill not go beyond, seven percent if it is to access some credit facilities.

According to Nsapato, this has a negative impact on education because among other things, “Government cannot increase salaries of civil servants of which teachers are part or pay allowances beyond a certain amount because doing so would inflate the wage bill there by contravening the conditionality for the loan,” Nsapato said.

He said this undermines teachers’ motivation, and also restricts investment in the education sector. Nsapato argued that while government is doing away with donor financing in the education sector, it must consider alternative financing such as introducing levies and promoting organised corporate social responsibility by stakeholders.

He added that currently, there is no coordination or documentation of CSR activities in the country.

“Just imagine how much impact it would have to introduce, let’s say if any corporate entity has a CSR activity, fifty per cent of it must be implemented by the entity while fifty per cent must be directed to an area of government’s interest.”

This way, according to Nsapato, government would leverage on the CSR activities to deal with some challenges in some sectors such as education.

During the press briefing Nsapato, was accompanied by Benedicto Kondowe and Joylet Genda the national coordinator for ECD Coalition.