Partnership

Education Sub-Saharan Africa (ESSA) works in partnership with governments' ministries and recognized organizations in health, peace and environment matters in Sub-Saharan Africa. Such organizations includes the Green Belt Movement (lead by the Noble Peace Price winner Prof. Wangari Mathaii), Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Education, Kenya Institute of Education, FAWE: Forum for African Women Educationalist, Ministry of Health, E-learning Africa, Teachers, Communities Educators and Community, District Authorities and others to ensure that maximum service is provided at a minimum cost.

Education Sub-Saharan Africa (ESSA) is also looking for opportunities to partner with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Fund, UNICEF, USAID, World Bank, IMF and other organizations of goodwill willing to intervene in areas of Health, Peace and Environment.

ESSA refers to the donor or lender practice of providing direct budgetary support to finance production and distribution of education materials in exchange for their good will in creating conducive learning environment. Most parents in Sub-Saharan Africa region can not afford to purchase education materials for their children. Incomes in Africa are very low. And therefore, Education Sub-Saharan Africa (ESSA) need initial support to implement various education programmes.

Through interventions from working partners Education Sub-Saharan Africa (ESSA) will have full capacity to implement all programmes in areas of need. ESSA is open to participations by supporting partners and is willing to work with them (partners) in different areas of interventions in the region. ESSA is audited by recognized audit firms and is willing to be audited by any other firm of our partners' choice.

Strengthening and Expanding Partnerships

• Overview
• What needs to be done
• Challenges

Overview:

The effective political, economic, and social weight of African civil society organizations, of international and local NGOs, PVOs, religious organizations, regional networks, as well as the emergence of the private sector and community's interest in development has expanded the scope and outreach of partnership strategies. ESSA needs to strengthen existing partnerships and foster new ones because of their many advantages. For example, partnerships can help sustain sectoral approach by:

• Fostering working relationships between agencies, governments, and civil society.
• Establishing a foundation for an educated workforce to support economic competitive.
• Attracting and mobilization resources of change.
• Maximizing impact on communities through alternative forms of education.
• Increasing transparency and accountability.

What needs to be done:

New types of donor coordination such as coordinated planning and funding, program reviews, and policy dialogue and advocacy have improved programmatic, funding, and planning strategies. Partnerships with regional African professional networks such as Green Belt Movement, and governments, ministries and departments provide channels for policy dialogue and information exchange. Partnerships with the private sector have opened up opportunities for information technologies to support basic education such as E-learning and higher education programs, school rehabilitation, and science teaching. International and local NGOs and PVOs provide community schooling and strengthen civil society's capacity to deliver and manage education services.

Together with partner, Education Sub-Saharan Africa (ESSA) has also developed a comprehensive set of tools and techniques for policy analysis, dialogue, and communication to help strengthen countries' capacity to analyze and formulate educational policies and implement reforms. Using the Education Sub-Saharan Africa (ESS) approach has made girls' education a top priority of the regional agenda.

In another example of our approach, Education Sub-Saharan Africa (ESSA) which is indigenous nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), promote community participation by strengthening parent associations. These activities foster greater civic responsibility, which, in turn, builds social capital. Parents gain a forum to express their ideas and advocate for education in their communities. Parent associations now monitor local school expenditures and teacher attendance and provide effective oversight of many school operations. In some cases, they manage supplemental budgets for school expansion or improvement.

Challenges:

The HIV/AIDS, Malaria and TB pandemic threaten to undermine much of what has been accomplished over the past decade. HIV/AIDS, Malaria and TB increase teachers' absenteeism and attrition through illness. It decreases families' ability to pay school fees. And it erodes the process and quality of education by decimating the ranks of managers, curriculum designers, planners, and administrators. In some areas, the socioeconomic changes brought about by HIV/AIDS, Malaria and TB are so pronounced that education service delivery systems face total collapse.

Quality improvements have not, generally, kept pace with increases in access. As school fees are reduced or eliminated, national budgets are hard pressed to keep up with the costs of educating burgeoning school-age populations, e.g., additional classrooms and qualified, trained teachers. Despite improvements in many countries, quality remains uneven, and the average time needed to complete each cycle of education is increasing. Although girls are enrolling in greater numbers, they remain likelier than boys to drop out.

Another difficult aspect of the access-quality nexus is assessing whether quality learning is indeed taking place. Most indicators of quality such as class size and per capita budget expenditure are really "proxy" measures, and in only a few instances has student achievement been directly assessed. Education Sub-Saharan Africa (ESSA) will provide encouragement and support to missions to review student assessment in two ways:

1. National assessments that appraise the performance of all or part of the education system so that schools can be held accountable for results.
2. Continuous classroom assessment that enables teachers to monitor student performance.

Education Sub-Saharan Africa (ESSA) will continue focusing its work with missions and multilateral partners on systemic policy reform and development of relevant education materials on health, peace and environment matters as an integral and fundamental element of the its (ESSA) approach. It will also redouble efforts to assist governments in the implementation of reformed policies through capacity building, mandates, transfer of authority, and dialogue. One type of inducement that has been very effective in some areas, for example, is non-project assistance, or NPA. However, since NPA is not always available, and in some cases undesirable, missions should seek other effective ways to enter into policy dialogue and effect reforms.