What CIDA Should Do: The Case for Focusing Aid on Better Schools

Abstract

The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) could improve its development aid impact by focusing on basic education. In the report, the author documents the importance of universal literacy in enabling countries to escape from extreme levels of poverty and identifies specific types of projects CIDA could fund. Over the previous decade, CIDA's budgeting has not reflected the very high rank afforded to education among the UN's Millennium Development Goals. The study examines a dilemma faced by all aid advocacy. Achieving universal literacy requires effective governments able and willing to assure the supply of adequate education services of reasonable quality - whether via government schools, schools supported by non-government organizations (NGOs), or for-profit private schools. But governments in poor countries are usually not effective in delivering basic services.