Initiatives and national education policy and planning processes: a comparative case study of the Education For All Fast Track Initiative in Rwanda and Ethiopia

The Education for All Fast Track Initiative (FTI) was launched by the World Bank in 2002 as a global initiative to help low income countries accelerate progress towards the MDG target of universal primary education by 2015. Over the past decade, the FTI has expanded to become one of the most important initiatives to emerge out of the Dakar World Education Forum. The FTI provides around two hundred million US dollars per year to over forty developing countries and receives support from most of the major bilateral donors and multilateral agencies working in the education sector. As well as providing additional finance, the FTI was also designed to promote the principles of aid effectiveness to increase the impact of all financial support to the education sector. This monograph provides evidence on the operations of the FTI by drawing on the findings of a comparative country case study of the FTI in Rwanda and Ethiopia. The case study was conducted in 2009 and 2010 as part of a doctoral research project for the Institute of Education at the University of London. The research collected the views of leading national stakeholders and local representatives of donor organisations that were involved in the application to join the FTI partnership and the early implementation of the education sector programmes. The case studies found that the FTI had made important contributions to the education sector but that the global initiative had also caused serious disruption to the national planning processes particularly in the early stages. The case studies are intended to make a contribution the research gap identified by Professor Angela Little in an earlier CREATE monograph on the impact of global education initiatives on national policy processes.