Can countries afford their national SDG 4 benchmarks?

This paper reviews the two previous SDG 4 costing exercises and their main assumptions, and speculates about the potential financial impact of COVID-19. It introduces the SDG 4 benchmarking process and how to estimate the cost of achieving these targets set by countries, largely based on their sector plans. Finally, it presents the revised assumptions of the model and the key findings. Despite lowering ambition, there is still an average national financing gap of USD 97 billion per year in the 79 low- and lower-middle-income countries. This is several times the external resources currently being offered.