In Pakistan there is a province called Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). There is a political fight going on that revolves around a young girl called Mumina Nazir. Some people say she exists. Other people say she does not. At the bottom of the political fight is nearly £3 million ($4 million), most of which is aid coming from the UK.
In fact, there is a lot of money at stake as to whether or not young boys and girls like Mumina exist or not. Mumina is one of the 41000 students enrolled in a basic education project in the KP province. The project is run by the provincial government and funded by UK’s Department of International Development (DIFID). 50 percent of these enrollments have been found to be fake. But the government neither denies nor acknowledges the accusations. The case remains pending.
UK and US are among the several large foreign aid providers that spend massive amounts of money on educational programs abroad. UK’s DIFID spends nearly 11% of its foreign aid (£1.5 billion) on bilateral education projects. Whereas US foreign assistance spends around 3% of its humanitarian aid ($1 billion) on educational programs abroad. These funds are meant to educate the youth of developing countries. But it does not always reach its intended recipients.
Recurring cases of corruption have made people question the effectiveness of foreign aid to education. These include taxpayers of donor countries who ask why they should continue to finance corrupt bodies. These also include critics of foreign aid like NYU Professor William Easterly and Nobel laureate Sir Angus Deaton. They, like others, say that aid distribution channels lack accountability and create chances for corruption. Many corrupt governments like those in Haiti, Uganda, Cambodia and several others have been in their sight.
Uganda is one of the recipient nations of US aid to education. In one of the corruption cases, major leakages of money were discovered in an audit by comparing actual enrollments in schools and the funding flows. It was found that only 13% of funds allocated for non-salary items like textbooks and supplies reached the schools.
In Zambia, the government is alleged to be involved in embezzlement of up to £3.5 million ($4.7 million) of UK aid cash. These funds were intended for health, education and community development. As a result, UK completely halted the transfer of funds in the end of 2018.
Cutting off foreign aid completely is an option at one end of a spectrum. But it means cutting off humanitarian relief to thousands who do benefit from it. We should not assume because of some corruption that foreign aid to education is all-ineffective. Indeed, many children in Pakistan, Zambia and other countries receive basic, higher and skill-based education through aid. Most of these students are from low income backgrounds that would not be able to afford an education otherwise.
Education is an investment in human capital. An article in the Peabody Journal of Education says that foreign aid to education helps improve societal behaviors. Farmers make more intelligent choices that increase output. Families make more intelligent choices in terms of family size, health practices, and choices of investment. Children grow to become more productive citizens.
Hareem Mustaqim is one such young girl who benefitted from USAID money. She learnt basic grammar on the US funded ACCESS Micro-scholarship program in Pakistan. She plans to become a teacher herself.
Such positive repercussions of aid to education means stopping aid is not a viable option. But addressing corruption is.
Measures of better tracking and accountability need to be put in place. Strategies from cases where corruption was reduced through corrective action need to be replicated, keeping local considerations in view. In Uganda, for instance, fund transfers to education offices were made public through newspapers and radio. Within three years of this, 90% of non-salary funds were reaching the schools.
There should be no negligence in audits either. In case of the DIFID sponsored basic education program in Pakistan, the government running the program had not conducted an audit for the past eight years. DIFID ought to have been more observant of this.
With better preventive and corrective measures put in place, the money can actually reach deserving children. And perhaps, then we can also know if there is an actual person called Mumina Nazir, or not.
