THE UNIVERSITY OF ZAMBIA

INSTITUTE OF DISTANCE EDUCATION

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION AND POLICY STUDIES

EAP 1010- EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT IN ZAMBIA

2020 ACADEMIC YEAR

Assignment Three

NAME: MCBRIDE MULEYA

STUDENT ID: 19001114

LECTURER: PILIRA TEMBO CHIRWA (MRS)

QUESTION: Foreign aid and debt have had a number of adverse effects on the
provision of education. Discuss how education can be used to reduce
dependency on foreign aid by third world countries.

[DUE DATE: 1ST MAY, 2020 11:59 PM]

With a view that foreign aid and debt have a number of adverse effects on the provision of
education, this paper is an academic assertion to discuss how education can be used to reduce
dependency on foreign aid by third world countries.

In its broadest, foreign aid according to (Riddell, 2007, p. 17), “consists of all the resources,
physical goods, skills, and technical-know-how, financial grants (gifts), or loans at
(concessional rates) transferred by donors to recipients.” Extensively, foreign aid would
include resources to address human and development and poverty needs in the poorest
countries. It is clear, that aid, is packaged in a way that it is comes to completely take over all
the sectors. Plainly, it is like importing the skilled labour (work force), money, ideas and other
resources to foster development or ruin it.

Foreign aid comes in different forms according to (UNESCO, 2010) Official Development
Assistance is calculated as the sum of grants and loans to aid recipients that:

…a) are undertaken by the official sector of the donor country; b) have as
the main objective the promotion of economic development and welfare in
recipient countries and, c) are no on concessional financial terms (that is with
a grant element equal to at least 25 per cent of the total.
The elucidation above clearly indicates that foreign aid can be free or not. At times, the aid
comes with economic and political conditions.

Unfortunately, for a long time, most developing countries (third world countries), especially in
the African context, have continued depending on foreign aid to support their socio-economic
development. The continued dependency on aid is an indicator enough to show that the
developments in all sectors is far from being attained. Most countries have remained indebted
and or aided in all developmental plans. A wealth of literature laments the existence of foreign
aid to developing countries, as it comes with adverse impacts, and at the same time debates
have been fuelled to counter the motion (to some, foreign aid is a vehicle to all-rounded
development of a country).

Before delving into the discourse, as education will be an answer to the reduction of foreign
aid, it is vital to define the reason why foreign aid is given to third world countries and the
negative impact it comes with. (Riddell, 2007, p. 89) outlines the following factors that
necessitates donors to transfer aid, these are,

…to help address emerging needs; to assist recipients achieve their

development (growth and poverty reducing) goals; to show solidarity; to
further their own national political and strategic interests; to help promote
donor-country commercial interest; because of historical ties; the
contribution of aid funds can makes to providing and strengthening global
public goods, and reducing the ill effects of global evils. Additionally, some
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 donors have stated more explicitly to base aid-giving decisions on the human
rights records of recipients governments, in particular by reducing or halting
completely on basic human rights they assess as seriously deficient.
Coming to adverse impacts, (Hansen & Tarp, 2000; Moyo, 2009) outlines that foreign aid
comes with serious effects such as creation of aid dependency-syndrome, retention of
authoritarian government in power and encourages corruption. Moyo strongly elaborates that
the notion that foreign aid brings growth is a myth because aid has been and continues to be an
unmitigated political economic and humanitarian disaster for most developing countries.
Extensively, unlike encouraging investment, foreign aid in fact chokes off investment, and
facilitates corruption. Hansen denotes that it perpetuates underdevelopment and guarantees
economic failure in poor regions.

Clearly, such adverse effects of foreign aid require a lasting solution, which is education.
According to the (World Bank Group, 2011) education is said to be fundamental to
development and growth. It is a strategic development investment. Human beings are seen to
be enablers of all development achievements from health advances, and agricultural
innovations to infrastructure construction and private sector growth. Developing countries
therefore require unleashing the potential of the human mind using education.

With the view that foreign aid focus on the deficiency of a country to help, in a way, foreign
aid is applied education. This is so because according to (Jones, 2002) education is defined as
the stock of skills, competencies and other productivity enhancing characteristics. In other
words, education is an opium for eradicating poverty and/or foreign aid. It is a key component
of human capital. Educating the people on a poor country is promoting economic growth. The
discourse will have intertwined socio-economic factors to explicitly show how education is
necessary.

Firstly, one big problem that causes over dependency on foreign aid is population. Most
developing countries have failed to manage the population and this has necessitated
governments to opt for foreign aid as earlier highlighted. Since population, triggers economic
down-fall, education can help reduce or manage population. (Kelly, 1991) indicates education
affects population in three ways, that is, fertility rate, age at first marriage, and infant and child
mortality. On fertility, Kelly analytically indicated that most women with high education tend
to start child bearing much later than women who are less educated or not educated at all do.
This is the same case when it comes to age at first marriage and child mortality. (Tadora &
Smith, 2011) adds that of 8.2 million fewer deaths of children aged 5 and younger between
1970 and 2009, one half can be attributed to more education among women of reproductive
age.

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From the analysis above, a deduction can be made that, education here equips women or
families with knowledge on how to regulate child bearing, and avoid child or infant mortality.
Without education in such a world, uncontrolled child bearing and infant mortality rates can
increase hence donors would be moved to help, as earlier elaborated, to help curb the resultant
problems.

Secondly, in line with economic growth, an increase of one standard deviation in student
reading and math score is associated with an increase of two percentage points in annual Gross
Domestic Product per capita growth (that is per person growth) (Tarnoff, 2016). In addition,
(UNESCO, 2010) emphatically outlines that for every US$1 spent on education as much as
US$10 to US$15 can be generated in the economy growth. A projection is that if 75% more
15-year olds in forty-six of the world’s poorest countries were to reach the lowest OECD
(Organisation for Economic Development) benchmark for mathematics economic growth
could improve by 2.1% from its baseline and 104 million people could be lifted out of extreme
poverty.

It is clear here that education plays a major role in economic growth by the formation of human
capital of a society which in turn creates a firm foundation for the socio-economic development
of a country. Following (Memon, 2007), education in this regard raises the efficiency and
productivity of the individual members and turns them as skilled manpower, ensuring a
sustainable economy.

Talking about manpower, (Tadora & Smith, 2011) education expands human capabilities
which is key aspect to development. If people learn or improve reading, communication,
arguing and being able to choose in a more informed ways and in being taken seriously by
others and many others. Such attributes can enhance better decision making, more engagement
in the political process and positive spill over effects to those around the educated person.

In the same vein, (Jones, 2002) emphatically states that education allows for easier assimilation
of foreign technology and both convergence and development are assisted as technology
transfer is made more efficient with greater education. In complete support of Jones’s view,
most developed countries have seriously embraced technological advancements to aid in
booming their economy in many areas of development. Through education (a stock of all
knowledge and expertise), third world countries need to embrace technology to engineer their
economic growth.

Comprehensively, (Hanushek & Woessmann, 2010, pp. 60–67) says that,

The relationship between skills and growth proves extremely robust in

empirical applications. The effect of skills is complementary to the quality

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 of economic institutions. Growth simulations reveal that the long-run
rewards to educational quality are large but also require patience. The focus
on human capital as a driver of economic growth for developing countries
has led to undue attention on school attainment. Developing countries have
made considerable progress in closing the gap with developed countries in
terms of school attainment, but research has underscored the importance of
cognitive skills for economic growth. This result shifts attention to issues of
school quality, where developing countries have been much less successful
in closing the gaps with developed countries. Without improving school
quality, developing countries will find it difficult to improve their long run
economic performance.
Clearly, education is the answer, if third world countries can wisely seal the gaps, dependency
will be history. Continually, in most third world countries, due to lack of education, diseases
such as HIV/AIDS have continued choking economic growth. According to (Grant, 2017),
education ensures the health society of people in the world by creating awareness through
educating people. In addition, the other positive social impacts of education though not directly
related to poverty but equally important, including improvement in functioning and continuity
of democracy and re-education in crime rate. In view of this, it can be said that an educated
nation reach far out to fight diseases through scientific research, awareness and many other
ways.

Lastly, education according to (Tarnoff, 2016; World Bank Group, 2011) creates economic
stability and adoption to environmental change. It is viewed that households with more
education cope with economic shocks and exploit other avenues or economic opportunities
better than less educated households. The current Covid-19 epidemic has explicitly reviewed
this fact. Most people are no longer working but just stay at home, without a salary, yet most
educated people still thrive because they tune in to virtual working life style. Such initiatives
keep the economy to boost even if it may not be at a high rate.

In conclusion, (Afzal, Farooq, Ahmad, Begum, & Quddus, 2010) concisely indicates that
society is a combination of monetary and non-monetary factor and hence both are to be
considered whenever an activity is planned or taking place. Education is one such activity
which both the way and gets affected. The discourse has broadly outlined crosscutting issues
in as far as foreign aid is concerned, especially how education can be used to redeem
developing worlds from aid dependency and debt. Education alleviates poverty, inculcate
health habits, bring forth skill-workforce, and enhances technological assimilation and many
others. These and other discussed are propellers of socio-economic development of a country.
Education is the way to socio-economic independence.

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 REFERENCES

Afzal, M., Farooq, M. S., Ahmad, H. K., Begum, I., & Quddus, M. A. (2010). Relationship
Between School Education and Economic Growth in Pakistan: ARDL Bounds Testing
Approach to Cointegration. Pakistan Economic and Social Review, 42(1), 39–60.

Grant, C. (2017). The contribution of education to economic growth. Brighton, UK.

Hansen, H., & Tarp, F. (2000). Policy Arena, Aid Effectiveness Disputed. Journal of
International Development, 12, 393.

Hanushek, E. A., & Woessmann, L. (2010). Economics of Education, Amsterdam. In B. D. J

& P. J. McEwan (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Education (pp. 60–67). Retrieved
from http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/education-and-economic-growth

Jones, C. I. (2002). Introduction to Economic Growth. W.W. Norton and Company Inc.

Kelly, M. J. (1991). Education in a Declining Economy: The Case of Zambia 1975 to 1985.
Washington, DC: The World Bank.

Memon, G. R. (2007). Education in Pakistan: The key Issues, Problems and the New
Challenges. Journal of Management and Social Sciences, 3(1), 47–55.

Moyo, D. (2009). Why Foreign Aid is Hurting Africa. The Wall Street Journal, 1–5.

Riddell, R. C. (2007). Does Foreign Aid Really Work? New York: Oxford University Press.

Tadora, M., & Smith, S. (2011). Economic Development (11th ed.). Addison Wesley.

Tarnoff, C. (2016). Foreign Aid and the Education Sector: Programs and Priorities.
Retrieved from www.crs.gov

UNESCO. (2010). The Central Role of Education in the Millennium Development Goals.
MDG Summit High-Level Round Table. Retrieved from
http://www.unesco.org/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/ED/ED_new/images/education_f
or_all_international_coordination_new/PDF/analyticalnote.pdf

World Bank Group. (2011). Learning for All: Investing in People’s Knowledge and Skills to
Promote Development. Education Strategy 2020. Washington, DC.

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