(Business Daily Africa)
Does anyone find the International Monetary Fund and World Bank's latest enthusiasm for financing free education only a few years after they insisted on cost sharing intriguing?
As one development scholar recently put it, if a construction engineer presides over the building of a bridge and a few years later that bridge collapses, he can be held liable for his role in the project.
If however a policy wonk prescribes bad policies that lead to loss of lives they simply walk away from it and profess alternative policies.
This is the looking glass through which Kenyans should see the latest enthusiasm that the World Bank has for financing free education in Kenya despite having forced the country's hands into costly cost-sharing programmes in the health and education sectors a few years ago.
Yesterday, the bank was head over heels in support of President Kibaki's hint that the country may offer free secondary education beginning next January, leaving many Kenyans wondering where the catch is.
And the catch is that with the country increasingly financing its national budget from local resources, the two institutions have been losing policy leverage within the official circles.
Could someone at the World Bank please explain what has informed this shift in their policy on education financing?
No comments:
Post a Comment