Government"s coordination of external aid to education : the case of Namibia

Primarily, the Namibian experience points to several requisites for effective attraction of aid for education; these are a stable and open government, the absence of corruption, strong political leadership, and a detailed educational development plan, including a cogent set of policy documents. In terms of coordination of aid once it has been received, the Namibian experience demonstrates that decentralization of decisionmaking to the Ministry of Education and Culture and within the Ministry to individual implementing units can be very effective. In addition, and perhaps most significantly, is the need for the host country to take the lead in managing donor resources and coordinating it within its own educational planning framework, taking care to establish formal coordination procedures. These measures should mainly be regarded as means to ensure that programs are implemented in a cost-effective manner and to prevent management breakdowns that could result from the high personnel turnover that characterizes public services in so many developing countries. Included in this management system should be processes for registering expenditures, whether incurred in-country, in the donor country, or elsewhere under aid programs. Includes bibliography.