UN WFP’s Development Project in Ethiopia
“Improving Education Through School Feeding” &
Ethiopian Government’s Social Sector Programme
“Education Sector Development Programme”
I. BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Ethiopia is one of the educationally least developed countries in the world. Though it is becoming
closer to 50% recently, the gross enrolment rate (GER) in early 1990’s was less than 30%, which is
definitely the worst in the world. Due to high drop out rates and repetition, only about one fifth of
children enrolling in primary school complete grade 6. The unsatisfactory general situation is further
aggravated by gaps between the regions, population groups and gender. World Bank’s Programme
Appraisal document in 1998 envisages the poor quality of education; “Poor performance is linked
with inadequate facilities (due to long standing neglect and civil strife, a number of schools in the
country are in need of major repair), lack of teaching materials (textbook to student ratio is 1:5),
inadequate teacher training (only about 85% in primary, 30% in junior secondary and 40% in senior
secondary are qualified for their post), and a curriculum that fails to take into account regional,
cultural and linguistic differences. Science, language and culture components seem too theoretical,
lacking enough practical material to prepare students to lead productive lives in their communities.”
In order to bring any development effect in Ethiopia, improvement of education sector is absolutely
prerequisite. Also under the context of education as human right, it is government’s responsibility to
deliver proper education opportunity to all the children in Ethiopia. Thus, Ethiopian Government has
been committed itself to achieve the Education for All by 2015 and needs big effort to fulfil its
obligation.
(million children)
[Figure1] Ethiopia School Age Population and
Enrolment
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Primary Total
School Age total
[Table 1]
Primary (Grade 1-8) Gross Enrolment
Ratio (1999/2000)
1999/2000
1998/99
1997/98
1996/97
1995/96
Region
Tigray
Afar
Amhara
Oromiya
Somali
Benishangul-Gumuz
SNNP
Gambella
Harari
Addis Ababa
Dire Dawa
Boys
65.8
10.2
50.3
66.9
10.6
105.5
77.4
114.9
110.6
91.6
69.1
Girls
61.2
7.7
43.2
36.1
5.6
57.2
41.9
71.3
81.2
91.2
55.5
Total
63.5
9.1
46.8
51.6
8.3
81.8
59.8
93.7
96.2
91.4
62.4
Total
60.9
40.7
51.0
Source: Both information of “Ethiopia School Age Population and Enrolment” and
“Primary (Grade 1-8) Gross Enrolment Ratio (1999-2000)” were taken from
“Education Statistics Annual Abstract 1992 E.C. / 1999-2000” by Ministry of
Education.
Other Basic Information (“The State of the World’s Children 2000” by UNICEF)
Adult Literacy (1995): Male 40% [3 countries less than Ethiopia; Mali, Niger (21%), Somalia]
Female 26% [16; Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Benin, Burkina Faso, Gambia,
Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mozambique, Nepal, Niger (7%),
Pakistan, Senegal, Sierra Lion, Somalia, Yemen]
Gross Enrol (90-97): Male 47% [5; Bhutan (31%), Djibouti, Mali, Niger (36%), Somalia (15%)]
Female 27% [4; Bhutan (19%), Mali, Niger (22%), Somalia (8%)]
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II. OVERVIEW OF PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION
[Right Targeting]
The project is designed to address following three major problems: 1) Short term hunger due to
insufficient access to food at home; 2) Micro-nutrient deficiencies due to inadequate dietary intake;
and 3) Low attendance and high drop-out rates. In order to improve above issues positively, WFP
targets chronically food insecure areas. WFP and our partner agencies jointly developed the way to
incorporate 9 different indicators to show the priority areas in terms of development assistance in
Ethiopia. WFP believes that the project should focus the “Very Highly Vulnerable” areas in Chronic
Vulnerability Status map so that the right population can receive the assistance.
[Original Design]
The project started in 1994 under joint effort of the Ministry of Education (MoE) and WFP with the
initial beneficiary level of around 37,000 students in 40 schools. The expanded school feeding project
(ETH 4929/01) was approved for a five-year period in March 1998 by the WFP Executive Board and
was commenced in the same year. This project, valued at almost US$ 26 million, was originally
designed to cover an average of 125,000 students per year in chronically food insecure areas in 4
regions (Tigray, Amhara, Oromia and Afar).
[Project Keep Expanding]
Due to the emerging demand in the drought affected areas, the number of school children in the
existing schools was dramatically increased in first two years. By the end of 1999, we found that
more than 40,000 children on top of planned 120,000 children were absorbed by WFP assisted
schools. WFP HQ approved 7,237 mts of extra food resource in October 1999 and this was utilised to
cover increased number of students. In the following year of 2000, we found more cases of so called
“magnetic effect” in WFP assisted schools, which means that students in nearby schools were
attracted by WFP assisted schools and non-assisted schools were deserted. Since this project has been
strictly targeting the chronically food insecure areas in Ethiopia, the same phenomenon was found in
many of WFP assisted schools. Therefore, WFP and MOE jointly decided to increase the coverage in
existing target areas. By the end of 2001, the project covers almost 300,000 students in 600 schools,
which counts almost 5% of roughly 6 million enrolled students in all Ethiopia. This makes the project
cost increased up to US$ 32 million. As a result, the project demonstrates its strong popularity among
school children and the volume of the project soon becomes treble comparing to the volume in just
two years ago.
[Food Basket]
Until the last semester, the food basket of this project consisted of two different commodities, one
was a fortified blended food called FAMIX, and another was school feeding biscuit. Both of
commodities have been produced and purchased locally in Ethiopia. WFP is promoting the local
capacity of food production which would eventually give the project a potential to be sustainable in
the future.
Meanwhile, US Government launched its new initiative called Global School Feeding Initiative in
late July 1999, just after G8 Summit in Okinawa. This gives WFP more food resource to cover in
WFP supported countries but also gives a restriction in food basket which means US Government
gives food but not cash. US Government donates CSB (Corn Soya Blend) to WFP among other
commodities like wheat, maize and vegetable oil. Since the project in Ethiopia has been using
FAMIX which is similar commodity to CSB, the project is under the process to switch the way to
acquire food commodity from local purchase to food import from US Government.
[Impact of the Project: From the recent Assessment]
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Recently, WFP has conducted the study called “Impact Assessment of School Performance and
Nutrition” to see the achievement of the project rather scientifically. The report is not formalised yet
but here are some of the result and findings of this assessment study.
The assessment study was done with randomly selected 30 WFP assisted schools and 29 non-assisted
schools. The study suggested that the level of enrolment increase was higher in WFP assisted schools
comparing to that of non-assisted schools. At the same time, the ratio of dropout to enrolment shows
that WFP assisted schools has smaller/reduced dropout comparing to that of non-assisted schools.
The study also suggested that the school feeding benefits to the reduction of girls’ dropout.
It is found that only a third of children have three meals per day and half of the children get only two
meals. Much strikingly, a quarter of children has merely one meal per day. Under this circumstance,
it is not difficult to imagine the fragile food security at house hold level and the widespread
prevalence of malnutrition among children. The study found that it is obvious that WFP assisted
schools show much better status in terms of stunting, wastage and underweight than non-assisted
schools.
As summary, the study confirmed that the project has been achieving the objective of the project by
increasing enrolment and decreasing dropout, also decreasing malnutrition rates.
[Figure 2] Enrolment in assisted and non-assisted
schools, absolute numbers
[Figure 3] Ratio of dropout to enrolment in
assisted and non-assisted schools
18000
30
Enrolment
14000
12000
assisted total
non-assisted total
assisted girls
non-assisted girls
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
Dropout enrolment ratio
16000
25
20
assisted total
non-assisted total
15
assisted girls
non-assisted girls
10
5
0
95/96
96/97
97/98
98/99
99/00
95/96
96/97
Year
98/99
99/00
Year
[Table 2] Malnourished students in assisted and nonassisted schools (%)
Nutritional
Indicator
Stunted
Wasted
Underweight
97/98
Assisted Schools
17.8
13.0
25.0
[Table 3] Number of meals per day in
surveyed area (%)
Region
Amhara
Tigray
Oromia
Afar
Total
Non-Assisted
Schools
23.5
18.0
31.5
Source: Above Figure 2, 3, Table 2, 3 were taken from the
forthcoming document “Impact Assessment of School
Performance and Nutrition” by WFP, Addis Ababa.
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1 meal
17
5
59
19
20
2 meals
77
41
29
31
48
3 meals
7
54
12
50
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III. EDUCATION SECTOR DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME
This project is within the framework of the Education Sector Development Programme (ESDP),
which is supported by the World Bank together with many other bilateral and UN agencies. Ethiopian
Government is the main body of implementing ESDP to make sure that this sector wide approach will
be successful. In this regard, the School Feeding Project is one of the big contributors to the success
of ESDP in terms of decreasing drop-out and increasing enrolment.
[Programme Approach vs. Project Approach]
ESDP started in 1997/98 with a lot of enthusiasm by donor community and Ethiopian Government.
The main idea of ESDP is that major donors put their money into the Ministry of Finance (MoF) and
Ethiopian Government manages the fund appropriately. Later, the Government sends the one unified
report to those who contributed. This reduces the chances of overlapping, double funding, redundant,
and unnecessary duplication of same kind of reporting. Therefore, most of bilateral donors and the
World Bank were enthusiastically pushing ESDP. This approach is called “Programme Approach”.
However, only World Bank and African Development Bank deposited their money into MoF account
so far but no other donors did. In this sense, one can say that ESDP has not exercised the main idea of
the programme but just the fragment of implementation. Most of UN agencies, GTZ, JICA and few
other bilateral donors are restricted their way of funding within “Project Approach”. Because of low
implementation of Programme Approach, it seemed that Project Approach gained some strength in its
argument. It is not clear yet which argument may overwhelm the other. However, the fair view should
be that there must be a good balance between both approaches.
[Ethiopia Eritrea War Affected Heavily]
Soon after ESDP started, the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea broke out. Most of European
countries called peace but it was not heard. As the war deepened, the relationship between ESDP
donor countries and Ethiopian Government was getting worsen. Donors stopped funding and
Ethiopian Government called it “betrayal”. The height of dispute was the time of Joint Review
Mission (JRM) in Nov/Dec 1999 and also at Annual Review Meeting (ARM) in March 2000.
Ethiopian Government was building the argument called “on-board / not on-board” which means that
Government differentiate donors who supported ESDP even during the war from other donors who
didn’t. Government named some donors like DFID, EU, Finland, etc. as “not on-board donors” and
tried to block their participation in JRM or ARM. After the war ended in the mid 2000, though the
relationship has not fully recovered yet, the atmosphere was getting better and some donors have
been trying to find the way to resume assistance to ESDP. DFID sent their representatives to ARM in
June 2001.
[Quantity vs. Quality]
It should be properly acknowledged that Ethiopian Government has been successful to achieve the
enrolment target so far. However, it also should be properly acknowledged that the level of
educational quality in classrooms has been deteriorated. In March 2000 at the second ARM, the
Government first rejected the JRM recommendation that quality also should be taken care. But they
accepted the idea by the end of three-day ARM after heavy discussion regarding the quality. Since
then, there has been nothing done in this area and situation has been worsening. In Mid Term Review
(MTR) Mission in March 2001, this point was raised strongly by the mission. And this argument
gained better position at the third ARM in June 2001.
The main focus now is the revival of three education policies namely “Continuous Assessment”,
“Self-contained classroom”, and “Automatic Promotion”. These were introduced at the beginning of
ESDP but were abandoned because of unpopularity among teachers and even parents. In ARM 2001,
these old policies were discussed and gained new attention. Another focus is the simplification of
curriculum especially in the lower primary level. In order to maximise the efficiency, curriculum
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should be fairly easy to handle by teachers and understandable by students. ARM in 2001 approved
this idea and MoE will start revising the curriculum soon.
[The Third Annual Review Meeting in Nazareth: June/2001]
As briefly noted above, the discussion in the third ARM in June 2001 produced some tangible
outcome which should be and will be implemented for sure. As for a technical point, participants of
ARM agreed that ESDP indicators regarding dropout should be strengthened so that the dropout issue
can be monitored well. The following is some important outcomes of the third ARM.




Quality of education gained fresh focus for coming fiscal year or two. The original question
was "how to regain real education in a classroom?" The improvement of curriculum, textbook,
teacher training etc. will be carried out.
NGOs were officially recognized as partners of ESDP in first time of its history. This was
emphasized because many people especially regional and zonal officials are becoming to
understand that NGOs are very much needed to carry out non-formal, innovative type of
education in order to achieve the Education for All in 2015 in Ethiopia. Reduction of drop out
and gender gap are the focus points.
Special Task Force Report which was written jointly by MoF and IDA (World Bank) was
generally endorsed by ARM which says (1) 3 years rolling plan of budget should be exercised,
(2) donors should provide 3 year assistance plan, (3) Social Sector Capacity Building Fund
(SSCB) should be initiated by separating health and education (this was formerly called Social
Sector Technical Assistance Fund), (4) harmonization of donor procedures should be
strengthened and it should move toward merging into government's procedure.
It was recognized that government and donor relationship should be improved.
[Table 4] ESDP Key Performance Indicators (Selected)
Suggested Indicators
Budgetary and Expenditure Indicators
Education’s share of the total budget
Primary education’s share of the total education budget
Access Indicator
Total number of primary schools (‘000)
Total primary (grade 1-8) enrollments (‘000)
Quality Indicators
Share of lower primary (grade 1-4) teachers who are qualified
Total number of upper primary (grade 5-8) teachers
Number of core primary textbooks in school
Grade 8 examination pass rate
Efficiency Indicators
Primary school student : section ratio
Secondary school student : section ratio
Grade 1 dropout rate
Total primary school dropout rate
Average grade 4 to 8 repetition rate
Average grade 4 to 8 repetition rate for girls
Coefficient of primary school efficiency
Equity Indicators
Gross primary enrollment rate in the two most under-served areas
Share of girls in primary school enrollment (grade 1-6)
Base Line
Status
Target in
1995/96
1999/2000
2001/02
13.7%
46.2%
11.28%
N.A.
19.0%
65.0%
9,670
3,788
11,490
6,463
12,595
7,000
85%
27,381
5,729
61.7%
89.6%
39,145
7,205
82.39%
95%
36,777
20,000
80.0%
52
63
28.5%
8.4%
12.8%
16.2%
60.0%
66.4
74.9
30.3%
18.9%
12.9%
9.5%
36.6%
50
50
14.2%
4.2%
6.4%
8.1%
80.0%
16.2%
38.0%
8.53%
39.2%
25.0%
45.0%
Prepared by Mamoru ENDO
JPO (Junior Professional Officer)
5
In WFP Ethiopia Country Office
27/July/2001
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