ASSESSING THE FINANCING OF EDUCATION AND THE ATTAINMENT OF SDG4 IN ZAMBIA

There are many compelling reasons why governments world over need to prioritize funding to the education sector. As a result of the important role that education plays in development, SDG4 on inclusive and equitable quality education and promotion of lifelong learning opportunities for all lies at the center of the attainment of all SDGs. To this effect, UNESCO standards provide for allocation of at least 4% to 6% of GDP or 15% to 20% of national budgets to education. However, evidence has shown that although most developed countries pledged to allocate a total of US$110 billion between 2018 and 2021 under the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) replenishment initiative, most developing countries failed to adhere to either of these benchmarks or the pledges. Education financing particularly by African governments shows a dire picture due to low capacity of many of them to raise taxes coupled with the mounting debt burden. In Low Middle Income Countries (LMICs), it is estimated that an additional US$ 15.4 billion a year is needed to achieve SDG 4 targets by 2030. This entails doubling of current expenditure in LMICs in order to meet the SGD targets. For Zambia in particular, the share of the education budget over the SDG period has reduced from 20.2% in 2015 to 10.4% in 2022 representing a reduction of 48.5%. To the contrary, the analysis of the education budgetary allocations by size from 2016 shows that the budget has almost doubled over the SDG period rising from ZMW9.1 billion in 2016 to ZMW18.1 billion in 2022. Despite the steady increase in the size of the education budget, there have been significant disparities between the approved budget and the amount released, with the performance of the budget averaging 91% since 2016, while majority (91%) of the education allocations are spent towards Personal Emoluments and Recurrent Departmental Charges