The recently published Financing Education in sub-Saharan Africa report by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics reveals, among other things, a stark bias in many SSA governments’s education funding. This bias favors tertiary level students over primary and secondary, in some cases to the tune of 50:1. Public spending on education has resulted in spectacular results with the number of children in primary schooling between 2000 and 2008 rising by 48%. However the truth remains that in 1/3 of these countries, according to the report, half of all children do not complete primary education. That’s 32million children and set to rise with a growing population of youth. So where should governments invest? If they continue to invest heavily in tertiary students at the expense of primary can they ever achieve EFA? If they invest more heavily in primary where should those investments go if already with billions of dollars of ODA investments and up to 18% of GDP already going on primary education, millions of children are still out of school? Should these investments be focused more exclusively on the expansion of teaching capacity? And what role can technology play in both this expansion of capacity and increase in efficiency? With the current economic crises, as the report notes, governments will have to make strategic decisions about where to spend their money. The report also reveals that regrettably between 2002 and 2008, the international community was ready to provide a total of US$15.86 billion for education in SSA but a staggering 9% was never disbursed. This was due to a lack of programs and structures in place to absorb the funds. This meant that US$221 million went unspent each year, in the words of the report. Money that could have been used to fund all of the primary schools in five countries: Burundi, Cape Verde, Comoros, Guinea and Rwanda. Download the full report here: By Niamh Brannigan www.uis.unesco.org/ev.php