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Leveraging private sector support to achieve basic education outcomes: Lessons learned

from Morocco and Cameroon

Vijitha M. Eyango, Ph D

Chief of Education, UNICEF Cameroon

Abstract:

We are already well into the 21st century and have to be realistic about the current

funding landscape. It is an era of escalating education needs, scarce resources and

shrinking donor funding pools. New financing arrangements offered by the private

sector if carefully cultivated offer one part of the solution. This paper begins with a

the backdrop of private sector support to basic education,1 then moves to discuss

two case studies from Morocco and Cameroon and ends with a discussion of the

potential role private sector financing arrangements can play in achieving primary

education outcomes.

Introduction

Over the past decades, shrinking budgets coupled with the financial crisis have

crippled the public sector’s ability to fully finance primary education. Traditional donor

funding for education is shrinking. The relevance of education is also in question as

education continues to churn out graduates with skills that do not meet labor market needs.

Within this scenario of scarce resources juxtaposed with increasing basic education needs,

private sector has a role to play.

Public-Private Partnerships (PPP)

There are a variety of public-private partnerships (PPP) in play. Traditional PPP’s in

education are those driven by public sector’s need to buy into the public government sector

in an effort to improve efficiencies, competitiveness and the overall quality of education

service delivery. These kinds of PPPs include government contracting with private sector

for school construction, school voucher systems, and private sector training to improve

budget and raising management standards and capacity (Patrinos et al, World Bank, Fennel).

In countries such as India, such partnerships emerged at the tertiary level with the increased

demand for Indian university education; this model has been suggested as a “panacea to ills

of the Indian state school system” (World Bank, 2005 as quoted in Fennel). Other models

1 Basic education is defined in this paper as primary education consistent with Education for All and MDG goals

of universal primary education for boys and girls.

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of PPP’s include the emergence of private schools as alternatives to the public school

system.

Other PPP’s include initiatives such as NGO support for education through initiatives

implemented by Prathan2 or Room to Read3, who act as education “facilitators” through

children sensitization to the education process and addressing issues of low retention

through reading, writing and mathematics. Examples of education “facilitation” through

donor support is also evidenced by the accelerated re-entry programs for out of school

children as implemented by USAID in its post-9/11 education policy in Afghanistan and Iraq

and UNICEF Cameroon that is using the same model for school re-entry. (Eyango 2002 and

UNICEF 2011)

This paper deals with a different but complementary dimension of the PPP

discourse. It goes over the emergence, especially over the last decade, of public-private

corporate social responsibility models of partnering aimed at catalyzing government and

donor support to improve education outcomes. It argues that private sector has a key role

to play in financing basic education service delivery and improving the relevance of

education. Private sector partnerships can also be capitalized upon for advocacy and

outreach through support of innovative communication and messaging for education

campaigns or calls.

Public-Private Partnerships: Key players

The World Bank and the International Finance Corporation were amongst the first

multilaterals to look at public-private linkages and potential for achieving education

outcomes. In addition to innovative financing and differentiated business models, the

model in play related to private sector support in education service delivery thus

accelerating the process of coming close to MDG and EFA goals. The World Bank’s

International Finance Corporation (IFC) in 1998 put together EdInvest (http://www1.ifc.org)

as a venue for public-private partnering in education; its primary purpose was the creation

of an information portal for data on private education at all levels. While a key public-

private model, it was an approach and framework linked to privatization of education

service delivery—making the case for private sector taking over service delivery roles in

2 www.pratham.org

3 www.roomtoread.org

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education rather than an approach aimed at galvanizing partnerships to undertake

development programs.

Amongst the bilateral agencies, USAID (US Agency for International Development)

was the pioneer development agency to create a platform for leveraging private sector

support for development through USAID-private sector partnerships. USAID’s Global

Development Alliance (GDA) created in 2001 had as its underlying philosophy that social and

economic conditions in poor and transitional countries are improved when public and

private sectors work together (USAID, 2001). In addition to supporting public-private

program calls globally, it also built a strategic framework for education partnering on key

themes. One example was USAID’s Education and Employment Alliance (EEA) which was

launched in 2005 and with a goal of to create new public-private partnerships that would

expand and improve education and employment opportunities for underprivileged youth in

six countries of the Asia and Middle East Bureau’s scope: Egypt, India, Indonesia, Morocco,

Pakistan, and the Philippines. This has expanded to a larger platform for leveraging

government development assistance through private sector partnering; last week another

thematic venture launched by the GDA office “Women and Girls Lead Global” is a public-

private alliance created between Independent Television Service (ITVS), U.S. Agency for

International Development (USAID), and Ford Foundation, in cooperation with lead NGO

partner CARE.

US Department of State followed closely behind USAID’s GDA and launched its own

call for public private partnerships for development. Even through different

administrations, the focus of this office has remained the same—strategic partnering with

private sector can improve diplomacy and development outcomes. The Secretary’s Global

Partnership Initiative is State Department’s current entry point for public-private

collaboration through a call for partnerships that leverage private sector strengths in

innovation and business resources of partners for greater impact.

DFID (UK Development Aid), also a player in the bilateral public-private dialogue may have

arrived later in the game but has capitalized on lessons learned and built thematic areas for

development gain. A recent example currently under review is their partnership with Nike

Foundation to support girls. DFID’s “Girl Hub”, launched in 2010 targeted the needs and

rights of adolescent girls. It involved a joint sharing of resources and expertise between

Nike Foundation and DFID over a three-year period with a total DFID grant of £11.6 million

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(with an additional £1.2 million of in-kind support) with Nike Foundation has commitment of

£0.8 million (plus £2 million of in-kind support). This significant contribution by a bilateral,

twinned with the strengths brought in by Nike Foundation is an example of innovative

public-private partnering that strengthens support for adolescent girls as the cornerstone

for development.

Microsoft Foundation Partnerships in Learning program is an example of a hybrid

public-private model that takes Microsoft’s strengths in ICT (Information and

Communication Technology) provision, training and education and in a South Africa

example touches all dimensions of programming for success while taking into consideration

accountability, management, and oversight. In an assessment of this partnership, Draxler’s

paper presented during the World Economic Forum presents the potential for success of the

Microsoft and South Africa private sector partnerships between Lonmin mine in the

Marikana region of the Northwest Province. Lonmin draws its pool of workers from 29 of its

local schools, but needed its workers to have high levels of digital literacy to be effective,

but local schools were unable to provide those skills to its students. Lonmin partnered with

Microsoft’s Partners in Learning and created 25 computer labs within 6 months reaching

15,000 students through 500 teachers. South African Department of Education became

more involved. All stakeholders benefited-Lonmin and Microsoft. At the school and

community level, students gained skills for employment, teachers resources, and Lonmin a

trained workforce. (Reza Bardient, Microsoft South Africa as quoted in Draxler 2008).

The above examples provide a glimpse into operational frameworks in play aimed at

leveraging private sector resources and expertise to achieve education and development

objectives at large. While rigorous evaluations still need to substantiate the success of the

above programs, these are the kinds of partnering that show potential in improving

educational outcomes in marginalized countries and communities.

The next part of the paper moves to country-specific examples from Morocco and

Cameroon to fully appreciate the potential and challenge of public-private partnering within

individual country contexts.

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Morocco4

In 1995, the same year in which Othman Benjeloun assumed CEO responsibilities for

BMCE Bank 5 (Banque Marocaine du Commerce Exterieur,), he founded BMCE Foundation.

BMCE’s vision was to partner with Morocco’s Ministry of Education to construct pre and

primary schools in 55 remote and under-served villages of the country. These villages which

originally did not have schools, water or electricity not only have this but schools and

teachers who instruct in mother tongue. A total of 63 state of the art primary schools have

been constructed in these rural zones, plus 136 pre-schools benefitting 14,000 students.

BMCE Foundation has expanded its reach and has also built schools in Mali and Senegal.

The model has recently expanded to Congo Brazzaville with the opening of a BMCE

Foundation school in September, 2012.

After school hours, these very schools are used for adult training and literacy, village

meetings and local enterprise; “The aim is to address the endemic isolation, poverty and

illiteracy that afflict rural Morocco by making the schools a hub for wider community

development, while respecting local cultural heritage and language.” (Synergos, 2004).

BMCE Foundation’s first group of 45 students finished this year their high school degree and

will pursue university studies, 60% are girls and 80% are Science major and 20% in

humanities.

Under the Foundation’s social responsibility mandate, the Foundation carefully

brokered a partnership that balanced differing agendas---humanitarian interest,

government ownership, shareholder anxiety, private sector visibility— with an end result

that provides Morocco’s most vulnerable children with new avenues of access to pre-school

and primary education. This program uses as its base the Ministry of Education’s official

curricula, adapted based on the needs of the student base and community context. In

addition to providing new avenues for education access through the construction of pre-

schools and primary schools, the program provides citizenship education, and schools built

using local resources and “architecture adapted to its environment” spaces.

4 Information provided is based on author’s field notes during three USAID missions to Morroco spanning

2003-2009

5 BMCE is one of the largest corporations on the Casablanca stock exchange with total assets of over $5 billion,

the BMCE Bank Group employs nearly 3,000 people in more than 200 branches throughout the country.

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The BMCE Bank Foundation has leveraged its base and mobilized a range of partners

and collaborators around a common agenda. For expertise in matters of pedagogy, adult

literacy and teacher training for example, partnerships with Morocco's National Education

Ministry and the Rene Descartes Paris V University have been cultivated.

Telecommunications firms are partnering with BMCE Foundation. The principality of

Monaco provided key early financial support for two schools in the southern regions of

Essaouira and Taroudant. In the north, Spain is supporting an additional two schools in the

regions of Al Hoceima and Nador, and the Spanish Telefonica Foundation is helping finance

a school in Tangier. Senegal's Health and Education Foundation has joined the foundation in

opening the first school outside of Morocco in Dakar. In another partnership, the Laureus

Sport for Good Foundation has contributed funding to integrate physical education and

sport in the curricula of the schools with a pilot project in the Marrakech region.

Sister banking institutions and their shareholders saw the transformational change

being made by BMCE bank and wanted to also give back to their communities. BMCE

created an “infectious model” of private sector support for education with other banks and

institutions now emulating its example. For example, Attijariwafbank provides scholarships

for university students and also helps in school rehabilitation. Banque Populaire has a

foundation involved in education. Zakoura Foundation has also supported elementary

education and pre-school education.

Cameroon6

In Cameroon despite relatively high national primary school enrollment rates (83% in

2008-09 and 87.9% in 2009-10), there are still major gender disparities in school attendance.

Compounding this situation, only 32% of Cameroon’s public schools have potable water and

only 45% have toilets (MINEDUB, 2011) and at least 30% of Cameroon’s population has to

fetch drinking water. These water carriers are mainly girls of school age but who are kept

away from school by tasks such as carrying water, looking after their siblings, or helping with

the farm. Of the children who begin primary education, over 45% drop out before the end

of the primary cycle with girls accounting for the large number of drop-outs.

This case study speaks to the tripartite partnership between UNICEF, Cameroon’s

Ministry of Basic Education and MTN (Mobile Telecommunications Network) Foundation7

6 Information gathered from author’s field reports (current posting is with UNICEF Cameroon)

7 Cameroon’s foremost cell-phone provider; headquartered in South Africa

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partnering in a direct response to water and sanitation (WASH) and girls’ education

disparities.

The first phase of the partnership aimed at improving student access to potable

water and sanitation facilities. An initial pilot study led to the construction of 6 wells

(providing potable water to 3,358 children) and the co-financing (UNICEF-MTN) of 3

classrooms in Sabongari-Ngangassaouo school in Cameroon’s Adamawa Region.

The partnership evolved and expanded to address the glaring gender disparities in

four of Cameroon’s most marginalized regions. Due to increasing gender disparities faced by

girls and in the face of new refugee migration and settlement patterns in Cameroon’s East

and Adamawa, MTN Foundation signed a new partnership which included an integrated

development program that provided drinking water and wells, toilets, new modular design

multipurpose rooms to include libraries and books, school supplies to include furniture and

textbooks, girls scholarships, community grants for school gardens.

Not only has this partnership resulted in infrastructure and scholarships for girls,

refugees and other vulnerable populations, it has also enabled improved public messaging

for back to school and hand-washing campaigns. The relationship has been carefully

cultivated and managed and Cameroon’s most vulnerable children are the ultimate

beneficiaries. (UNICEF, 2012)

MTN-UNICEF PPP: Lessons Learned

Monitoring and Evaluation

UNICEF’s comparative advantage was clearly visible when it came to monitoring,

evaluation and sustainability of infrastructure investments; this has been a struggle for most

donors and partners. School rehabilitation is often under par, and there are limited

government protocols for the monitoring and evaluating or to ensure sustainability of the

outcomes. Construction of water and sanitation infrastructure is sensitive; upon completion

there are no drinking water protocols to ensure consistent monitoring quality of the water

system for schools. The contamination of a well, even a year after donor engagement in the

project, poses not only a health hazard but negatively impacts on donor credibility in the

country.

MTN did not have any institutionalized protocols to address this problem; UNICEF as

a key partner to the government was able to: 1) set up an infrastructure task force chaired

by the two line ministries of Water Resources and Energy and Basic Education to serve in

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advisory capacity, 2) use leverage with the government resulting in the delegation of

government engineers to monitor infrastructure developments in the field ; and 3) Work

with the Ministry of Basic Education and the Ministry of Water Resources and Energy to

draft protocols for government monitoring and evaluation and sustainability of

rehabilitation and construction ventures.

UNICEF’s advantage in monitoring and evaluation was capitalized upon in the

implementation of an independent social survey to assess the impact of UNICEF

programming in the two regions to include the MTN-UNICEF program (Scientis, 2012)

Field based monitoring and evaluation ensured that infrastructure built was being put to

use. Field visits exposed students working outside locked classrooms, and toilets locked so

as to be kept in pristine condition. Regularly scheduled field monitoring enabled a rigorous

monitoring and evaluation modal

Communication and Advocacy

MTN’s comparative advantage in its communication strength was capitalized upon

by UNICEF. During Cameroon’s recent cholera outbreak, the partnership resulted in MTN’s

dissemination of the MINEDUB-UNICEF “our schools without cholera” campaign plus other

health and safety messages. This was done through an innovative SMS message campaign

whereby key health, safety and awareness messages were disseminated in both national

languages of English and French to all MTN subscribers. Given MTN’s base as the largest

phone company in the country, this ensured key message dissemination to the majority of

the country’s cell phone users.

MTN’s flexibility and means to disseminate key messages far outweighed UNICEF’s

communication channels. MTN’s communication advantage was further exemplified in its

creation of pubic visibility materials for the project. MTN has far superior advertising

expertise and their business is to capture the market share of clients. The partnership

enabled UNICEF to capitalize on MTN’s expert communication modalities with the end

result get key messages out to a wide audience.

Pilots Positioned for Scaling Up

Small pilots with the potential for going to scale as evidenced by the modular design

of the multipurpose room—MTN’s unrestricted financing allowed the MINEDUB and UNICEF

to design and implement pilot innovative multipurpose rooms in Bouam and Adinkol schools

in the East. This design offered the possibility to have 2 classrooms including a library with

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flexible partitions which could be expanded to make up one large room ideal for larger

training events and community discussions. This modular design is cost effective and

positioned for replication.

MTN support for ccommunity grants for school gardens as a part of the integrated

service package resulted in 7 community gardens. Within a few months, produce of the

school gardens was being harvested and being used to supplement school meals. This

innovation was possible due to the unrestricted nature of MTN funding and is a model that

is sustainable and already being replication neighbouring districts.

UNICEF’s Bureaucracy

Approval for UNICEF engagement with MTN took one year of discussion; UNICEF’s

New York headquarters had to vet MTN as a funding partner ahead of any formalization of

partnership. Once the approval was finalized, program implementation was able to move

forward swiftly. However, in construction implementation UNICEF construction

procurement protocols are bureaucratic. MTN interest in finalizing and branding its

infrastructure investments was slowed down by UNICEF procedures. UNICEF had to

announce the bid, receive tenders, choose a final provide and then launch the project with

phased payments to the contractor based on water and construction monitoring and

testing, while keeping 10% as a guarantee as a final pay-out to contractors 12 months after

the completion of construction. While this ensured an end product of high quality, the

timeline was not as fast as MTN Foundation would have wished; MTN shareholders and the

Foundation’s Board were anxious to see vulnerable children in their financed schools while

contractors had to adhere to UNICEF norms and protocols

Public Private Partnerships: Key Lessons

Public-private partnerships when carefully brokered combine the strengths of different

stakeholders to catalyze contributions to education objectives. Below are some additional

insights into PPP leveraging for social gain:

Communication: As evidenced by the MTN example, UNICEF capitalized upon the

communication side of MTN to design and disseminate key messages to an audience

MTN understands very well. MTN corporate has an ear on the Cameroonian client base,

and knows how to capture their attention with messaging, images and sound-bites far

more effectively than UNICEF Cameroon could hope to accomplish on its own. This is

evidenced in numerous other examples, for example Nike Foundation that was able to

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utilize strengths of its communication and advocacy team and create ate a user friendly

visual interface to get the energizing “Girl Effect” message that serves as a call for action

to lift adolescent girls out of poverty and make them future leaders 8. This video has

generated millions of views. This is the kind of partnership that brings the comparative

advantage of the corporate world to link up with corporate social responsibility and

make far reaching impact beyond what a traditional donor partnership. The selling

power private sector can provide is a key ingredient in this equation.

Measuring impact of communication and advocacy: While a clever communication and

advocacy campaign can be generated out of brilliant video of campaign, the role of the

implementing partner is to monitor and evaluate the impact of the communication

strategy. Strategic communication platforms need to ensure that changed behavior is

evidenced or changed policy depending on the anticipated outcome of the project (Julie

Coffman, 2003). Are we looking to effect behavior change or policy change, and what is

the measurement objective in the continuum of social mobilization? Without a clearly

articulated and measureable goals and impact measurements, a communication

campaign can fall flat on its face.

Monitoring and Evaluation. Assessments of bilateral public-private partnerships

question planning, governance, monitoring and evaluation, impact. (ICAI, Dewar et al).

Private sector does not have the technical capacity to monitor and evaluate education

outcomes. Moving outside communication theory and into standard monitoring and

evaluation frameworks, the “public” part of the PPP is its strength in identifying

measurable goals and outputs. For example, a program focused on “girls’

empowerment” should clearly identify interventions that will enable tracking,

monitoring, measuring and evaluating outcomes. Given that education interventions

are for the most part output driven, they are well positioned for rigorous impact

evaluation thus allowing stakeholders to have access to reliable quantitative

information.

Conclusion

The BMCE model illustrated direct engaged between a Foundation and government

to realize shared education objectives. In this model, BMCE’s position as a private sector

8 Ref: http://www.girleffect.org/video

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voice in Morocco gave BMCE Foundation the necessary credibility with the Ministry of

Education and Moroccan government at large to engage directly with their education

partnership. In the MTN-Ministry of Basic Education model, MTN Foundation did not have

the necessary leverage to engage directly with the government but recognized UNICEF’s

leadership in the education sector and its close partnership with the Ministry of Basic

Education. A careful cultivation of that relationship resulted in MTN Foundation-UNICEF

joint support to Cameroon’s Ministry of Basic Education to improve access to quality

education to Cameroon’s vulnerable children. This tripartite relationship took a year to

broker, but has already proven itself as a partnership to emulate.

It is clear that socially responsible public-private partnerships have a pivotal to play

in realizing development outcomes. However, the effectiveness and impact of public-

private partnerships lies in a clearly articulated joint strategy that exploits the comparative

advantage of each party while ensuring realistic outcomes and impacts with quantifiable

and measurable results.

About the author: Vijitha M. Eyango is currently UNICEF Cameroon’s Chief of Education. In addition to leading a core team of education specialists and administrative staff to support the Ministry of Basic Education’s education mandate, her focus has been on cultivating partnerships with bilateral, multi-lateral, private sector and civil society partners to achieve basic education outcomes. Prior to UNICEF, she was Senior Education and Gender Advisor for USAID’s Asia and Middle East Region, headquartered in Washington DC. Over a nine year period with USAID she designed, implemented and coordinated strategic education and gender programs in key countries of the region ranging from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Indonesia to Yemen and Morocco. Prior to USAID she was a professor at the University of California’s Graduate School of Education, Chair of UCLA’s Institute for the Study of Gender in Africa (ISGA) and Director of UCLA’s African Bibliography Project. She holds a PhD in International and Comparative Education from UCLA’s Graduate School of Education.

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