Two-thirds of the inhabitants of Djibouti, a small country in the Horn of Africa, live in the capital city. The rest, mostly nomadic herders, live in stony desert. There are wide disparities in the quality of education and learning outcomes between urban and rural areas. The government is also grappling with high dropout rates, high teacher wages and lack of data hindering expenditure management and policy decisions. In addition, youth are graduating with low skills for the labor market. Recent large projects in the country (for example, port expansion and hotel construction projects) have not generated many jobs for Djiboutians, failing to solve the country’s extremely high unemployment.
IDA is helping Djibouti devise several distinct strategies: (i) to provide schools for nomadic children in isolated rural areas, increase access and improve the quality of basic education; (ii) to ensure that training and education are aligned with the needs of the economy; and (iii) to improve the management and efficiency of the education system.
The percentage of students who have completed primary school without repeating a grade went from 52 percent in 2003/2004 to 71 percent in 2008/2009.
Highlights:
- Dropout rates have decreased overall. However, the dropout rate of 1.6 percent for girls is still greater than that of boys (0.8 percent).
- The Gross Enrollment Rate at the primary level reached 71 percent (67 percent for girls) in 2008/2009 compared to 52 percent in 2003/2004, according to the Planning Department of the Ministry of Education. At the middle school level, girls’ enrollment increased from 24 percent in 2003/2004 to 45 percent in 2008/2009. In 2008/2009, 86 percent of the 100,000 students in school were enrolled at the basic education level.
- Progress on improving the management and efficiency of the education system has been more mixed. Almost all schools now have a Parents Association or a School Management Committee. A surprising 90 percent of teachers have received in-service training between 2006 and 2009. However, non-salary recurrent expenditures have reached only 9.2 percent of the Ministry of Education’s budget in 2009, from a baseline of 6.6 percent in 2006 (failing to reach the Ministry’s 15 percent target), meaning teacher wages still dominate expenses.
- The education sector remains a government priority, receiving 23.3 percent of the state budget in 2009 (or 8.4 percent of GDP), very high relative to comparable countries.
- Investments in school infrastructure are bearing fruit but disparities remain. The current percentage of schools with electricity in urban areas is 97 percent, compared to only 49 percent in rural areas. In urban areas, 92 percent of schools have access to water vs. 73 percent in rural areas. The percentage of schools with separate restrooms for girls is 79 and 75 percent respectively for urban and rural areas.
- IDA’s Second School Access and Improvement Project (2006-2010), phase II of a US$30 million credit, is supporting the implementation of the Government’s education reform agenda. A third phase is expected to be in place in 2011, and will incorporate a greater focus on reaching the most underprivileged populations and improving skills for youth.
- IDA also provided over US$100,000 in technical assistance in 2008 to help the government prepare a skills development strategy in collaboration with the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) to improve the relevance of vocational training to the needs of the labor market and to improve the post-primary education and training possibilities so that Education For All (EFA) goals can be met.
In addition to IDA lending, the government received US$8 million under the Catalytic Fund of the Education for All-Fast Track Initiative Program (EFA/FTI) (2006-2010) to support activities complementary to the IDA project. The World Bank is managing this Trust Fund and monitoring its progress.
The Education Program Development Fund (EPDF), part of the EFA/FTI program is also providing US$150,000 to finance studies that have begun to improve data collection and analysis and will begin to address the efficiency and quality issues noted earlier.
A joint education donor-government technical committee meets regularly to monitor the progress in implementation of the education reform agenda and the Catalytic Fund (CF). In addition to IDA and CF, several partners (African Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank, France, Japan, US, the World Food Program and UNICEF) provide financial resources or technical support for the implementation of the education reform agenda, especially with regard to expanding access.
IDA will continue to work with the Ministry of Education and international donors to prepare the next Catalytic Fund request (2010) which will continue the focus on improving the quality of education by providing children with school supplies and provide schools with wells, solar panels, and dormitories for nomadic children, and put in place support for special needs children and school feeding programs.
Reinforcement of private sector partnerships has become a priority for the government in the past year. The Ministry of Education recently entered into a partnership with the Brazilian construction firm that built the new port in Djibouti to arrange for work/study internships for students in one of their technical/vocational high schools. The Ministry of Education is looking to expand this type of partnership in other sectors (likely to include tourism) with World Bank technical assistance.
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