Ei-iE

Gorgui Sow is the Regional Coordinator of the African Network Campaign on Education for All (ANCEFA), and a board member of the Global Campaign for Education (GCE). EI recently interviewed Mr. Sow to find out about ANCEFA's efforts to contribute to the achievement of quality Education for All.

1. Why is it important that unions and civil society work together on EFA?

The campaign to achieve the EFA goals can only succeed if it has the full involvement of the teachers unions. This is a ‘condition sine qua non’ in order to have a sustainable impact on the national and international levels. So it is very important to build a broad platform involving the various segments of civil society - one that speaks with one voice!

2. Global Action Week 2007 marks the halfway point to 2015 and the intended achievement of the EFA goals: what is GCE’s major success story to date?

We have managed to pressurise the international community to launch the Fast Track Initiative (FTI). It is not yet global, nor is it perfect, but it has led to the design of a framework to deliver spending commitments. Now we see governments in Least Developed Countries (LDCs) launching education reforms that are leading to an improvement in planning and monitoring.

3. What is the biggest EFA-related challenge to Africa?

The biggest issue is the need to increase funding for education and to assure national accountability on educational spending. The GCE is calling on governments to allocate at least 6% of their GDP to education and half of that to basic education. This is a challenge because at this moment over 60% of African Governments are investing less than 3% of GDP in education.