(A) comparative analysis of primary education projects in Malawi and Uganda : focusing on the accountability mechanism of the World Bank

2020년 2월

서울대학교 대학원

협동과정 글로벌교육협력 전공

이은정(Eunjeong LEE)

This research explores the accountability mechanism of the World Bank which has

been continuously used to provide education Official Development Assistance (ODA) to many

developing countries. With growing interest of the World Bank in education ODA, although

the Bank is not an education specialized institution that intensively researches and offers only

education projects to developing countries, it is necessary to analyze how the accountability

mechanism of the World Bank have influenced final outcomes of the education projects the

Bank provided for a certain period of time.

To answer this research question, this research takes a meta-evaluation of two

African primary education projects which are already implemented by the Bank. The projects

of Malawi and Uganda were implemented in a similar period of time for their primary

education development, but received the opposite results at the end of the projects. To

investigate why the two similar education project provided all by the Bank shows a difference

in their final outcomes, the Principal-agent theory is used to describe the actual relationship

between the donor (the Bank) and the recipients (the Governments of Malawi and Uganda)

from project design phase to evaluation phase. Also the three components of accountability

(United Nations, 2013) are used to analyze whether the Bank as well as the Governments of

Malawi and Uganda took a strong accountability and how the accountability mechanism of the

Bank affected the projects directly or indirectly to receive the opposite outcomes at the end.

Findings address weak accountability mechanism of the Bank in limited contexts

of Malawi and Uganda were the main cause of unsatisfactory project outcomes. The Bank did

not fully reflect the highest priorities of the recipients. And it heavily focused on increasing

quantitative gains rather than qualitative changes which actually promote sustainability of the

education projects. But, the reason why Uganda’s Primary Education and Teacher

Development Project (PETDP) shows relatively more satisfactory outcome was due to stronger

responsibility taken by the Bank than Malawi’s Primary Education Project (PEP), especially

from project design. However, findings also tell that the unsatisfactory outcomes of the

education projects were not caused only by poor accountability mechanism of the Bank. In fact,

the highly limited capacity of the Governments of Malawi and Uganda also contributed to their

poor achievements in their education projects.

With these findings, the qualitative study would provide practical contributions and

theoretical insights on education aid-providers as well as aid-receivers. The study cannot insist

that the accountability mechanism of the Bank and other institutions have become or will

become more agent-friendly and community-centered in education ODA. However, the study

highlights more accountable roles of the principal and the agent, who are the influential actors

for quality education at the international level, to promote more sustainable and satisfactory

education projects in future.