The World Bank, jointly with itspartners, the governments of France, Ireland and Norway, andlater with Education Program Development Fund (EPDF) supportwith technical support from the Pole de Dakar andCooperation Francaise/AFD, launched AGEPA as a regionalpilot program in five countries in 2003/2004. Thiscompletion report provides an overview of the technicalassistance activties, outputs and lessons learned; and thefinancials of the initiative. The following provides thesector context for the initiative. At the current stage ofthe Education for All (EFA) process, better management andaccountability at the local, school and classroom levelsplay an essential role in raising education quality andreaching universal primary school completion. Since 2002,Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries have made considerableprogress in access to education, with primary completionrates increasing from 49 percent in 2000 to 60 percent in2006.However, the advances in primary completion are notsufficient to achieve the EFA goals, and education qualityremains very weak. Though more than 90 percent of Africanchildren enter primary education, only two-thirds of thosereach the final grade. Moreover, only 50 percent of studentsmaster the basic competencies the system set out to teachthem at the end of primary schooling. Building institutionalcapacity at all levels of the system is also essential forthe success of policies such as decentralization,school-based management and school grants that mostcountries in the region have adopted in recent years.African education policy makers and local educationadministrators (inspectors, school directors etc.)increasingly emphasize that the implementation of EFA plansat the grassroots level remains a major challenge.
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