On the creation of Adam: what debt relief means for education in the DRC

Danny Cassimon, Tom De Herdt and Karel Verbeke ()

No 2015.06, IOB Working Papers from Universiteit Antwerpen, Institute of Development Policy (IOB)

Abstract: In this paper, we assess to what extent large-scale debt relief, irrevocably granted to DRC in 2010 after a decade long bumpy process, has impacted on post-conflict reconstruction, governance and public service delivery in the country, more particularly in the education sector. In principle, this link potentially works through two main channels, one being increased overall resource availability, the other one through imposed conditionality to receive the debt relief. We show that resource availability indeed increased for the sector, with positive effects on e.g. teacher wages and pupil enrolment, but it did little in improving pro-poor service delivery in education. The latter is complicated by the political economy of the education sector, characterized by a system that basically transforms schools into tax points (through school fees, rather than being financed by transfers from the central level) with redistribution of proceeds to all stakeholders, a system that was rather reproduced, instead of challenged or reversed during the recent period of debt-relief induced resource hikes and conditionalities.

Keywords: debt relief; education; Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative; HIPC; Democratic Republic of Congo; DRC; pro-poor spending (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2015-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iob:wpaper:201506

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