Successive political promises have been made since 1961 to ensure that all children have access to education in the region. None has been realized.

This section of the report documents the reality whereby fifteen of forty-four countries have no policy commitment to free primary education at all. It also shows some of the underlying causes of for-fee education in the region, including the regressive ideological shift encouraged by the World Bank, away from the previous model of education as a free public service, towards a free market of education. This shift triggered the re-design of public education, opened the door to creeping privatization and introduced “user fees”.

Uniformly low educational enrolments in countries where charges are levied and much higher enrolments in countries that have made a commitment to free education tell the most important part of the story, as detailed in this report. The phenomenon of enrolment explosions triggered by announcements of free education has shown how big a barrier the fees, charges and other contributions are for poor children, who are the majority of Africa’s population.

Out of 45 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, only three - Botswana, Mauritius and Seychelles - fully guarantee free primary education. By no coincidence, they are also cited as African economic successes. In 12 countries, governments have committed themselves to making primary education free in recent years. However, the general picture remains that in too many Sub-Saharan African countries public primary education should be but is not free. The experience in human rights work is that overcoming the denial that a problem exists is the first and the most difficult hurdle. Acknowledgment of a problem leads to seeking solutions, both national and international.

For this region as in all others, governmental commitments are examined by comparing their fiscal priorities. The yardstick is based on widespread acknowledgment that excessive military expenditure distorts governmental budgets and investment in education suffers. Indeed, available data for the past decade and for this one highlight distorted priorities in Angola, Ethiopia or Sudan, and point to the priority given to education in Lesotho, Namibia or Seychelles.