Japan's Efforts for Support in Education Sector

June, 20, 2002
Ministry of Foreign Affairs

More than 100 million children are still out of schools and 880 million people remain illiterate in developing countries. In order to improve the situations which developing countries are now facing, World Education Forum held in Senegal in April 2000 adopted the Dakar Framework for Action that set concrete goals¹. Thus, the international community has been stepping up its efforts to strengthen the support in education sector. In order to positively take the lead in these efforts by the international community, Japan, as a country that has been historically invested in education as a basis of nation-building, will enhance its support to the efforts of developing countries for achieving the goals of the Dakar Framework for Action through the following.

(1) Enhanced support in education sector to low-income countries.
Japan will provide ODA in education sector over the next five years with the amount of more than 250 billion yen to give support to low-income countries² which have difficulty in achieving the Dakar goals.

(2) Strengthened cooperation in basic education sector
Basic education is indispensable to ensure a person's acquisition of knowledge, values, and skills that will be the basis for his or her life-long study. Based on this recognition, Japan will strengthen its cooperation through ODA in line with the Basic Education for Growth Initiative: BEGIN³ to give support to the efforts made by developing countries for Universal Primary Education.

Note.1
(1) Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education;
(2) Ensuring that by 2015 all children have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality;
(3) Ensuring that the learning needs of young people and adults are met;
(4) Achieving a 50 percent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015 and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults;
(5) Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005 and achieving gender equality in education by 2015;
(6) Improving the quality of education.

Note.2
Low-income countries refer to the 49 least development countries (LDC), and other 23 low income countries (OLIC) with the GNP per capita below $760, in the DAC list of Aid Recipients.

Note.3
BEGIN covers not only low-income countries but all developing countries.