Public Expenditure Review of the Education Sector in the Democratic Republic of Congo: An Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Equity Analysis. Report No. ACS14542

A sound education sector is fundamental for the economic, social, and political transformation of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The DRC has achieved significant progress in its education sector over the last decade, demonstrating strong resilience following a particularly violent period in its history. The DRC's development trajectory will depend on its ability to reap the benefits of it resource-rich territory, which will require large investments in human capital to transition to an economy based on improved productivity, innovation, and technology. The DRC's population has a very large youth cohort and reaping the benefits of the demographic dividend requires ensuring that sufficient funding is allocated to address priority issues at all levels of education. The three tenets of education investments can be summarized as follows: invest early, invest smartly, and invest for all. This report is organized into following sections: section one gives introduction, section two discusses the country context in terms of demographic dividends and available fiscal space for increasing social sector demand. Section three provides an overview of the education sector context including a chronological order of education sector policies, goals, priorities, and structure. Section four analyzes key indicators of education sector performance. Section five analyzes education sector financing including budget framework and process, the key actors, sources of funding, trends of public expenditure, budget allocation and execution, equity, affordability, and unit cost analyses. Section six examines education sector management issues focusing on efficiency and effectiveness of resources utilization. Section seven presents summary of main findings and policy recommendations. The annex section is divided into four segments including a methodological note, supporting tables, figures, and boxes for the sections. ["The Public Expenditure Review (PER) of the Education Sector in the Democratic Republic of Congo" was prepared by a World Bank Group team consisting of Kebede Feda, Tanya Savrimootoo, Élisé Wendlassida Miningou, and Sabiti Kalindula. This report was translated into French by Aude DiPaolantonio.]