11th
World Bank Funding for English Language Improvement Centres: Big Money, Little Supervision
The World Bank identified three areas of higher education in Ethiopia to be improved in General Education Improvement Programme (GEQUIP): English Language Improvement Centres (ELICs), the Higher Diploma Programme and Continual Professional Development. Huge amounts of money were allocated to these areas to provide new materials and equipment and after nearly two years since the colleges and universities submitted their list of desired items, the money came through in January. Suddenly teachers and purchasers from institutions all over Ethiopia were racing to cities to spend the money. The money should have been used to buy the items listed by the institutions and on nothing else – reports had to be submitted and receipts shown to account for the spending. Although these guidelines were in place, most of the volunteers I know were dubious about the success of this funding programme. Would appropriate things be bought? Would the institutions stick to the list? Would the items be given to the right people in the right departments? Etc.
As an ELIC Coordinator, I was determined to be as involved as possible to make sure this was done right and that the ELIC at the Nekemte Teacher Training College benefited fairly from the funding. Before the money arrived I badgered the vice dean to see the proposed list for the ELIC so that the English teachers could know what they should be getting. I was pleased with some of the items – one-thousand pounds for books, a laminator, an LCD projector, a scanner, a laptop, a printer with lots of toner – but equally baffled by others, like a four-thousand pound duplicating machine, fifty headphone sets (we have one computer and no MP3 players or walkmans), a TV (already got one) and a VCR (already got one and a DVD player. Besides, even in Ethiopia people don’t use VCRs anymore). It looked like a list that had been made half-heartedly and then tinkered with. However, it would be a great boost for an already well-stocked English centre.
The most important items on the list for me were the books and luckily I was able to choose them myself with the help of another English teacher, Fikre-Maryam. We spent two days in Addis Ababa piling up grammar books, dictionaries, course books, story books, and teaching books and after some long hours in cafes waiting for the money men to arrive, the deal was done, money exchanged and books loaded. I’d heard book-buying horror stories from other volunteers involving multiple trips to identical books stores to obtain quotes for a single book and then return trips to finally buy the cheapest. You can see why bureaucratic process like these pro formas are put in place, and they may well help to limit some corruption and inefficient spending, but they are frustrating, time-consuming and often illogical. For instance, me and my counterpart, Teressa, visited the same chain of bookstore in Nekemte, Mega Books, (owned by the Prime Minister’s wife) and found many of the books we ended up buying in Addis and for the same price from the same chain. But because of the pro forma policy, we weren’t allowed to buy on our doorstep, we had to check prices at least in three different stores. As it happened, after visiting only two Mega Books stores in Addis, the purchasers through the rule book out the window and decided we could just buy without a pro forma. Great, but couldn’t we have done that in Nekemte and saved two days travel, three nights in a hotel, etc.? Yes, but as far as I was concerned, we’d been lucky and the process had been relatively painless.
Indeed, that was the easiest part. The next hurdle was having someone to sign for the items – not only the three-hundred and seventy-six books we’d bought, but the other electrical equipment that was on the list (although we had no idea how much of it had been purchased). As a volunteer with only five months left in the country, I couldn’t sign and, for capacity building purposes, I didn’t want to sign. The college had to be responsible and find its own solutions. But nobody wanted that responsibility and, to be honest, I could sympathise. I too would hesitate to sign for more than ten-thousand pounds worth of items in a work environment where there is no allowance for wear-and-tear and blame is quickly attributed, often resulting in court appearances and huge fines. The onus is on the signer and once the ink hits the paper, they are on their own. The institution appears to provide no support. Herein lies the problem. Even after materials are signed for, they often not made available for general use for fear of being damaged or stolen. Books are locked away from students and computers sit on top of cupboards. Common sense gives way to hefty rules and regulations borne from a lack of trust. Development slows to a crawl and chances are missed. This was our problem. Weeks went by with no decision from the English department and the materials stayed locked in the storeroom. I was anxious to get it sorted as I knew other people would be eyeing up our equipment. The dean threatened that if no one stepped forward, the books would be put into the library where they would effectively be useless. The Nekemte TTC library, like most others in universities and colleges around the country, does not allow students to browse the books or even get near to them. From the other side of the counter, the student must tell an assistant – who knows little about the books – what they want and hope that the assistant finds it or even knows where to look on the muddled shelves. Students tell me they rarely find what they are looking for. Again, a lack of trust. I think one of the best things about the ELIC is that students have full access to books and that there is someone to point them in the right direction. Self discovery is important. If the new English books were diverted to the library, the ELIC would lose its purpose and the students wouldn’t benefit at all.
Finally, after many meetings – some informal and farcical, others more formal and frustrating – Hailu Degaga, an older, impatient and slightly deaf English teacher, stepped forward to say he would sign. On one condition: that he get the laptop for his own use. Although this was blatantly wrong, it meant that the books would come to the ELIC along with the other things. It was two months since we’d bought the books and it was a relief to see Hailu Degaga leading a troop of students into the ELIC with three-hundred and seventy-six new books. However, the storeroom hadn’t been kind to them – they were caked in dust, corners were bent and some covers even torn. I spent days cleaning them with the help of a few students. Now, thankfully, they are on the shelves and being used every day by students of all subjects. On average about fifteen different students come every day to do assignments, to look at the dictionaries, read football magazines, or generally to pass the time talking in English.
The other equipment however, was more difficult to get. Even though we had Degaga on board to sign, it was still a struggle to get to the goods – ‘relevant’ people were often not around, Degaga was often not around, and we were repeatedly sent away empty-handed. When we did finally bust open the storeroom, we learned that the laptop had already been taken by (or given to) the IT teacher and that we weren’t allowed to take some of the other key items. The one thing they were willing to hand over was the huge box of fifty headphone sets that sat redundantly in the middle of the room. This was one of those moments in which you curse and denounce the country, believing that it’s a perfect example of everything that’s wrong with it. I went to the dean with a clear, strong letter demanding our items – this was not a personal mission of material gain, it was about fairness in receiving what was planned and allocated and keeping other people’s troughs out. The dean looked at my list and casually informed me that he’d taken the colour printer with all the toner cartridges. Indeed it sat next to him, still wrapped in plastic. The money for the duplicator had been used to buy different things for other teachers and the laptop he explained by saying ‘well, you and the English teachers were too slow’. Well, why don’t we take all staff members onto the playing field a have a huge punch-up and then the winner takes everything? After laughing nervously at my suggestion, he tried to convince me that the list they submitted was never really meant for the ELIC. The college just saw the funding programme as a chance to get more materials for the college as a whole. While I understand that institutions are chronically under funded, the World Bank had identified three distinct areas to fund and the dean was flagrantly disregarding this and even blaming the programme for limiting the funds. My blood boiled – couldn’t he just appreciate the huge amount of money that was being spent to improve parts of his college? No, it seems he couldn’t. And he couldn’t resist that colour printer either and accept anyone else having it.
By chance – and out of the blue – two officials from the Ministry of Education came to visit the ELIC the next day and were very interested in the management of the World Bank money. Although the majority of their observations and recommendations were unhelpful, they did confront the dean on the management of the GEQIP materials, which made him squirm and give excuses like a naughty kid caught pinching someone else’s bike. Disappointingly the Ministry officials didn’t press the issue and the colour printer remains in his office. However, the laminator, the TV, the scanner and CD stereo are now in the ELIC. All we need now is a working multi-plug! The last one I pleaded for fused after two weeks. Made in China (the low end stuff), as everything else is here.
Last week, with the new additions to the ELIC sitting in boxes around me – I have no idea where to put the fifty sets of headphones – I got word that we had to draw up a new list of items for the next round of GEQIP funding by the end of the day. Great, I thought, this time we could request more sensible things: fewer bells and whistles and more practical materials like stationary and good quality multi-plugs. We had one afternoon of no electricity to scrawl down a list by hand. Long after I’m gone the money for these items will again be handed to the college, but who knows what squabbling, diverting, and mistreatment will lay between the items and the ELIC.
My experience highlighted a few of the problems with the GEQIP funding programme, i.e. inappropriate selection of materials, responsibility for materials and the distribution of materials. But I’ve heard of many more and even during an ELIC conference at the Ministry of Education, we learned that reports that we (the ELIC Coordinators) should have written about the GEQIP materials had already been submitted by our institutions without our knowing (presumably stating that all materials had been bought and given to us). Both the World Bank and the Ethiopian Government should do far more to guide, support and monitor the institutions in the spending of funds of this scale. Without it it’s like a free-for-all scramble amongst children. It’s heart-breaking to see these opportunities go missed.
