Project or programme title: Sector Project on Education
Commissioned by: German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
Country: Global
Lead executing agency: German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
Overall term: 2020 to 2023
Education is a human right – and a lever for sustainable development. A well-educated population is the basis for poverty reduction, long-term economic growth and social development. Education has a positive impact on the health of families, strengthens the role of women and enables social and economic participation.
Over the past few decades, successes in international education cooperation have been achieved worldwide. Nevertheless, the lack of access to high-quality education remains an urgent challenge along the entire education chain.
With its education strategy, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) is taking a holistic approach that includes all areas and forms of education: early childhood education, primary school education, secondary school education, vocational training, university education and adult education as well as formal and informal education. This is consistent with the concept of lifelong learning that is anchored in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
BMZ supports the implementation of the international education goal (Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4): ‘Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life-long learning opportunities for all’ through contributions that impact several countries and are implemented in selected cooperation countries.
BMZ and German development cooperation contribute to achieving the education objective of the 2030 Agenda.
The supraregional project (sector project) advises and supports the BMZ Education Division on implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in particular SDG 4. To this end, the project contributes to BMZ’s strategies, methods and approaches in all areas of education except vocational training. It advises BMZ on identifying innovative education topics and taking on a pioneering role for German development cooperation in the area of international policy.
The project creates working and strategy papers based on environment observations and comments and also develops basic concepts. These are incorporated into global discussion, particularly multi-state cooperation. In addition, the project handles BMZ’s contacts, expert dialogue and networking with relevant players in the education sector.
The key implementation partners include the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), the Education Cannot Wait Fund (ECW), the Global Partnership for Gender Equality in the Digital Age (EQUALS), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the German Commission for UNESCO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the European Commission and a number of state donors. The project also advises various university education and scientific institutions and is setting up a BMZ service point.
Priority areas of the project are the cross-cutting issues of digitalisation, displacement and crises, the environment and gender equality.
Latest update: October 2020