23 May 2013
I am absolutely delighted to announce that in Washington today the Global Partnership for Education Board met and decided to grant Zimbabwe the sum of US$23,6 million for teacher retraining, professional development and performance, as well as capacity building for strategic planning, budgeting and monitoring of results.
This is a culmination of several years work involving the World Bank, our partners in the Education Transition Fund and Unicef. The GPE is the successor to the World Bank’s Fast Track Initiative (itself designed to promote investment in Education) a programme that Zimbabwe did not benefit from because of the years of political turmoil between 2000 and 2009. In 2011 I was invited to a meeting of the GPE in Denmark and first made the case for Zimbabwe’s admission to membership of the GPE. That was followed up with a meeting I had with the GPE in Washington in May 2012 which saw Zimbabwe admitted as a member of the GPE.
Since then we have been working closely with our partners in the World Bank, ETF and Unicef and produced a proposal for funding which has today been accepted.
When the programme commences it will focus on improving the skills of our existing teachers, most of whom have done years of service without any meaningful in house training and professional development. I believe that this programme will result in a marked improvement in the quality of teaching in Zimbabwe.
My gratitude is extended to our many friends in Unicef, the diplomatic community and the World Bank who have helped us secure this critically important funding.