Following a high-level joint mission in Ethiopia, Nicolai Wammen, the Danish Minister of Finance and Global Champion for Education Cannot Wait (ECW), along with ECW Executive Director Yasmine Sherif, urged donors to take decisive action by exploring new and innovative financing solutions aimed at providing quality education for millions of children affected by crises in Ethiopia and beyond.
Currently, approximately 9 million children in Ethiopia are out of school due to ongoing violence, climate-related disasters, and widespread displacement, representing a dramatic threefold increase since 2022.
Nearly 18 percent of the country’s schools have either been destroyed or damaged. Additionally, Ethiopia is home to the third-largest refugee population in Africa, with over 200,000 new arrivals from Sudan and Somalia in the 2023-2024 period, further straining existing resources.
The ECW delegation visited the Tigray region, which is in the process of recovering from a three-year conflict that halted educational activities. They toured schools receiving funding from ECW and its strategic partners, engaging with children, parents, and teachers.
The delegation witnessed the tangible effects of ECW-supported programs carried out by UN agencies and international and local civil society organizations, including UNICEF, the Norwegian Refugee Council, Save the Children, and Imagine1Day, all in close partnership with the government.
In a single school, enrollment surged by an impressive 20 percent last year, attributed to a robust set of interventions financed by ECW. During the mission, Sherif revealed a new US$5 million First Emergency Response (FER) grant, which elevates ECW’s total contributions to Ethiopia to over US$93 million since 2017.
This new FER grant, with UNICEF receiving US$4 million and the local organization Imagine1Day allocated US$1 million alongside their consortium partners, is designed to meet urgent needs in the Oromia and Afar regions. These areas have recently faced renewed conflict, intercommunal violence, drought, and displacement, all of which have severely impacted educational services.
These emergency measures will complement the US$24 million Multi-Year Resilience Programme announced by ECW last month, which focuses on addressing needs in the Amhara, Somali, and Tigray regions.
To date, ECW’s combined multi-year and emergency funding in Ethiopia has benefited over 550,000 children and adolescents, offering a wide array of support services, including school rehabilitation, teacher training, mental health and psychosocial support, inclusive education, school feeding programs, gender-transformative initiatives, early childhood education, and more.
ECW prioritizes support for the most at-risk populations, including girls, children from refugee, displaced, and host communities, as well as those with disabilities.
The investments made by ECW are in accordance with the Ethiopia Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) and the Ethiopia Education Sector Development Programme VI.
ECW is urgently seeking additional funding to address the US$64 million shortfall necessary to meet the pressing educational needs outlined in the 2024 HRP.
