As the architecture of international development financing undergoes a fundamental re-evaluation amid growing budgetary constraints and rising expectations on education systems, the question of aid effectiveness can no longer remain peripheral.

What was once considered a technical debate has now become a strategic, political and ethical imperative. The logic of “more funding” as a solution has reached its limits. It is now essential to rethink how to fund better.

Yet education aid remains largely structured around project-based approaches—well-intentioned, but often isolated and implemented in silo. This fragmentation of funding can weaken public administrations, dilute accountability and hinder the systemic transformations required for sustainable improvements in education systems.

Aid fragmentation: A widely shared diagnosis

Twenty years after the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, its core principles—ownership, alignment, harmonization, results-based management and mutual accountability—are more relevant than ever. However, their implementation remains marginal.

In partner countries, this trend often results in the multiplication of external project management units, parallel procedures and temporary structures. Significant resources are mobilized for short-term interventions that are not always embedded in national strategies.

In many cases, these projects replace rather than reinforce existing systems, making it difficult to sustain and scale up progress. Often, they are not integrated into national budgetary or regulatory frameworks.

Aligned pooled funds: A credible and operational alternative

In response to these limitations, aligned pooled funds in education offer a concrete and structuring alternative. Designed to support national policies through existing public systems, they help reconcile transformation ambitions with implementation realities.

Aligned pooled funds bring the principle of alignment to life—not only in terms of national priorities, but also by anchoring aid in national procedures, rules and institutional processes. The degree of alignment—measured through GPE’s 7 criteria —is particularly high in this approach, setting aligned pooled funds apart from forms of delivering aid.

Aligned pooled funds also operationalize the principle of harmonization by allowing multiple donors to pool their contributions within a unified framework governed by common rules.

Funds are planned, executed and monitored through national public financial management systems thereby enhancing coherence, transparency and spending efficiency.

On the African continent alone, this collaborative force is already visible: 11 financial partners support aligned pooled funds for education in Mozambique, 8 in Niger, 6 in Burkina Faso and 3 each in Madagascar and Guinea.

For both donors and partner countries, transaction costs are reduced and policy dialogue becomes more streamlined, effective and transparent through this collective approach.

A progressive transformation of practice

Experience shows that aligned pooled funds gradually but deeply transform relationships and practices among development partners.

By integrating external funding into national decision making and budgetary systems, aligned pooled funds strengthen institutional capacity, support a more structured sector dialogue and promote shared accountability.

Potential capacity gaps are identified early and addressed jointly with national administrations.

To achieve this, technical assistance can support the core functions of a functioning public administration.

Aligned pooled funds often focus support on key areas such as planning, budgeting, procurement, financial management, internal control mechanisms and monitoring and evaluation—with a long-term objective of institutional autonomy and capacity strengthening.

Responsibility for implementation is fully delegated to ministries and public services. This principle is rooted in a central objective: to enable progressive and sustainable empowerment of national institutions which is essential for improving transparency, governance and public resource management.

Tangible results at national scale

With support from GPE, aligned pooled funds are already delivering encouraging results across diverse national contexts:

• In Niger, the aligned pooled fund subsidized over 8,000 schools in 2021, reaching nearly 2 million students through a harmonized national framework.
• In Madagascar, for the first time, external resources now flow through the national public accounting system, enabling the financing of 33,000 public schools from primary to lower secondary levels.
• In Guinea, the aligned pooled fund has supported decentralization by funding the National Agency for Local Government Financing (ANAFIC) which is responsible for primary school construction. This mechanism is based on a jointly negotiated financial and operational framework representing a major step forward in interministerial coordination.

These examples illustrate the ability of aligned pooled funds in education to support national-scale interventions, including in fragile contexts, while also facilitating the implementation of structural reforms. By working through national systems, they promote more equitable, context-sensitive and country-led financing mechanisms.

Reviving the aid effectiveness agenda

The Financing for Development (FfD4) conference in Seville provides a critical opportunity to put aid effectiveness back at the center of education financing. The transition to more aligned, better coordinated and more accountable aid modalities is not a technical preference—it is a political necessity to increase impact, restore trust and improve outcomes.

Aligned pooled funds in education offer a credible pathway for combining systemic transformation with financial accountability and good governance. They embody a model of cooperation based on partnership, transparency and respect for local institutions.

Repoliticizing aid effectiveness, reinvesting in national systems

It is time to fully embrace the political dimension of aid effectiveness. This means moving beyond short-term, visibility-driven interventions that have shown their limits both in terms of development outcomes and donor influence. Instead, international aid must adopt a more coherent, strategic and nationally anchored approach.

Aligned pooled funds provide a compelling example of how this can be achieved in practice.

By supporting national systems instead of bypassing them, by strengthening institutional capacity instead of substituting it and by fostering coordinated efforts instead of fragmented ones, aligned pooled funds in education offer a concrete and sustainable pathway toward more effective equitable, and impactful education financing.