Youth Employment Programs - Independent Evaluation Group

Box E.1Africa Schools ProgramIFC supports private primary and secondary schools in Africa through its Africa Schools Program.The overarching objective of the program is to help improve the educational quality andfinancial and managerial capacity of private K–12 schools in select Africa countries. IFC supportcombines investment and advisory services. The investment component of the programcontains a risk-sharing facility with the banks. The risk sharing enables the bank(s) to developa medium-term lending program for private schools. The accompanying technical assistanceprogram is designed to prepare schools to borrow from the formal sector. Technical assistancealso provides advice to the banks, which have limited experience in the education sector. Ithas also been designed to improve the business environment to support investments in privateschools. The first of these facilities was approved in Ghana and then expanded to Kenya,Rwanda, Uganda, and Liberia.The program has generally reached its objective of capacity building of schools. Thus far, theresults of the parallel Advisory-Investment program in Ghana and Kenya have not met theaccess-to-finance targets, critical to the overall success of the program. The school facility inGhana was expected to reach about 50 schools by 2009, However, the program reached only 25beneficiary schools and the technical assistance program was closed in June 2011. Similarly,the facility in Kenya in 2010 reached 9 schools compared to a target of 100, and the number ofnonperforming loans in the facility exceeds the target of five. Therefore, the current risk-sharingfacility is on hold with the bank. The program is having difficulty in finding other partnerbanks that can extend loans to schools. In Rwanda, the program has been successful in reachingits target number of facilities, and it has fewer nonperforming loans than expected.Source: IFC Africa School Projects Documents.Figure E.4Distribution of IFC Advisory Services ProjectsA. By Regon B. By Business LineWorld11%East AsiaandPacific6%Europe andCentral Asia0%Latin Americaand theCaribbean6%Investmentclimate11%Middle EastandNorth Africa17%Sustainablebusinessadvisory50%Public-privatepartnershipstransaction39%Sub-SaharanAfrica56%Source: IFC Internal Database as June 2011.130 Youth Employment Programs