Financing the Foundations
Public investment in early childhood development in Eastern and Southern Africa
Highlights
This policy note examines the level of public spending on early childhood development (ECD) in Eastern and Southern Africa and finds persistently low levels of investment, alongside fragmentation and weak prioritization.
Estimates from global databases show spending rose from the early 2000s to around 2014 following stronger policy attention and expanded service delivery, then plateaued at low levels. Detailed budget analysis shows that identifiable allocations are lower still and often minimal, especially for early learning and other non-health domains. This divergence between global data and visible budget book allocations reflects both measurement issues and structural weaknesses in how spending is organized across sectors.
ECD financing is dispersed and inconsistently executed, and the full picture is obscured, limiting the ability to assess how much is truly being invested in early childhood. However, across both approaches, the underlying signal is consistent: spending patterns do not reflect strong evidence that early childhood investments generate the greatest impact on human capital development.
The report reinforces calls to reprioritize and rebalance spending toward the early years, and notes that strengthening ECD investment requires clearer prioritization, better coordination across sectors, improved execution, and a clear focus on a limited set of high-impact interventions to better align spending with this high-return stage of human development.
