Sierra Leone: Selected Issues
IMF Staff Country Reports, April 17, 2020
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- Sierra Leone: Selected Issues
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Bibliographic details
- Published: April 17, 2020
- Series: IMF Staff Country Reports
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9781513541310.002
Summary findings on education and macroeconomic impact
- Boosting education and its quality for all children yields substantial macroeconomic gains.
- The results indicate the macroeconomic benefits of education could be substantial, in the order of up to 40 percent of gross domestic product in the long run.
- Several factors currently within and beyond the education sector constrain efforts that could effectively reap the economic benefits from education.
Policy priorities and recommendations
- Equalizing access to education emerges as a critical goal for shared prosperity across the population.
- Attaining free secondary education for all is identified as a critical long-run objective.
- With limited fiscal space and vast challenges in the sector, evidence-based prioritizing, sequencing and targeting of policies is critical.
- Careful monitoring of education spending and its impacts will help reassess programs and priorities going forward.
- Enhancing the governance of the sector to ensure that spending is well-aligned with needs in the various levels is important.
- Tackling the education challenge will require coordinated work to overcome hurdles in several sectors.
Implementation considerations and constraints
- Investments in the sector will take time to yield results, creating a need for sustained, multi-pronged policy interventions.
- Several factors both within and beyond the education sector constrain effective implementation of policies that would capture the economic benefits from education.
Content in this bundle
- Sierra Leone: Selected Issues; IMF Country Report No. 20/117; March 24, 2020