Finance Minister Augustine Kpehe Ngafuan has called for stronger accountability in Liberia’s education sector, stressing that public resources must follow the people and activities directly responsible for educating Liberian children.
Speaking Tuesday during the Executive Budget Hearing with the Ministry of Education, the University of Liberia, Tubman University and other county-based universities, Minister Ngafuan said the government must do more than simply allocate money to the education sector. He said it must also be able to track how those resources are being used, particularly in classrooms.
“We need to track what’s happening in the classrooms because if we pay those who aren’t in the classrooms, they are taking away money from those in the classrooms,” Minister Ngafuan said.
His remarks placed a human face on the government’s broader effort to make the national budget more focused on results, accountability and value for money.
For Minister Ngafuan, the issue is not simply how much money the government allocates to education, but whether those resources are reaching the people and institutions where they can make a meaningful difference.
He said the ongoing Executive Budget Hearings are intended to help the Ministry of Finance assess what ministries and agencies have accomplished with resources appropriated under the current budget, while identifying their core priorities going forward.
“What I’m going to do is to clear out many entities to understand quickly what they’ve done with resources appropriated in the current budget and to understand the core priorities going forward,” he said.
The Finance Minister’s message comes as the government reviews competing demands from ministries, agencies, universities and other public institutions ahead of the preparation of the next national budget.
Minister Ngafuan acknowledged that government resources remain limited despite progress in domestic revenue mobilization, saying Liberia cannot afford to finance every request at the level being sought.
That reality, he said, makes prioritization and accountability essential.
He urged education authorities and institutions to help the government make difficult choices by identifying areas where limited public resources can have the greatest impact.
His classroom-focused argument was straightforward: resources intended for education should ultimately strengthen teaching and learning rather than be absorbed by individuals or activities that are not contributing to the work for which the funds were appropriated.
Minister Ngafuan also challenged the notion that improved educational outcomes are simply a matter of allocating more money.
“It’s not a matter of how much, it’s a matter of how well,” he stressed.
He explained that two institutions could receive similar levels of funding but produce different results depending on how the money is allocated, how their teams perform and how effectively the resources are executed.
That, he said, is why the budget process must go beyond examining figures and instead consider performance, implementation and measurable results.
The Finance Minister illustrated the challenge using the example of a parent with five children but enough resources to send only three to school.
Rather than leaving the decision entirely to the parent providing the resources, he said ministries and agencies that understand their own needs best should help determine which priorities deserve attention first.
“You know those children better than we do,” he told entities participating in the budget hearings.
The education-sector hearing is part of a broader series of Executive Budget Hearings being conducted by the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning as the government works toward the October 31 deadline for submission of the national budget.
Minister Ngafuan indicated that the government is determined not only to meet the statutory deadline but also to submit a budget that reflects Liberia’s actual priorities and available resources.
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