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Opportunity EduFinance
Level 18, 100 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 1GT

Telephone: +44 (0) 7768599834

© 2024 Opportunity International Education Finance functions under its US and UK affiliates. Opportunity International United Kingdom is registered as a charity in England and Wales (1107713) and in Scotland (SCO39692). Opportunity International United Statesis a 501(c)3 nonprofit.

Latest Blog

Accountability, EduFinance, and UNESCO's GEM Report

by Opportunity International

The UNESCO Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report has just published its first annual edition, reporting this year on sustainability in education, and we’ll be posting our thoughts about it later this week.  This report serves as oversight for education-related Sustainable Development Goals. In the meantime work continues at GEM on next year’s report, which will focuses on Accountability. Accountability is a cornerstone for our EduFinance work, and we therefore contributed our findings to…

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School Loans, Job Creation, and the Advancement of Low-Income Communities

by By Nathan Byrd, Head of Education Finance

In a new third-party analysis of 94 Ugandan schools accessing Opportunity EduFinance loans, the resulting school growth created an average of 18.6 additional jobs within the community. How Schools Expand When a school builds new classrooms, dormitories and other infrastructure, the school requires more staff to manage these facilities including teachers, dorm monitors, security guards, and cooks among others. When a school purchases a school bus, it requires more staff such as drivers – and, as…

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Microfinance boosts education for 44,000 Ugandan girls

by Opportunity International

For too long, microloans in the education sector were difficult, unprofitable, and unsustainable. Cash flows were irregular, the returns on investment took time. And lenders could not stomach the risks.  But big data, our ability to collect and analyse large amounts of information, has minimised this risk, lifting our loan repayment rates to 99 percent and opening new possibilities for education microfinance. In 2014, we launched a three-year education microfinance project in Uganda, with funding…

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Consigning the cane to history

by Opportunity International

For as long as anyone can remember, many teachers in Ghana have relied on the cane to control their classroom. These days it has become more frowned upon, however the practice is not yet illegal and remains widespread. How best to see corporal punishment banished from the country’s schools? Opportunity EduFinance’s work with its Self Improving Schools System (SISS) in Ghana has shown that facilitating peer-to-peer professional development and support is one very effective way, by letting school…

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Big data means investors should look again at African education

by Nathan Byrd, Head of Opportunity EduFinance

As delegates gather in Kigali for the World Economic Forum on Africa this week, they may be encouraged to hear how the digital revolution can help transform Africa’s education systems. It cannot happen fast enough. Despite impressive progress, some 30 million children in Africa are out of school and this number appears to be growing. At least part of this crisis comes from a lack of funding for education. African governments spend an average 18 percent of their total spending on education, higher…

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Microfinance helps build a school, create jobs in coastal Ghana

by Opportunity International

The latest figures from UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report remind us how donor aid can be so capricious, even for something as critically important as education. Released on Monday, April 25th, UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report estimates that from 2013 to 2014, global aid to education dropped 4 percent to US$13.1 billion. That means that the world now needs to find an extra US$39 billion per year to achieve universal pre-primary, primary and secondary education of good…

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Aid drops for education, shows microfinance is needed

by Opportunity International

Comfort grew up in a fishing community on Ghana’s sunny Atlantic Ocean coast. Most people worked with fisheries, but Comfort wanted to teach. She began by teaching three children on her front porch. And when she told her family she was going to start a school, they asked her: “Hey Mum, are you sure that you can do it?” Today, Comfort runs an academy with 800 children and 40 teachers plus a nursery school next door. To get there, she took a microloan from Ghana’s Opportunity Bank. This first…

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