The 2024 MCA awards in London chose Girls’ Education South Sudan (GESS) as an International Project of the Year. The other finalists in the category included IBM, Stantec, and KPMG.
This recognition is a testament to the huge contributions the GESS program has made in the over 10 years of its implementation across South Sudan, and the continued support of the GESS donors. Over the years, GESS has supported the education of girls and those on the margins of society through different interventions.
A pioneering program led by Mott MacDonald has helped to double the number of girls enrolled in education in Africa’s youngest nation, The Times reported in a supplement.
South Sudan is a new country – it only formally came into existence in 2011, after a 2005 peace agreement ended decades of civil war in Sudan. But it has faced a problem familiar to many older nations: too few children, particularly girls, can go to school, limiting their life chances and perpetuating cycles of poverty.
The Girls’ Education South Sudan (GESS) program is an initiative supporting the country’s government to address the issue head-on. Over two phases to date – beginning in 2013 and 2019 – a team of partners led by Mott MacDonald’s specialist education consultancy Cambridge Education has been working towards several goals.
These include reducing barriers to education access, improving enrolment, and accelerating educational attainment for all children, especially girls and marginalized youngsters such as those with disabilities.
“We operate across the whole of South Sudan, working with technical and local partners to tackle a range of different problems,” says Akuja de Garang MBE, a team leader at Mott MacDonald who has headed up both phases of GESS.
With UK International Development funding (part of the UK’s partnership with the government of South Sudan) she has been working to increase girls’ participation in education throughout the country.
It requires a broad-based approach. Some partners in the project are charged with addressing cultural barriers, as girls’ education is not often prioritized in many regions of South Sudan. Others focus on financial obstacles, through initiatives such as cash transfers for struggling families. Supporting schools to improve facilities, increase capacity, and develop training programs for teachers has also been crucial.
Working with South Sudanese partners in each region of the country is vital, says de Garang.
“The project has to be sustainable over the longer term, with local partners who can continue this work even when the consultants have left,” she says. “Many of our partners have real standing and influence in their local communities and can be drivers of change; we must be supporting the local economy and job creation.”
Over time, the GESS program has also found local partners indispensable in providing continuity when tensions have escalated in parts of a country that continues to experience political volatility.
“There are challenges in working with so many different stakeholders but if you have shared objectives and you’re prepared to engage regularly, most issues can be overcome,” de Garang adds.
The impact of GESS on girls’ participation in education has been dramatic. In 2011, they accounted for 38 percent of South Sudanese children in school; by 2023 it was 49 percent, with the number of girls enrolled up from 540,000 to more than 1.2 million. In addition, some 2,500 teachers have received training and 4,500 school management committees have been created to improve governance.
“One indication of success is the longevity of the program, with two phases completed and a third phase in the planning stage,” says Simon Harris, managing director of international development services at Mott MacDonald. “We’ve also seen other donor nations supporting this project rather than choosing to set up their initiatives.”
From the beginning, Mott MacDonald has had to demonstrate that GESS is delivering good value for money for the UK taxpayer, against the government’s framework of assessment around economy, equity, efficiency, and effectiveness.
“I also think in terms of the value of the difference we are making for girls,” de Garang says. “We see it in the numbers, but also in the stories these girls tell and the way they feel so much more valued as human beings when they have access to education.”
The project is full of individual success stories, but de Garang is particularly proud of one girl who benefited from a cash transfer that enabled her to stay in education for four years of secondary school.
“She subsequently went on to university and now she has come back to us, working as a role model for GESS and taking part in Mott MacDonald’s internship program. She’s a young woman with real choices about her future.”