By Khaita Sylla, Country Director, ActionAid Senegal
I come from Senegal, where in 2025 the government allocated 20.9% of the national budget and 6.16% of GDP to education, both above the minimum benchmarks recommended by UNESCO. Within the Economic Community of West African States region, Senegal could even be seen as a “good student”, since many countries struggle to meet the 20% public expenditure target benchmark for education. But the question we must ask is this: if the financing is there on paper, why are we still failing to achieve gender equality in education? The answer lies not only within the education sector itself, but within the global economic system that shapes what governments can actually afford to invest in women and girls. Because the reality is that gender-transformative education cannot exist without economic justice.
Global tax abuse: extracting resources from the Global South In 2024, the Tax Justice Networkestimated that Senegal loses around USD 58.7 million every year because multinational corporations and wealthy individuals shift profits into tax havens and underpay taxes. This is what is known as global tax abuse. This is not simply a technical problem of tax administration. It is a political problem of global inequality. If these loopholes were closed and this revenue collected — and just 20% allocated to education — Senegal could mobilize an additional USD 11.7 million annually, more than 6 billion CFA francs, for education. That is money that could finance teachers, safe schools, gender-responsive curricula, and programs that keep girls in school. Instead, it is quietly extracted from our economies and accumulated in offshore wealth.
And Senegal is far from alone.
According to the same report, countries across the world lose around USD 492 billion every year to global tax abuse. In Africa alone, USD 7.4 billion disappears annually, and this is likely an underestimation. This is not simply lost revenue. It is stolen possibilities. Every dollar hidden in a tax haven will take away from building classrooms, not hiring teachers and denying a girl a right to education.
A growing debt burden At the same time, countries like Senegal are constrained by a growing debt burden. In 2024, debt servicing consumed 31% of government revenues, representing about 20% of total public expenditure and 5.3% of GDP. In other words, a significant share of public resources is flowing out of our countries rather than being invested in public services. And when countries face fiscal pressure, institutions such as the International Monetary Fund often recommend austerity policies — including limits on public sector wage bills and privatization.
We know what that means in reality: fewer teachers, underpaid teachers, overcrowded classrooms, and weakened public education systems.
These policies do not fall equally on everyone. They disproportionately affect women and girls, because when public services shrink, it is women who absorb the burden of unpaid care and girls who are more likely to drop out of school. This is why we must name the problem clearly: the global economic system is not gender neutral. It systematically prioritizes debt repayment and corporate profits over the rights of women and girls.
Building alliances across movements So, what can be done about all of it this so that we are not here again in 5 years’ time talking about the same limitations for GTE. A lot is already going on that we can continue to build up on: First, we must break the silos between movements. Education advocates, feminist movements, and economic justice activists must work together much more strategically. The struggle for gender-transformative education is inseparable from the struggle for tax justice and debt justice.
Colleagues in the economic justice movement have been working on these issues for years and partnering with them is critical. When we collaborate them, we can expose the full political economy of inequality — and show that the barriers to financing education are not inevitable, but constructed.
Action for tax justice At the national level, governments must close the loopholes that enable tax abuse and introduce progressive and gender-responsive tax systems. Senegal is currently reviewing its tax policies and CSO like CAJUST (Citoyens Actifs pour la Justice Sociale) and NGOs like ActionAid have been part of the discussions to make sure the new policy is gender responsive, intersectional and progressive taking into account structural inequalities. This means ensuring that wealthy individuals and multinational corporations finally pay their fair share, instead of shifting the burden onto ordinary citizens — and often onto women through regressive taxes and unpaid labor.
At the global level, negotiations are underway to establish a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation. It is important that we input into this process and again push our governments to remain ambitious in the demand for a Tax Convention that not only seals the loopholes that have enabled global tax abuse, but also ensure a feminist Tax Convention that guarantees a fair allocation of taxing rights for countries in the Global South. This process represents a historic opportunity. But it will only be meaningful if it leads to a fair redistribution of taxing rights toward countries in the Global South, and if it explicitly recognizes that tax justice is essential for advancing human rights and gender equality.
Action for debt justice On debt, we must also challenge the dominance of austerity-driven economic policy. Austerity is often presented as inevitable. It is not. It is a political choice, and one that too often sacrifices public services in order to protect financial interests.
We must continue demanding debt relief and debt cancellation, especially in countries where governments spend more servicing debt than educating their children. Because no country should be forced to choose between repaying creditors and educating its girls.
The change we need Financing gender-transformative education requires transforming the global economic rules that determine who has resources and who does not. We must confront the systems that extract wealth from the Global South, constrain public spending, and reproduce gender inequality.
TaxEd Alliance