UK's Brown unveils $15 bln education aid pledge

MAPUTO, Apr 10 (Reuters) British finance minister Gordon Brown today unveiled a 15 billion dollars commitment to fund education in developing countries, saying rich nations were beginning to deliver on their promises to help the world's poor.

Brown, joined by former South African President Nelson Mandela in Mozambique's capital Maputo, said the British pledge to fund schools, teachers and equipment over 10 years marked the biggest global education initiative ever undertaken.

It is also a major step towards realising vows made at last year's G8 summit to dramatically increase aid to Africa.

''The initiative launched today is about delivering one of the great rights, the right of education,'' Brown told reporters.

He said Britain would lobby other rich countries to raise a further 10 billion dollars per year to meet a goal of bringing education opportunities to 100 million children, mostly in Africa, by 2015.

''I believe we are today changing the terms of debate about the future. It is no longer about promises of aid tomorrow, it is about signing up today to concrete actions starting now to deliver for every child in the world the chance of education,'' Brown said.

At a summit last year the leaders of Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada and Russia said that by 2010 they would spend about 25 billion dollars more a year on Africa, where poverty claims a child's life every ten seconds.

They also pledged, with other donors, to roughly double total aid for all developing countries, boosting it by about 50 billion dollars a year by 2010.

The funding will be used to train teachers, build and equip school houses and forge new links between British schools and their counterparts in the developing world.

Recipient countries are expected to come up with their own, 10-year plans to make use of the funding, which officials say could dramatically increase the numbers of young people able to access basic educational services.

Brown's initiative was welcomed by non-governmental aid groups, who in the past have criticised developed countries for failing to deliver on promises of help.

''With the UK government leading by example, we now call on other European and G8 countries to match the UK's offer and make their promises on education a reality,'' Marta Cumbi, Global Campaign for Education in Mozambique chief, said in a statement.

''Without this, the only lesson children will be learning is how to cope with a life condemned to poverty.'' Brown, who also met with finance ministers from South Africa and Nigeria in Mozambique, toured a local primary school and later met a selection of Mozambican and British school children at the seaside presidential palace in Maputo.

Mozambique is among several African countries that in recent years dropped required school fees for public schools and increased school building programmes.

But officials say the southern African country still has one million children who are not in school while many more including a disproportionate number of girls fail to make it past the fifth grade.

''We need 55,000 more teachers,'' Cumbi said. ''To make this a reality, we need long-term predictable funding ... we are not alone, there are many other poor countries, especially in Africa, that face the same problems.'' REUTERS SHR RAI1912