Gordon Brown unveils $15 billion education aid pledge

British Finance Minister Gordon Brown yesterday unveiled a $15 billion commitment to fund education in developing countries, saying rich nations were beginning to deliver on their promises to help the world's poor.

Mr 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," Mr Brown told reporters.

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

"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," Mr Brown said.

At a summit last year the leaders of Britain, the US, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada and Russia said that by 2010 they would spend about $25 billion 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 a year by 2010. Mr Mandela, who remains busy campaigning for AIDS and other causes despite his official retirement, welcomed Mr Brown's move.