Major International Development Partners and their Roles in Educational Aid to Cambodia: Situational Analysis in the 2010s

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine the roles of international partners in educational aid to Cambodia between 2010 and 2019 under the framework of foreign aid in conjunction with Cambodia’s direction for economic and social development. This research employs descriptive mixed methods by investigating statistical data obtained from the Cambodia ODA Database and analyzing related documents. The output is presented using illustrative charts and tables to compare various issues, together with content analysis from relevant documents, which is then presented in the form of descriptive analysis and descriptive statistical analysis. The results show that Cambodia’s top five international partners in terms of educational aid subsidies in the 2010s were the European Union, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, Japan, and Sweden. These donors had different types of aid and different orientations on development, yet these collaborations led to the development of numerous Cambodian education programs in order to achieve the global education agenda. When exploring trends in educational aid, the study found that there are “emerging donors,” especially China and South Korea, who have played more crucial roles in Cambodia recently.