As the target year of achieving Education for All development goals approached in 2015, there were discussions about the post-EFA agenda, a process parallel to setting the post-Millennium Development Goals. This transition should not be understood simply as a normative framework. It has coincided with changes in structure, actors, modes of interactions, and practices. The emergence of new types of donors who used to be recipients of aid is changing the landscape of international educational development. Transnational networks of civil society actors gained power to set the discourse at multiple levels, through their global mission-driven and expertise-based advocacy. Advanced communication technologies and broader participation increased the amount of ideas exchanged, while the global governance structure becomes more centralized in its decision making.

The book analyzed the responses of three east African countries - Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia - to the changes brought under the paradigm of EFA and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which spread the virtue of universal basic education and a new decision-making mechanism fostering partnership with external stakeholders. International environment since the late 1990s has effected systematic and wide-spread standardization, which resulted in less diversity of policies across countries. At the same time, the responses of the governments towards such external forces were different according to the conditions such as the respective countries' historically developed educational system, ways of decision-making and operation in the bureaucracy, relationship among key actors, and socio-political, economic, and cultural contexts. Based on the in-depth interviews with key ministry officials, aid officials, NGO representatives, and academics involved in educational policy-making processes, the book shed light on the things happened in the process of making national education policies experienced by actors with different perspectives.