The colonial heritage left an extremely high illiteracy rate, an insufficient and distorted school network, a poorly trained body of teachers, and no experience or expertise in administering education (MINED, 1990). But this is not the only constraint, or at least it does not explain all the problems.

The current educational system also feels the effects of the model and style of governance adopted after independence, characterised by an excessively centralized administration.

An analysis of the environment that characterised the major reforms undertaken as from the early 1980s suggests that insufficient attention was paid to creating an internal capacity adequate to managing the developments resulting from the expansion of the system and the introduction of the SNE. There was great concern over teacher training, but there is no sign that areas vital for the sustainable operation of the system, such as the inspection and super vision of the institutions, educational planning, and financial and human resource management, among others, were duly taken care of.

The absence of this internal capacity, at central, provincial and district level poses real difficulties for the implementation across the country of the policies approved by the central bodies. Besides, one of the major challenges that the education sector has to face consists in restricting its action and intervention in the areas of political decision, norms, quality control, deferring responsibility for the implementation of the policies adopted to the local state bodies.