TITLE:
Public Spending on Education, Economic Growth and Public Service Delivery in East African Community Countries: A Longitudinal Association Analysis (2010-2021)
AUTHORS:
Estimé Nobel Basabakwinshi, Léonidas Ndayizeye
KEYWORDS:
Public Spending, Education Spending, Economic Growth, Public Service Delivery, East African Community
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Financial Risk Management,
Vol.15 No.4,
November
11,
2026
ABSTRACT: This study investigates the longitudinal associations between public education expenditures, economic growth, and the quality of public service delivery for Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda in 2010-2021. A naturalistic, longitudinal, correlational research design utilized panel data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, the Fund for Peace Fragile States Index (Public Services Index, PSI), and the IMF/World Bank, harmonized via The Global Economy.com database. All variables were analyzed as macroeconomic aggregates. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, pooled OLS regression, and a bootstrap product-of-coefficients decomposition were used. Education expenditure as a share of GDP was positively associated with PSI in Burundi (r = 0.83, p = 0.001) and negatively associated with PSI in Uganda (r = −0.61, p = 0.035); associations for Rwanda and Tanzania were not statistically significant. Economic growth was not significantly associated with PSI (r = 0.21 - 0.48, all p > 0.10). The pooled OLS regression model (without country fixed effects) explained 17.0% of the variance in PSI (F(3, 44) = 3.01, p = 0.040); education expenditure as a share of total public spending was the only significant predictor (β = 0.076, p = 0.009). A fixed-effects specification is reported in the revised manuscript. The contemporaneous product-of-coefficients association between growth and PSI via education spending was not statistically distinguishable from zero (0.010, bootstrap 95% CI [−0.002, 0.035]), and the mean PSI did not differ significantly between 2010 and 2021 (t(3) = 0.51, p = 0.642). These findings underscore the importance of institutional quality, absorptive capacity, and expenditure targeting. As an observational analysis of 48 country-year observations with only four countries, all results are associational and exploratory.