EFA lists six major goals, including improving child education, gender parity and literacy.

UNESCO says the initiative has made major strides, especially an effort to attain universal primary education, with countries like Ethiopia, Guinea and Burundi improving rapidly since 1999.

Education for All is also in-line with the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, which seek to eradicate poverty, stop HIV/AIDS and improve other aspects of life in developing countries.

But the head of the Education Division at the African Union Commission, Beatrice Njenga, says the U.N. initiatives are misdirected.

"EFA focuses on basic education and a few years later we have MDGs whose education goal is primary education, but they go on to list other goals to do with development, to do with child mortality, food security and all that," said Njenga. "And you look at those goals and you think with primary education, with basic education shall we be able to meet these goals? One reason we might not meet MDGs in terms of, for instance, child mortality is because we don't have human resources. Where do human resources come from? Not basic education."

The African Union has established its own "Plan of Action," education goals to achieve by the year 2015.

Instead of focusing on a bottom-up approach that promotes basic education for all, the AU plan is geared more toward developing stronger African universities, that will produce graduates who are focused on solving African problems.