Ideological arguments are made for open learning, economic ones for distance education. If it can produce similar results to those of conventional education at a lower cost, then distance education has a powerful appeal. With increasing demand for access to educational opportunities at all levels, and often decreasing budgets in real terms for educational provision, there has been a growing interest in the open and distance learning in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) as an increasingly important and credible part of education delivery strategies designed to enable greater access to quality education. The debate in SSA has tended to be centered more upon cost advantages than open access, but both considerations are important. There is very little reliable data on higher education and training costing data and where they exist, the data emphasize recurrent, not capital costs, and costs per student rather than costs per successful graduate. This report focuses on exploring ways in which to avoid the symptoms of weak financial planning. It outlines key concepts and approaches to financial planning for distance education. It then explores some key mistakes that have been made in financial planning in different contexts. Having provided this conceptual framework, the report goes on to explore the costing of of distance education and open learning (DEOL) in some detail using case studies of actual DEOL programs in SSA and a financial planning tool developed for precisely this purpose. The emphasis in this report is on the costing of DEOL provision in SSA, and the case studies used as the basis of this report have all been drawn from institutions and programs in SSA. (Contains 20 tables and 4 figures.) [This report was written by the South African Institute for Distance Education (SAIDE), with support by the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) and the Commonwealth of Learning.]