Across the globe, NGOs from developed countries are conducting education programmes in developing countries together with local partners with the aim of supporting the implementation of education for sustainable development, ESD. Earlier Swedish development projects have supported schools to become ‘Green schools’ with a focus on ecology and to create utilities such as waste-management systems, school gardens and composting. During the UNESCO decade, DESD, schools have been encouraged to become ‘ESD-schools’. In this paper, the focus is on teachers’ ESD implementation outcomes. The analysis is oriented towards East African teachers’ responses concerning their ESD teaching. Information about the overall outcomes of the World Wide Fund for Nature’s (WWF Sweden) educational programme was acquired by the author in interviews with principals, teachers and pupils from six primary schools and one teacher training college in the three African countries of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. It is difficult for a scholar from a ‘western’ culture to conduct research in a very different context. However, an important unifying factor is that the schools have been supported by an NGO that has made use of the services of experienced Swedish educators for more than three years. This has facilitated the use of a methodology developed in earlier studies of EE/ESD teaching in Sweden. The results confirm that ESD is context sensitive and is of interest for researchers and educators studying the outcomes of aid-financed development programmes. A complimentary approach of ESD is manifested in the East African context, which emphasises predetermined and often locally negotiated social and educational outcomes. The results are critically examined in relation to the diverse international meanings of ESD and to earlier research into different ESD approaches.