The Jomtien World Conference and the Dakar World Education Forum declared Education for All (EFA) as a primary policy goal of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Malawi, a participant of both Jomtien and Dakar, first achieved EFA through its Free Primary Education policy of 1994. However, this early effort resulted in a number of unintended consequences typical of EFA, including negative impacts on educational system quality. In this paper, a quality assessment framework is used to evaluate whether Malawian EFA policies were designed with the necessary support for an effective universal primary educational system as defined by planning, social barriers, budgetary limitations, and educational quality. Two policy phases were evaluated, each a ten year period following Jomtien (1990-2000) and Dakar (2000-2010). Results indicate that EFA polices in the Jomtien phase often failed to consider social and structural considerations necessary to improve the educational experience, which belied a quantitative achievement of universal primary education. While policies in the Dakar phase addressed many of the quality deficiencies of the previous era, lingering issues such as enrollment and retention remained.