Public lecture: Religion and education reform in Francophone Sahel

This LUCIS/ASCL lecture will be given by Prof. Leonardo Villalón and Mamadou Bodian (Sahel Research Group, University of Florida, Gainesville) and is the keynote of the LUCIS-funded workshop 'Africa's Changing Educational Landscape in an Era of Global Restructuring'.

Across the francophone Sahel, public education has often been poorly delivered and its quality has been falling for much of the post-colonial period. A major reason for this is that the educational systems inherited from colonial period have had a very poor ‘fit’ with societal demands and cultural values. One response to this has been the development of a vast parallel system of informal and religiously-based education (ranging from very basic Qur’anic schools to quite sophisticated ‘Franco-Arabic’ schools) operating outside the official state system. Because they are unofficial they are not counted in official school enrolment rates, and they vary widely in their ability to train a future productive workforce. Social and political changes following the democratic flowering of the 1990s increased the importance of religion in the public sphere. This combined with growing international interest in educational outcomes to create a new policy-making environment. In this context, key actors in each country have been able to initiate previously improbable reform processes based on the idea that bringing educational institutions more into line with local social realities and expectations would improve things.

Across Francophone Sahel, states have sought to assert their legitimacy in the process of reforming the Islamic education sector. However, they do not have the necessary financial resources and are obliged to negotiate support from multiple donors, including the World Bank, UNICEF, USAID, Islamic Development Bank (IDB), etc. These partners – the IDB in particular – have been mobilized through programs and projects that seek to guarantee all children an environment that promotes their education and protects them from all forms of risk. However, the multiplicity of actors and the development of forms of resistances from local promotors of Islamic education makes it challenging to bring various agendas together.

This keynote lecture seeks to examine these recent reform efforts in three countries of the Sahel – Mali, Niger, and Senegal. While the underlying drivers have been similar in each country, the reforms themselves have been developed pragmatically, in line with local and national opportunities and realities.

We conclude that the reform goes beyond a mere introduction of Arab-Islamic education into the formal education system. It marks a transition to what might well be considered the end of colonial school and the birth of a new school. The reform of Arab-Islamic education also raises questions about the renewal of elites, the future of secular institutions and, in the long term, the reorientation of the axis of cooperation with the Arab countries. In other words, more than a reform of Arab-Islamic education, it reflects profound social change, but with political and economic consequences to be determined.

Organisor: Dr Mayke Kaag