Integrating mother tongue instruction (local languages) into Sahel education systems

The Sahel faces significant education challenges, exacerbated by rapid population growth and a young demographic, with nearly half of the population under 15. In response, Sahelian governments signed the Nouakchott Declaration in 2021, committing to a coordinated approach to improve education, focusing on government involvement, teacher mobilisation, and community engagement. However, political instability in countries like Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso between 2021 and 2023 has complicated these efforts, creating overlapping crises that affect education policy and provision.Despite these challenges, government and development agencies continue to work on strategies to improve educational access and quality in the region, and recent evidence demonstrates that early- grade instruction in learners’ mother tongues can help overcome obstacles. Evaluation reports from CONFEMEN’s PASEC 2019 show a 25 percent improvement in Grade 2 reading fluency where local languages are used, coupled with a 30 percent rise in numeracy scores in Niger’s bilingual cohorts and a 20 percent reduction in repetition rates (CONFEMEN-PASEC, 2022; Niger 2017). Investing in standardised mother-tongue materials, strengthening regional teacher training hubs, embedding local-language literacy metrics into monitoring and evaluation, supporting community-driven oversight, and following the phased roll-out approach recommended by the CONFEMEN report can help Sahelian partners scale bilingual education effectively, boosting retention, equity, and community trust.1The Education Research in Conflict and Protracted Crisis (ERICC) Helpdesk was requested to provide technical and contextual quality assurance of a series of three strategy papers addressing issues affecting education in the Sahel region (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger), to inform and support strategic education interventions. This series of reports cover the topics: 1) Integration of Koranic and secular schools; 2) Mother tongue instruction; and 3) Nomadic pastoral education. This report is part 2 of this series.