"Two systems have developed since colonization and independence, completely separate from one another: the formal French school and the informal Qur’anic schools," Khalil Enahaoui, regional coordinator for the IBD program, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported on Saturday, July 16. "Our goal is to bring these two together by emphasizing bilingual, Franco-Arabic teaching."With more than 50,000 locations, Islamic schools have attracted thousands of students across Niger. These schools, traditionally free of charge and with flexible schedules more suited to children working in the fields, have long constituted an essential way of learning for much of the population of this country, one of the poorest on earth. Faced with only 7,600 formal schools and an illiteracy rate cresting above 84 percent nationwide, Niger is in the first year of an ambitious decade-long education plan that aims to boost literacy and numeracy and create a stable and most of all employable population.
Enahaoui suggested that the influence of these schools reached far beyond basic literacy. "If we leave the Islamic schools to develop wildly, we won't be able to control them," he said. "Pushing these schools out to the edge of society only radicalizes students and teachers and feeds prejudices and assumptions. To ignore these schools is to sow the seeds of violence and ignorance."