Contenu du sommaire : États réformateurs et éducation arabo-islamique en Afrique

Quantifying and qualifying the demand for Arabic and Islamic education in sub-Saharan Africa
The quantity and quality of demand for Arabic and Islamic education — a central issue in African education policy — remains poorly documented. Data from nine sub-Saharan African countries show that a significant number of children attend formal Arabic and Islamic educational institutions and Koranic schools. While some pupils enroll in both public and Koranic schools simultaneously, many of them attend only the Koranic schools. The latter target middle-income families, rather than rich urban households or the poor rural ones that do not send their children to school.

Education for girls and (re)configured gender relations
Recent decades have seen a gradual opening up and adaptation to larger numbers of women in Senegalese Arabic and Islamic schools. This article analyzes how on the one hand this broadened access aims to protect young girls from social evils, and on the other hand would prepare them for future roles meeting specific religious norms. Thus Arabic and Islamic education now provides a locus for investigating both schooling for girls and gender relations. Even as the education system places women at the center of social reconfigurations, it also fabricates and promotes a “feminine ideal” in its discourse and images.

Negotiating Koranic school reform in northern Senegal
Throughout West Africa, the Universal Education movement has prompted a greater insistence on reform in Koranic schools, especially in teaching. The pressure comes from above (governments, international donors and nongovernmental organizations) and below (teachers and students). Some Koranic teachers have made reforms while others strongly resist any form of change. The reasons for these opposed reactions remains poorly understood. Analyzing findings from ethnographic interviews conducted with two Koranic teachers in northern Senegal, this article argues for a micro-approach, one that examines the relationship between national- and international-level reforms and the actions of Koranic teachers anchored in local situations.

Families and daara in Senegal
Koranic boarding schools (daara) form part of Senegal's informal education system. Despite criticisms and a relative drop in their attractiveness, many families still send their children to daara. Parents and their children choose this type of school for macrosocial economic and geographic reasons, and because daara teach a number of traditional religious and cultural values that the families revere. Analyzing their rationales allows us to understand the role daara continue to play in the education, socialization, and socioeconomic integration of former students, based on the testimony of their parents, extended family, and community.

“We want Hadith sciences professors !”In recent decades, the religious landscape of northern Nigeria has greatly changed, as a surge in reformist Islamic ideologies has led to a new corpus of religious teachings in the now-omnipresent modern Islamic schools (islamiyya). Brand-new approaches to managing these teachings have appeared, with reformers pleading for their “democratization”. These trends have diminished the status of traditional theologians (ulemas) and their young Kano male students (almajirai). Paradoxically, while a “democratizing” force has propelled the expansion of modern Islamic education, the enthusiasm for it has created new forms of exclusion for those who cannot gain access.

Spreading a “happy medium” Islam ?
On Friday, 24 April 2015, Morocco's new king inaugurated the Mohammed VI Institute, an academy for Islamic leaders and preachers (imams, morchidines, morchidates). The educational complex will train students from the Sherifian kingdom and from countries in the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa who seek a moderate religious framework — the “happy medium” Islam (al wasatiyya) that Morocco has chosen as the academy's guiding principle. This article first examines official representations of this “happy medium” Islam and the aims it may fulfill in the current African political and religious context. The authors then give voice to the individuals drawn to or participating in the academy.

Peace through environmental cooperation: a new conservation model?
In southern Africa, many “transfrontier conservation areas” (TFCAs) have appeared or expanded recently. Their presumptive goal: peace through environmental cooperation. However, of four new TFCAs, only one has this goal explicitly written into its charter, making it part of the “peace parks” network of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN); developers of the other three TFCAs only pay lip service to this principle. The article interrogates the idea of “peace through environmental cooperation”; the author situates TFCA creation in a legal and political context, the better to discern conservation and development aims now current in southern Africa. She questions the meaning and reach of southern African TFCAs: can they succeed in creating or reconstructing ecological, social, and cultural relationships within the region's political context of “reconciliation”?