Prime Minister Chairs Closing of Steering Committee for Niger’s Education Transition Plan

The Prime Minister, Head of Government, Mr. Ouhoumoudou Mahamadou chaired on Friday, July 7, 2023, in the banquet hall of the Primature, the closing of the meetings of the steering committee of the Transition Plan for the education and training. These meetings made it possible to assess the progress made and identify prospects that will boost the Nigerien education system.

During these fruitful exchanges, the Ambassador, Head of the Delegation of the European Union in Niger, Mr. Salvador Pinto Da Franca Roux, leader of the technical and financial partners of the education sector congratulated the commitment government in recent years. He recalled the importance of this new sectoral plan, which should contribute to longer-term, more exhaustive and more ambitious planning in this sector. “In this regard, we pleaded during the last steering committee for the development of a budgeted roadmap allowing the implementation, to plan key reforms for this sector”, he noted. Mr. Salvador Pinto Da Franca Roux also indicated that Niger can benefit from significant funds from the Global Partnership for Education, indicative allocations which amount to a maximum amount of 185.99 million dollars, one of the most high in the world of the Global Partnership for Education.

As for the Prime Minister, Head of Government, he hoped for happy prospects for our education system and was delighted with three good reasons such as the endorsement of the partnership pact by which all the signatory parties, namely the government, the technical and financial partners and civil society organizations undertake to support the implementation of the guidelines set out in the pact. These signatory parties have also committed to jointly address this pact to the Global Partnership for Education. There is also the result of the audit of the accounts of the Common Education Sector Fund and the accession of the Kingdom of Denmark to the Common Fund with an envelope of more than two million euros.

“During the present meetings of the Steering Committee, we conducted particularly rich exchanges which made it possible to question successively the curriculum reform, the management of teachers, school infrastructures, boarding schools for young girls, planning, coordination and sector financing, and education in emergencies. I am delighted to note the identity of the concerns between the TFPs and the Government on these key issues on which the Government’s policy is entirely oriented to find the best solutions, the best tools in order to achieve better results in learning and in life at school and later in society,” explained Mr. Ouhoumoudou Mahamadou.

According to the Head of Government, the responses that have been provided indicate that there is still a long way to go in order to achieve satisfactory results. “Our common commitment is that these results are within our reach. Among the concerns raised, we must not fail to pay particular attention to school feeding, for which political guidelines will soon be defined with you, in order to meet together this handicapping challenge for learning and equity in the face of the chances of success. On all these questions, I note that the pact, which we have just endorsed, has outlined some solid answers. These elements of answers will be deepened within the framework of the work in progress for the elaboration of a sectoral note which will be supplemented by the evaluation of the Transition Plan which saw us implement the major reforms on which we will rely to a new ten-year Sector Program to achieve SDG 4,” he concluded.

Rabiou Dogo Abdoul-Razak (ONEP)