Does promoting school attendance reduce child labor? Evidence from Burkina Faso's BRIGHT project

Using data from BRIGHT, an integrated program that aims to improve school participation in rural communities in Burkina Faso, we investigate the impact of school subsidies and increased access to education on child work. Regression discontinuity estimates demonstrate that, while BRIGHT substantially improved school participation, it did not reduce – in fact may have increased – children's participation in economic activities and household chores. This combination of increased school participation and work can be explained by the introduction of a simple non-convexity in the standard model of altruistic utility maximizing households. If education programs are implemented to achieve a combination of increased school participation and a reduction in child work they may either have to be combined with different interventions that effectively reduce child work or they may have to be tuned more carefully to the incentives and constraints the child laborer faces.     

The continuum of bilingual education in Burkina Faso: an educational innovation aimed at improving the quality of basic education for all

This article describes a real-life project currently being conducted in Burkina Faso—the bilingual education continuum—and explains its original and innovative aspects with respect to the teaching methods used and the development and process by which it is implemented in the schools. The article focuses on five main points: the status of bilingual education; the minimum factors needed for its success; the implications concerning the role of the teachers; the obstacles encountered; and strategies used to introduce bilingual education, while overcoming various obstacles.

Of gateways and gatekeepers: Language,education and mobility in francophone Africa

Over the past 15 years, a range of alternative education programs have been launched in Burkina Faso. The programs have been developed primarily by international or national NGOs, within a supportive policy space provided by the national government. They aim to respond to the widely recognized inadequacy of the French-language écoles classiques to provide a meaningful primary education experience for most Burkinabè children.     

Ray,N. (2012). Interrogating The Shield

This paper highlights, through a critical political economy approach, a number of inequalities, or “divides,” that have been neglected in digital divides research, divides arising from the domination of social media platform ownership by a few for-profit corporations. As a result, the paper calls for an expansion of digital divides research to include a critical examination of the empowerment relations flowing from the contexts of digital media technologies themselves and not just the contexts of users.     

Systemic Evaluation of Advisory Services to Family Farms in West Africa

Abstract

In West Africa, advisory services for family farms have been promoted to better address producers’ needs. The paper aims to show that these services can be understood as a system whose functioning is strongly determined by the financing mechanisms, the governance mechanisms put in place, the quality of human resources delivering advice, and the characteristics of the advisory method. The study is based on an analysis of two case studies in Benin and Burkina Faso using a common framework derived from an agricultural advisory system approach. The study highlights the strong interaction between the different components of the system. It shows that (i) the intervention method needs to be continuously adapted to take into account changes in financial capabilities and human resources available for providing advisory services, (ii) the nature and the quality of advisory activities are closely related to the skills of advisors and managers of advisory services, (iii) the governance mechanisms steering advisory services reveal the social relations between the stakeholders and influence the content of the advice, and (iv) the funding mechanisms are pivotal in defining the rules of governance. Lessons learned are drawn from this analysis that may serve to support advisory services.