APA – Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) – More than one million children in Burkina Faso are currently affected by the closure of schools in February 2023.
By 31 March 2024, 1,295 schools will have reopened in Burkina Faso, the Minister of National Education, Sosthène Dingara, said on Tuesday.
He added that these reopened schools were attended by 259,793 pupils, including 129,104 girls.
A total of 8,532 teachers, including 2,724 women, work in these schools throughout the country.
Minister Dingara insisted on the need to maintain and multiply efforts to ensure the continuity of school activities in the zones of withdrawal and to create better teaching and learning conditions in the recaptured zones.
At the end of February 2023, 6134 schools were closed due to insecurity, according to the Ministry of Education’s monthly report on education in emergency situations dated 28 February 2023.
According to the government, the school closures affected 1,050,172 students and 31,077 teachers, of whom some 6,300 were transferred to other schools in the interior of the country.
Burkina Faso now accounts for almost half of all schools closed due to insecurity in West and Central Africa.
Meanwhile, 1,762 schools have stopped operating in Mali, 1,344 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), 878 in Niger, 3,285 in Cameroon, 181 in Nigeria, 13 in the Central African Republic and 134 in Chad.
DS/te/lb/as/APA