Bilingual Education in Burkina Faso. An Alternative Approach for Quality Basic Education

An experiment in progress in Burkina Faso since 1994 has brought encouraging results worth sharing in the context of the search for African solutions to African problems. The experiment with bilingual education – in an African language and French – that was launched in 1994 in Loumbila territorial district (Oubritenga province, Burkina Faso). The study reports on the history, goals, strategies, content, difficulties and results of this innovation, as well as the perspective it offers on the use of African languages in the education system, the search for bridges between formal and non-formal education and the management of multilingualism for sustainable development benefiting the greatest number of people.