Madar (Ouagadougou) - Burkina Faso's military authorities have begun generalising bilingual education nationwide, with the first years of primary school now taught in a majority national language and French relegated to second place, RFI reported on Sunday, November 1, 2026.
According to RFI, fifteen days after the start of the school year, primary teachers received crash training in national languages, which are becoming the main channel of learning for first-year pupils, with written and oral teaching 90% in the local language under a government requirement.
The country has been divided into language zones including Moore, Dioula, Fulfulde, Gulmancema, Lyele, Dagara, Bissa and Nuni. Each child learns in the majority language of their locality regardless of origin, with French increasing year by year to 90% by the fifth year, when it again becomes the language of the primary-school leaving exam.
Not all teachers welcome the change. "Speaking a language in everyday life is not the same as it suddenly becoming the language of work and teaching," one said, while a teacher in Fada N'Gourma said she does not speak Gulmancema, the region's language, having been posted there.
Some parents regretted the lack of communication about the switch but said they accepted it and planned to support their children in French at home.
