Madar (Niamey) - The first session of the conference of education and vocational training ministers of the Confederation of Sahel States (AES) ended on Wednesday 11 November 2026 in Niamey after two days of work, with a number of recommendations, according to Niger's state daily Le Sahel.
The closing session was chaired by Burkina Faso's minister for elementary schooling, literacy and the promotion of national languages, Jacques Sosthène Dingara, who presides over the conference, in the presence of his counterparts from Niger and Mali, the newspaper reported.
After examining the conclusions of the meeting of experts from the three states, the ministers adopted the framework document of the Confederation's conference of ministers in charge of education and training, its rules of procedure, the cooperation monitoring mechanism and a programme of activities for 2027.
Participants recommended setting up the conference's committee of experts, formally appointing national focal points in countries that do not yet have them, formalising the make-up of the technical secretariat and creating a shared confederal digital platform.
The ministers reaffirmed their commitment to making education and training fundamental levers of the Confederation's sovereignty and home-grown development, with particular attention to girls' education, the inclusion of vulnerable people and the schooling of children affected by security and humanitarian crises, and to vocational training geared towards growth trades, entrepreneurship and self-employment.
Dingara said the meeting was part of implementing the Confederation's Year II roadmap, adopted on 26 February 2026 in Ouagadougou, which made setting up the conference a priority. "There can be no true sovereignty without quality education, without suitable vocational training and without young people who are sufficiently educated, qualified and able to take their own destiny in hand," he said.
He said the conference "must become a genuine framework for driving, coordinating, strategically guiding and monitoring common policies" on education and training, and called for the decisions taken to be swiftly turned into concrete, measurable action.
Niger's Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine opened the conference on Tuesday in Niamey under the theme "Building an integrated, sovereign and resilient education and training system serving the development of the Confederation of Sahel States".
