Chapter 3: The Village Schools of Save the Children/Usa in Mali: A Case Study of State-NGOs Relations in the Provision of Basic Education

The inability of sub-Saharan African countries, particularly those in the Sahelian region, to expand and make basic education relevant to their populations has brought about a situation whereby NGOs, in partnerships with local communities, are increasingly taking matters into their own hands. In some instances, they have created innovative education systems whose popularity among donors and communities has produced a dilemma for the NGOs themselves and the state: given the exponential expansion of these systems thanks to donors’ money, the state can no longer ignore them and mainstreaming them would entail two things: (i) reforming the formal education systems by integrating elements of the new systems; or (ii) creating conditions in the innovative systems that would bridge them with the dominant system. It has indeed become clear to the state actors that leaving the innovative systems unchecked would seriously erode the state’s legitimacy in the long run.