The North African educational challenge : from colonisation to the current alledged Islamist threat

Abstract

This paper focuses on the reproductive role of education in colonial and post-colonial North Africa, especially in the three main French-speaking countries, namely Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. The training of a bicultural élite was one of the main consequences of French colonisation. It will be argued that after independence, the framework of the ‘colonial’ educational system actually remained in place. It even became a ‘national’ system which, by the end of the twentieth century, produced, in each country, a very narrow national élite, which for decades kept State power and economic governance in its hands. After the 1980s, this situation led to deep political and social crises.