Foundational Learning: Senegal takes a new step forward with the adoption of a national advocacy agenda for Harmonized Bilingual Education Model in Senegal, “MOHEBS”

(MENAFN- MENAFNEditorial) DIAMNIADIO, Senegal, September 8, 2026/ -- Senegal is taking a major step forward in transforming its education system. For the first time, the Government has adopted a structured national advocacy agenda in favor of foundational learning, with the institutional validation of the National Advocacy Strategy to support the scale-up of the Harmonized Bilingual Education Model in Senegal. Held at the Diamniadio Ministerial Sphere under the leadership of the Ministry of National Education, this meeting marks the shift from a reform that has demonstrated its potential to a national ambition driven by the State, with a clear objective: ensuring its institutionalization, sustainability and scale-up.
The National Advocacy Strategy thus aims to bring together ministries, local authorities, technical and financial partners, civil society, youth, communities, researchers, the private sector and the media around a shared vision for the future of foundational learning in Senegal.
A reform backed by concrete results
“MOHEBS” builds on encouraging results. An independent evaluation conducted by RTI International in 2023 showed a 29-percentage-point improvement in oral reading and comprehension among students benefiting from the model, compared to their peers educated solely in French.
Now deployed across the country's 18 academies, the model today reaches more than 640.000 CI and CP pupils equipped with textbooks in national languages, supported by 12.116 trained teachers, 7.327 school principals and 339 inspectors.
These results strengthen Senegal's ambition to make bilingualism a lever for sustainably improving learning outcomes and reducing educational inequalities.
Three priorities to turn achievements into lasting change
The National Advocacy Strategy is built around three complementary pillars:
•strengthening the institutional anchoring of “MOHEBS”;
•mobilizing sustainable national financing for its long-term sustainability and scale-up;
•strengthening social buy-in and citizen engagement around the reform.
Bringing together around a hundred participants, MEN authorities, technical ministries, technical and financial partners, civil society organizations, researchers, local authorities, the private sector and the media, the session helped strengthen the institutional and political ownership of “MOHEBS”, mobilize sustainable resources and broaden ownership of the model. It gathered guidance from political authorities, prompted concrete commitments from partners, and shared the monitoring, coordination and accountability mechanisms that will support the roll-out of the SNP.
« Our ambition is clear: to make “MOHEBS” an institutionalized reform, sustainably financed, progressively scaled up, evaluated and collectively championed by the Nation. It is on this condition that we will help build Senegal's school system of 2035 », said Mr. Papa Malick NDAO, Secretary General of the Ministry of National Education, at the opening of the session.

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