Donderdag 20 April 2023

This event will be held physically in Leiden. For registrees who cannot travel to Leiden a link to an online platform will be sent one day before the start of the event. In Niger, the world’s least educated nation, girls are described as both vulnerable beings in need of protection and subjects imbued with unique potential, including the capacity to transform their country’s fortunes. To protect girls from harmful practices, such as early marriage, and, at the same time, unlock their unique capacities, parents must send daughters to school, rights activists, celebrities, and other advocates of girls’ education proclaim. While nationwide discussions highlight how boko (Western education in Hausa) has become a lightning rod for Muslim activists’ discontent with foreign intervention, adolescent schoolgirls parrot the slogans coined by non-governmental organisations and corporate responsibility projects to highlight the economic benefits of investing in girls. They cast themselves citizens of the future who, once empowered by education, will care for families, jumpstart local economies, and pull Niger out of poverty. This seminar traces a major contradiction in the vision of progressive futures peddled by development through its instrumentalisation of education in Niger: on the one hand, girls are treated as ideal neoliberal models of self-reliance and self-making; on the other, they must sacrifice themselves for the common good. Speaker: Prof. Adeline Masquelier (Tulane University, USA). Click here to register for this event

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