RIYADH, 23 August — The Kingdom has funded the construction of more than 150 French-Arabic schools in Burkina Faso, a west African nation, which is seeking closer cooperation with Saudi Arabia to build its educational infrastructure and develop research facilities.
“The school projects have been supported mainly by private organizations, philanthropists and the Islamic institutions of Saudi Arabia,” said Laya Sawadogo, Burkina Faso Minister of Education, who is currently visiting Riyadh.
Referring to these schools, he said that some of the institutions have been running courses from nursery school to degree level.
These schools, he said, are a great asset for a country like Burkina Faso, which has a weak education infrastructure for its 11 million population, with only 25 percent literacy rate, two universities, 4,000 secondary-level colleges and 6,000 primary schools.
Referring to his wide-ranging talks with Minister of Higher Education, Dr. Khaled Al-Anqari, and Minister of Education, Muhammad Al-Rasheed, he said they mainly focused on the possible areas of cooperation in the education sector.
These include major science streams like biological sciences, environmental sciences, the transfer of technology and biotechnology.
Sawadogo, who thanked Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd for sending two planeloads of relief materials to Ouagadougou, said several Saudi aid organizations like the Saudi Fund for Development, the Islamic Development Bank and the Muslim World League have been providing assistance to this west African nation, 67 percent of whose population is Muslim.
To this end, he noted that nearly 45 Muslim students from Burkina Faso have joined different universities in the Kingdom to pursue higher studies in Shariah and theology. Some of them have been granted scholarships by the Kingdom.
He said that he is also seeking support from Saudi Arabia to allow the admission of students from Burkina Faso into science streams at Saudi academic institutions that specialize in subjects other than Islamic studies.
The move, Minister Sawadogo said, will help students from his country join professional courses in Saudi Arabia.
Sawadogo will wrap his weeklong visit to the Kingdom tomorrow.
