Paper short abstract:

My contribution aims to analyze the schooling of Maasai girls from the point of view of teachers, parents and students themselves. This study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in a private secondary school in Tanzania that educates young girls from the pastoral population.

Paper long abstract:

The schooling of nomadic pastoralist children is an important issue for the Tanzanian government who wish to achieve universal basic education. The inclusion of these categories of marginalized populations and / or considered to be refractory to school and among them, girls - if possible up to the secondary cycle - has lead to the increase of the school supply in the remote areas where pastoralists live. The rhetoric of the equal right to education as welle as the idea that education is a factor of empowerment and development are widely mobilized by the various actors working in the field of actions and policies of education for girls. « Until all girls and women exercise their right to education and literacy, progress in achieving EFA will be stymied, and a dynamic source of development and empowerment will be squandered » [Unesco, 2015, p. 1] Based on ethnographic fieldwork within a private lutheran secondary school for pastoralist girls in Tanzania, this paper will explore the various representations of the schooling of pastoralist girls by educational actors (members of the Lutheran organization, representatives of the State, teachers and students) and massai themselves, which reflect divergent apprehensions of the right to education, social relations of gender and, more generally, the issues of girls' secondary schooling.