FROM POLICY DISCOURSE TO THE CLASSROOM: DIGITAL INTEGRATION IN SECONDARY EDUCATION IN GABON AND NIGER. MAPPING FAITH-BASED UPPER-SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN LIBREVILLE AND A COMPARATIVE READING OF NATIONAL CONTEXTS

Background. Digital integration in schools is a stated goal of African education policies,yet its classroom reality remains poorly documented, particularly in Central and Sahelian Africa. Methods. We combined a multisite case study of four faith-based upper-secondary schools in Libreville, Gabon, based on a questionnaire completed by sixty teachers, interviews with four deputy heads and visits to six other schools, with a secondary analysis of international indicators, national policies and published empirical studies on Niger. Results. No classroom in the four schools is equipped with digital tools. Two schools have a multimedia room run by a private provider and devoted to fee-paying office-software courses. Forty-one teachers out of sixty cite material obstacles, while nineteen report not using digital tools, a share that is paradoxically higher in the two equipped schools. Two stages of integration emerge, which we call pre-embryonic and embryonic. The comparison reveals two configurations of the divide: in Gabon, a largely connected country, it separates the school from society; in Niger, where fewer than one person in four uses the internet and about one in five has electricity, it remains primarily infrastructural. In both countries, teacher training is the common bottleneck.