La contribution de la coopération universitaire belgo-burkinabè au développement de nouveaux axes de formation et de recherche à l’Université de Ouagadougou de 1997 à 2012

Co-operation is a common practice among higher education institutions at all levels of development and is part of their mission. It helps to build institutional capacity, promote the sharing of resources, and reduce gaps between nations in the fields of science and technology and improve understanding between individuals and peoples. Since its creation in 1974, the University of Ouagadougou, now Joseph KI-ZERBO University, and Belgium’s French-speaking universities have developed a number of partnerships. Since 1997, this university cooperation has intensified and become more long-term with a new structuring of the Belgian university cooperation around continuous five-year programmes. Thus, the University benefited from the first three of these programmes until 2012, during which period many achievements were made. The objective of this study is to show the impact of institutional university cooperation between the French-speaking Belgian universities and the University of Ouagadougou in the development of new training and research axes. In order to carry out our work we consulted various documents, including reports of activity programmes, archives, etc. as well as internet sources. We were also interested in the material evidence of this cooperation. The study shows that many new courses and specialisations have been developed through this partnership during the three five-year programmes and that this has contributed and continues to contribute to the institutional development of the university.