First challenge: before addressing the global nature of citizenship, should national citizenship not be stabilized on the African continent? Indeed, this citizenship, with its colonial legacy (in terms of the arbitrary distribution of national territories), has been increasingly contested since the end of the Cold War; and has been a source of violent political and democratic struggles throughout the continent. More recently, in Mali, for example, the fragility of the state and the ethnic tensions fueled by jihadists have led to violent attacks on Dogon, Fulani, and other villages. 

Second challenge: citizenship education, whether national or global, must be able to bring about changes in the students, who will be the citizens of tomorrow. This requires a certain quality of teaching and learning. However, due to large class sizes and teaching practices that emphasize recitation and memorization, it is difficult to actively engage students in complex tasks. Moreover, many people interviewed in the field, including at UNESCO, recognize that among all the SDGs’ education-related targets, Goal 4.7 is not necessarily a priority for Africa: there are higher priorities like teaching and learning issues. This also raises questions about the choices made in terms of the language of instruction. In many African countries, the language of the former colonial power is still the one taught in school. However, without mentioning the socio-cultural dimension that is flouted, here, it has been widely demonstrated that students tend not to master this language. This underlines the importance of teaching in the mother tongue, at least partially, to effectively implement education for active citizenship and to train students capable of reflecting on what it means to be a citizen in their own contexts.

Third challenge: behind the concept of global citizenship lies the idea of the place and role of citizens in an increasingly globalized world. We believe that the concept of global citizenship makes sense in Africa, given the challenges that this continent faces: population growth, urbanization, the climate crisis, and socioeconomic inequalities. However, we know that in the context of globalization, there are winning and losing countries—and that the balance is tilted against Africa, which generally does not fully benefit from the supposed advantages of the new global economy. So, can there really be a sense of belonging to a global community that leaves many by the wayside? Even in Northern countries, GCE is viewed within a minimalist framework that considers global citizenship, at best, a Band-Aid solution to the social and ecological challenges of globalization (e.g., via learning to sort one’s waste, exchanging letters with students in distant countries, etc.), but certainly not one that enables deep societal changes.

Fourth challenge: the ‘global’ nature of GCE implies not being locked into merely local issues, but also being open to the rest of the world. However, we note a gap between what the curriculum suggests in terms of student decentration and classroom practices. Our research in Senegal shows that most teachers mainly cover issues related to that country because they are not sufficiently trained or informed about foreign issues—including what is happening in neighboring countries. This would require the availability and mastery of digital tools to research issues with a global scope—in particular, the Internet or social networks—as well as the ability to operationalize them at the local community level. This is far from being the case at present.