The future is uncertain for hundreds of Sahrawi graduates

The only university in the self-declared Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), or Western Sahara, continues to teach and deliver graduate students, despite the military stalemate that has persisted before and since its founding in 2012 that has left Morocco controlling 80% of the territory.

Hundreds of students have graduated from the University of Tifariti in the past 13 years. The institution draws students from the 173,600 individuals in five Sahrawi camps inside the Algerian border who rely on humanitarian aid and from Western Saharan communities such as Tifariti, an oasis town controlled by the SADR.

The ongoing conflict between Morocco and the Polisario Front, the political and military organisation claiming Western Sahara’s sovereignty, has lasted since Spain, the former colonial power, withdrew in 1975 and allowed Morocco and Mauritania to partition the territory. Mauritania subsequently abandoned these claims.

Dr Bachir Brahim Zergan, information officer at the University of Tifariti, told University World News that “hundreds” of people have graduated from the university, although he did not give precise numbers, including the current student body and staff.

He could only confirm that “many students graduate annually from the National School of Nursing and the pedagogical institutes at the state level”, adding that, for the National School of Administration and Information Technology, “there are cohorts that are not permanent”. He also said that “the overwhelming majority of Sahrawi students study at Algerian universities”.

Sahrawi people are survivors

The rectorate of the University of Tifariti and its Pedagogical Institute for the Training of Professors and Teachers are in Rabuni, a Sahrawi settlement just across the Algerian border, as are its National School of Administration and Information Technology and the Institute of Journalism. The National School of Nursing is in the Sahrawi communities of Smara and Aouserd – also in Algeria.

Zergan emphasised that the university is located in refugee camps and not in Polisario-controlled territories within Western Sahara and is named Tifariti after the town, not because it is based there.

He said: “Creating a university in the period that our people are going through has not been an easy task and, for many, it is an adventure, but there are adventures and there are events, and this is undoubtedly a unique event. If we remember the beginnings of education without means, without qualified teachers, with hardly anything, only the will of a people who want to live despite those who have denied their existence and continue trying to sing the funeral song before their coffin. But nothing could be further from reality. The Sahrawi people live, resist, educate and create.”

Zergan helps administer the university and lectures scientific research methodology. He said more students have recently enrolled, especially in the nursing school.

Conditions are hot and dry

The public university, regulated and assisted by several ministries of the exiled government of the self-proclaimed SADR, which is also based in the refugee camps, considers several centres as nuclei of future faculties, Zergan said. These are the Pedagogical Institute for the Training of Professors and Teachers, the National School of Nursing, the National School of Administration and Information Technology, the Institute of Journalism, and the School of Audiovisuals, Music and Fine Arts.

These schools operate in tough conditions, said Professor Ana María Vega, director of the UNESCO Chair on Democratic Citizenship and Cultural Freedom at the University of La Rioja, Spain. She was part of a delegation from her university that visited the University of Tifariti in January 2024.

The region is hot and the annual rainfall low. Vega recalled seeing “very basic facilities, such as a sparsely equipped library, offices, a few well-equipped classrooms ... but nothing more”. Medical facilities where students might train are also basic, with some Sahrawi women asking the delegation for help to travel to Spanish hospitals since, in Tifariti, they did not have the equipment they needed for necessary interventions.

Neither the Sahrawi refugee camps nor the university can deal with some of the medical demands they face, Vega warned, giving the example of a lack of care for people with cerebral palsy. The extreme heat is “another big handicap”, she said. While online remote training could be a solution for local students, the Tifariti internet connection needs improvement. She suggested the university does everything in its power to strengthen its international networks.

Collaboration on course

These are significant. “The university has collaboration agreements with around 70 universities, institutes and academic institutions in Europe, Latin America and Africa. Some of these partners collaborate to renovate institutes and train teachers and students,” Zergan said.

Partners include the Argentine University of La Plata, the University of Bechar (Algeria), the University of Cuenca (Ecuador), Germany’s Leipzig University and Italy’s University of Ferrara. A European Commission spokesperson told University World News that, since 2014, the University of Tifariti “has been a partner in several Spanish and Austrian projects on international credit mobility” under Erasmus+, the European Union’s HE exchange programme.

Zergan said that, through Erasmus+, students benefit from scholarships in Europe and the university also receives European students to carry out research and training.

Vega said there was no political angle in helping the University of Tifariti conduct higher education to help “analyse, debate, and listen to those problems that affect the human community and human rights”. She said she truly believes in what she read on a wall in the Tindouf region camps: ‘Education is the most powerful weapon in the world’.

According to the United Nations Regional Information Centre (UNRIC), “the harsh and isolated desert with frequent sandstorms limits livelihood and economic opportunities”. In a report released in March 2024, UNRIC warned that the military stalemate “has fuelled frustration and disillusionment, especially among young people”.

University does function well

However, Zergan argued that the university’s schools can help answer his country’s needs, saying the Sahrawi government is prioritising training teachers, nurses, pharmacists and doctors “in the first place”, as well as media skills “to transmit the voice of the Sahrawi people, and in political and administrative sciences for the formation and organisation of the administration” of his country.

Furthermore, the university’s pedagogical institute “is affiliated with five other teacher training institutes dedicated to staffing Sahrawi schools and educational institutions”. The University of Tifariti also operates a research centre. And the university is working on the first issue of a scientific journal, he said.

Students do not pay tuition fees and “sometimes outstanding students receive scholarships to continue their studies abroad”, he said.

According to former rector Jatari Hamudi, the university is “the place where all our historical and cultural heritage is also treasured, placed at the service of all Sahrawis, regardless of where they are”.

Zergan explained that the library has a collection of books and publications on Sahrawi poetry and culture, adding that the university is working with some partners on a website that includes Sahrawi archives related to customs, traditions, history, artefacts, human rights and war of the Sahara.

More postgraduate programmes planned

The university offers bachelor degrees at its School of Nursing, namely in nursing, pharmacy and gynaecology. The School of Nursing is the only university school where students can learn in Spanish as well in Arabic. In the other three schools, classes are only in Arabic.

Zergan added that the institution is working to offer masters programmes online in the future, but it is facing difficulties with internet connectivity and an unstable electricity network in the camps. Existing online classes have already been disrupted as a consequence.

The university also intends to train students in other postgraduate degrees, including PhDs, develop scientific research, invest more in distance learning, and improve the level of school curricula, he mentioned.

The professor added that the university is where it is now thanks to agreements of cooperation, the organisation of scientific conferences and study days, and “numerous difficulties and sacrifices made by Jatari Hamudi”, the institution’s first rector, who was succeeded by Moulay Amhamed Brahim on 4 March 2024.

Partnerships offer mutual benefits

The delegation from the University of La Rioja visited the University of Tifariti to discuss cooperation, especially in terms of distance education, the promotion of research and the training of teachers and students.

“Any university, and, in this case that of Tindouf, is a strategic agent for the development of a people and a country,” Vega said, warning that “young people without a future” might end up reverting to violence, which happens often in Africa.

As a result, the institutions discussed potential “international and interdisciplinary research groups” in the food sector, where Spanish researchers could learn from the Sahrawis about the impact of climate change since they are experiencing it, and how to deal with hard soil and a lack of water.

Moreover, she added, researchers from other areas could learn from the local students about how “to survive in extreme difficulties and ... with an enviable human disposition”. This is especially important, Vega stressed, when there is a fundamental problem among young people from the first world who “choose suicide as a way out”.

She said she found young Sahrawis had “a lot of enthusiasm for their future” and “great capacities, but few opportunities to develop them” in the refugee camps.

Therefore, the Polisario Front has a “very important challenge, which is to retain all this talent”, including people who graduated in Algeria, in difficult conditions because graduates might think twice before investing in a place that they see as a temporary location. Besides, since they never experienced the beginning of the conflict 50 years ago, these young people “perhaps no longer believe in the possible dream of returning” to Western Sahara, she said.