Native language education is helping children from the Kanuri ethnic group in northeast Nigeria learn in their indigenous language and improve their literacy and numeracy capacity.

Awana Umaru’s life was turned upside down when he and his family were displaced by conflict from their home in Mafa Local Government Area, Nigeria, eight years ago. The young boy found himself in an IDP camp in Maiduguri, Borno State, where he faces daily nightmares and constant struggles to survive. Despite the hardships, Awana found meaning, friendship, and purpose through radio learning classes offered at the camp for out-of-school children.

When Bulama Amande fled attacks from Non-state Armed Groups (NSAG) in Chabbal Kura, his community in north-east Nigeria to an internally displaced persons’ camp in 2019, his ancestral home and farmland were not the only favourite things he hurriedly left behind.

Last year, when Yagana Modu enrolled in a school in Kopa, a small community on the outskirts of Maiduguri, north-east Nigeria, it was not simply an end to a six years’ out-of-school experience. For the 12-year-old whose mother is late and father’s whereabouts unknown, it was a needed pathway to new friendships, learning and healing from the trauma of armed conflict.