Education Governance in Conflict Zones: The Politics of School Boycotts and Lockdowns in Anglophone Cameroon

Abstract

In conflict-affected societies, education governance often becomes a contested arena where authority, legitimacy, and resistance intersect. This study examines the governance of education in Anglophone Cameroon within the context of the ongoing crisis, highlighting how schools have become contested spaces of legitimacy, identity, and power, analyzing how the governance of schooling has been transformed into a struggle over sovereignty between the Cameroonian state and Anglophone separatist movements. Drawing on the political sociology of education and theories of fragmented governance, the study moves beyond narratives of passive victimhood to examine how non-state actors deploy education disruption as a strategy of resistance, while state responses oscillating between coercion, securitization, and symbolic reforms have further eroded local legitimacy. Using a qualitative case study design, the analysis combines longitudinal document analysis of government decrees and separatist communiqués (2016-2025) with semi-structured interviews conducted with educators, parents, students, and community leaders in the North-West and South-West regions. The findings reveal the emergence of a hybrid and shadow education governance regime in which the capacity to permit or deny schooling functions as a key indicator of local hegemony. While school boycotts are framed as collective resistance, their prolonged enforcement has generated internal social tensions as the educational, economic, and psychosocial costs increasingly outweigh perceived political gains. The article argues that restoring education in conflict zones requires an epistemically inclusive and conflict-sensitive governance framework that prioritizes local legitimacy, participatory decision-making, and the protection of education as a public good.