In sub-Saharan Africa, the issue of girls' education remains a major concern in terms of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 4. This issue involves several aspects, such as school retention and success. In Burkina Faso, keeping girls in school and ensuring their success is one of the major concerns of the education authorities. Despite the government's efforts, gender inequalities still persist. While parity has been achieved at primary level, inequalities still persist at secondary level despite all the efforts made. The gross enrolment ratio (girls/boys) is 1.02 at primary level, compared with 0.90 at secondary level by 2021-2022. The completion rate is 17.1% for girls and 21.1% for boys in 2021-2022. Women are also under-represented in the teaching profession, particularly at secondary level: the proportion of women teachers is 49.0% at primary level and 22% at secondary level in 2021-2022 (DGESS/MENAPLN, 2022). The security crisis that the country has been experiencing since 2014 has severely shaken the national education system. Girls are the hardest hit. This concern is also shared by the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) and the Laboratoire de Recherche sur les Transformations Économiques et Sociales (LARTES-IFAN), which, since 2021, with the technical and financial support of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), have initiated and are implementing a programme to benefit four (04) countries, namely Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sao Tome and Principe and Chad. One of the main approaches used in implementing the project is TUSEME, which is a FAWE model aimed at empowering young people, especially girls. One of the strategic objectives of implementing the TUSEME approach is to create transformational leadership among girls and build their confidence and self-esteem to enable them to remain in the education system and successfully complete their schooling. A mixed qualitative and quantitative method was used to mobilise empirical data for this study. The article analyses the issues involved and the factors conducive to increasing girls' school retention and success rates: the case of the TUSEME project in Burkina Faso.
