Working on Futures, Reducing Risk – University Graduates in Mali and Their Strategies of Action

The research examines the conditions and opportunities of university education in Mali. The West African state counts two state universities, five state graduate schools and various private universities. The capital city’s University of Bamako with more than 80 000 students is obviously the center of higher education. Facing precarious conditions due to the shortage of means and professors the majority of students manage nevertheless to successfully graduate. Being young and highly qualified, university graduates are still strongly affected by unemployment.

Given the problematic conditions of studies and the major difficulties entering the labor market, a university degree does not create the certainty expected, but provides and even provokes risk again. Consequently, the main questions to be answered are: Why do young Malians study nevertheless? And how do young academics cope with a situation characterized by uncertainty and unpredictability?

Achieving individual life goals demands decision-making processes characterized by the evaluation and reevaluation of personal circumstances and risks. The application of a biographical approach will highlight how university graduates work on their situations in order to reduce future risks. Based on six months of field research in Bamako, this predominantly empirical paper will investigate past, present and future aspirations and subsequent strategies of action deployed by university graduates in Mali focusing on how risk is perceived, evaluated and dealt with.