This article deals with the politics of aid partnerships in the education sector of Benin following an anthropological policy research approach based on empirical data. I present local debates on primary education and the New Study Programmes, the latest education reform introduced nationwide in 1999. The different perceptions of the reform content, its implementation process and its outcomes, articulated by education experts, policy makers, donors, intellectual critics, teachers and parents, illustrate the complexity of educational policy making and, implicitly, of state-building in transnationalised arenas.