Data from sub-Saharan Africa show that many students leave school without the skills they need to thrive. To address this issue, it is important to understand what factors influence learning. Heyneman and Loxley (1983) observed that, in low-income countries, school quality is more important for explaining differences in learning than students’ family backgrounds. Recent research suggests that this influential conclusion no longer holds, without discounting the possibility that such trends could still be observed in countries with very low national incomes. The present study investigates this possibility by using the highly-detailed PASEC dataset, which covers ten countries in West- and Central Africa. Improving on Heyneman and Loxley’s methodology by using general dominance analysis, this study finds no support for the ‘Heyneman-Loxley Effect’ in this low-income region. Both school quality and student background account for around half of the explained variance in learning outcomes. These findings suggest that both family- and school-related factors are important sources of inequality of opportunity in low-income contexts.