Yemen is the poorest country on the Arabian Peninsula. It used to be part of the American Axis of Evil, now it is in severe political turmoil. Yemen is a tribal society with a very strong identity and sense of culture. It attaches to traditional values, and yet it is also open to modern international views. This can lead to tensions, also in education. The development of a new teacher education curriculum at universities in Yemen showed a similar tension. A tension between the need to be true to traditional values on the one hand and the need and wish to align with what happens internationally in teacher education. A Dutch funded project facilitated the reform process. It provided professional development to enable staff to make informed decision about the curriculum reform process. The paper will describe the process of developing the new teacher education curriculum. It will present lessons learned about the development of the new curriculum in the complicated context of Yemen, will reflect on these 1) against the background of the tensions between traditional and modern international perspectives, and 2) in the wider context of curriculum design and implementation in general.