edtechafrica4tech.org/wp-content/themes/afourtech/papers/a4t-edtech-single.pdfedtech — p 4 the...

AfricA 4 TechDigital Talks

edTech

Preconference PAPer

nov. 2 — 4 2016

Turning cuTTing-edge oPPorTuniTy inTo grAssrooTs reAliTy : PersPecTives on how To develoP, scAle And finAnce educATion Technology in AfricA

Education

A4TedTech — P 4

The development of compelling, relevant, Afro-centric education technology (or edtech, as it will be referred to in this paper) presents a threefold challenge to educationalists and technologists alike. The first is the question of “why edtech?”. On a continent with significant socio-political, security, and economic challenges, why should we embrace edtech? Efforts to bridge the digital divide in African education have tended to focus on increasing access to ICTs : Why not start with the development of a functioning, robust education system? According to the IMF, by 2035 there will be more young Africans in the working age population (15–64 years old) than that from the rest of the world combined1. Improved education and training is vital to develop the skills and capabilities required for to transition to the more advanced economic activities. The disparities in education access between geographic regions, racial groups and social classes have been exacerbated by the digital revolution. The education and entertainment landscape of children in the Western world have been shaped by digital technologies. Massive investment in the development of digital content for children in Western countries has not been matched in Africa, where only a fraction of the population has access to ICTs.

Much of the innovation in edtech has focused on the use of technology to support the practice and pedagogy of learning and teaching. Simply put, technology enabled education : Why not focus on building a wide-scale telecommunications and online information network to allow people basic access to educational content, email, blogs, videos, news? Why not focus our collective efforts on strengthening access to mobile phones - the vehicle by which billions of Africans connect to the internet?

Mobile surveying company GeoPoll and World Wide Worx surveyed 3 500 mobile phone users in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and Uganda as part of the Mobile Africa 2015 study. 40% of individuals surveyed in these countries use the internet on their mobile phones. The breakdown of usage by country stood at 51% in Ghana, 47% in Nigeria, 40% in South Africa, 34% in Kenya and 29% in Uganda. Despite lagging in mobile internet usage, South Africa leads in app downloads, suggesting a higher penetration of smartphones. 34% of South Africa mobile users download apps compared to 31% in Ghana, 28% in

Three quesTions

1. International Monetary Fund (2003) Regional economic outlook. Sub-Saharan Africa : Navigating Headwinds.

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Nigeria, 19% in Kenya and 18% in Uganda2. The need for upgrade of African ICT infrastructure is apparent and imperative.

The question is not as glib or apparent as it may first seem : Why edtech - why now? This paper will go some way to explaining an Africa4Tech macro perspective on why edtech is a worthwhile intervention for Africa’s sometimes fragile education ecosystems but ideally, each region, country, district, community would have its own approach and answer for this question.

The second question is often “what will it take to make edtech work in Africa?”. Here, issues of access, content, platform, device, agency, stakeholders, financing, infrastructure, capabilities and opportunities enter the debate. In his 2015 annual letter, Gates discussed his belief that technology will aid, rather than replace, teachers, but said that overcoming structural issues — such as poverty and the gender opportunity gap — is crucial to making sure new technology developments can actually have an impact3.

As a result, edtech in Africa cannot develop in the same way as in other more advanced economies. This paper thus devotes most of its attention to the question of what edtech’s development will look like in Africa. We seek to offer a high-level overview of some of the emerging patterns in edtech ways of working that are contributing to innovative and sustainable answers to this question. Again, we also acknowledge that the complexity of specific national contexts changes the optimal approach and dominant narrative substantively. Thus we focus on recurring themes and perspectives on what it will take to operationalise edtech across the continent and provide a non-exhaustive set of illustrative case studies and use cases from the private, public and social sector.

The third - and arguably most urgent - question of Africa4Tech’s edtech stream is “how do we make this real?”. The educationalists and technologists meet each other at this junction between the “why” and the “what”; the needs and the tools. Positing on hypothetical opportunities, reflecting on real-world challenges, and drawing lessons from successes and shortcomings elsewhere only goes some way in understanding how to practically make the changes required to activate large-scale edtech. Africa4Tech aims to use the next few days of this creative collaboration to answer this question. To do this, participants will need to consider not just how new technologies and operating models can be developed and integrated but also how new learning and teaching practices and pedagogies that can be created and mainstreamed in response to an increasingly digital and connected world.

2. UNESCO-UIS (2015). ICT in education in Sub-Saharan Africa : A regional analysis of ICT integration and e-readiness. Montreal : UNESCO Institute for Statistics.

3. https ://www.gatesnotes.com/2015-Annual-Letter?page=0&lang=en

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Edtech platforms typically replicate existing educational materials on digital platforms. Similarly, the practices that educators implore to support learning and teaching, such as curriculum planning, assessment, and monitoring and evaluation, are also replicated on digital platforms in the form of online adaptive assessment services and test preparation support. This section details four major categories of these platforms applicable to African edtech : online learning content, learning management systems, adaptive assessment and test preparation platforms, game- or simulation- based learning tools.

online leArning conTenT

Historically, education has been a business requiring the construction of physical buildings. This has not traditionally been a rapid scaling business. Broad Online Learning Platforms are growing at an astounding rate in countries like China, where population and demand for education far outstrips the rate at which physical schools can be built. Content is recreated and reformatted for consumption on an electronic, usually web-enabled, device. Educational ebooks or etextbooks are a good example of this. In Africa, this device is most-often a mobile phone. The majority of Africa’s online and mobile learning projects focus on formal education in primary and secondary schools, with a higher concentration of projects in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda than in any other countries.4 Tertiary or higher education has received less attention but this is changing with the rise of Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs as they are commonly referred to. MOOCs provide education in the form of online course content, lectures, assessments, and projects, and have been one of the biggest unrealised edtech opportunities for the African continent. “The available open educational resources such as MOOCs, developed by leading universities, could be used, adapted and customised according to learners’ needs, culture and context,” says Dr Zeinab El Maadawi, an Associate Professor and Expert in eLearning and International Education Management at the Faculty of Medicine at Cairo University, “In this case MOOCs can be utilised either as a stand-alone model or be integrated in a blended learning format coupled with traditional in-campus teaching.”5

PlATforms

4. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Turning on Mobile Learning in Africa and the Middle East : Illustrative initiatives and policy implications (2012), Working Paper Series on Mobile Learning (WPS ML)

5. http ://ela-newsportal.com/moocs-a-must-not-a-luxury/

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The advantages of MOOCs is that they allow a large number of students to learn at a flexible pace. Very few of these registered students graduate from these programs and even fewer MOOCs are recognised, accredited courses in the developing world. Many in edtech argue that throughput is less important that output and MOOCs should be primarily measured against the quality of educational outcomes with scale as a secondary consideration. Without consensus on what is considered a “meaningful outcome”, it is difficult to evaluate their effectiveness.

Too few MOOCs collect and track data or indicators of learning outcome to compare their outcomes with those of other platforms, systems, or pedagogies but even in the absence of compelling data on their effectiveness, MOOCs continue to draw students from the developing world. With 11 million registered students and hundreds of course offerings from Ivy League and other prestigious institutions, US-based Coursera, for example, is the largest and arguably best-known MOOC platform. Typically there are no entry requirements and online course are free but official verification of completion is possible through the purchase «verified certificates». Students from emerging markets account for a third Coursera’s users according to president and co-founder Daphne Koller.

In South Africa, the University of Cape Town (UCT) became the first African university to offer MOOCs in early 2015. The university operates its MOOCs through Coursera and FutureLearn (a smaller British-based platform.6 In Tanzania, a number of online content projects have sprung up including Ubongo, a social-enterprise that produces local content for children in english and Swahili on a number of online and offline platforms - including radio and television. In Gambia, African Virtual University opened an eLearning centre. Egypt is already the largest and most active MOOC community in Africa and even hosts the world’s largest digital library, Egyptian Knowledge Bank. When classes could no longer take place in 2013-2014, the only way of continuing the education of medical students at Cairo University was through an online course7.

6. http ://rlabs.org/press-release-ucts-latest-free-mooc-to-catalyse-social-change/

7. http ://ela-newsportal.com/moocs-a-must-not-a-luxury/

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leArning mAnAgemenT sysTems (lms) And collAborATive Tools A Learning Management System (LMS) is a virtual infrastructure that e-learning materials or software can be built on8. LMS are schools administration systems that allow educators to create and manage curriculum content and lesson plans while allowing learners to access and download course materials and related administrative/support materials such as timetables or mock test papers. School systems in sub-Saharan Africa are starting to make use of LMSs to get system-wide insights on teaching and learning by state, province or towns.

In South Africa, for example, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) has successfully rolled out the South African School Administration and Management System (SA-SAMS) to hundreds of schools. This free system now holds the majority of data on learner and school performance in the country but extracting and consolidating this data at the national, provincial, district, and circuit levels is difficult and time-intensive. In response to this challenge, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF) launched the Data-Driven Districts (DDD) initiative. DDD is described on the MSDF website as "an easy-to-use dashboard that allows education officials to visualize SA-SAMS data immediately and graphically. A validation toolset was also introduced to measure and improve data submission quality. The combination of high quality submission controls, immediate feedback, and measured and reported data scores has given administrators renewed ownership of their education data". DDD has now reached a third of the total school-going population South Africa with data collected from over 8000 schools about more than four millions learners.9

8. L. van Dyk LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS : ENGINEERING THE EDUCATION INDUSTRY TO EDUCATE THE INDUSTRIAL ENGINEER SA Journal of Industrial Engineering 2003 14(1) : 139 - 150

9. Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Data Driven Districts (DDD), https ://www.msdf.org/initiatives/data-driven-districts/

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AdAPTive AssessmenT And TesT PrePArATion servicesDespite a lack of data, one of the findings of the SRI report on digital learning platforms was that adaptive learning technologies demonstrated larger learning effects than non-adaptive ones.10 Educators can now assess students’ understanding using wireless assessments on handheld devices. These provide real-time updates on individual student progress, allowing educators to track class progress and tailor instruction for students requiring remedial support. In addition to Wireless Generation, Prometric provides wireless assessment services11. A growing number of test preparation products are targeting developing regions, where inadequate higher education capacity drives much higher competition and hence demand for these services.12 Expanding this capability to an entire education system is an idea that is starting to gain traction in developed markets despite at present being little more than an idea. In Uganda, for example, Skooldesk is a learning platform for primary school children that aims improve test scores in four main subjects : English, Math, Science and Social Studies. Users select and write tests from a database of over 100,000 questions in multiple choice, fill in the blank, short answer, and True/False format. Their results are displayed indicating the correct/wrong answers.

gAme - or simulATion-bAsed leArning ToolsThese applications integrate curriculum with augmented or virtual reality-based environments, helping students understand and learn in exciting ways. McKinsey & Company’s 2012 report on ‘Transforming learning through mEducation’ refers to the examples of DreamBox Learning’s games for adaptive learning. DreamBox increased test scores of grade 2 students by 19% in just 2 weeks with over 170,000 learners now using the platform. The application of these simulation tools in rural or under-resourced learning environments has significant untapped potential. Through simulation, many STEM learners at secondary school, higher education, and vocational education and training, will be able to learn through practice and apply their skills where physical infrastructure limitations would ordinarily limit practical work.

10. Means, B., Peters, V., & Zheng, Y. (2014) Lessons from Five Years of Funding Digital Courseware : Postsecondary Success Portfolio Review. Menlo Park, CA : SRI Education.

11. McKinsey & Company (2012)Transforming learning through mEducation

12. McKinsey & Company (2012)Transforming learning through mEducation

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sTArT-uPsNigerian incubator Co-Creation Hub Nigeria (CcHub) recently launched Abuja-based edtech initiative re :learn. The initiatives is “an open living lab focused on learning and the smart application of technology in schools. It will host programmes such as the Summer of Code, a four-week course aimed at introducing young people to computer programming, which has already launched in Lagos.”13

Kenya's eLimu has developed a literacy app called Hadithi Hadithi!'. The app shares stories, vocabulary and other literacy topics for third grade (or standard 1) in English and Kiswahili in Kenya, and English and Lugbarati in Uganda. Developed in partnership with Aga Khan Foundation , Hadithi Hadithi! is the first Kiswahili literacy app, and the first literacy app designed and developed in East Africa.

Edtech hardware has also taken a leap forward in Kenya with the advent of the BRCK. BRCK is a rugged device, pre-loaded with a library of local content aligned to local curriculum and able to operate with or without internet access. The tablet is designed to withstand power surges and can be charged by solar, car battery, or grid power. To cope with intermittent electricity supply in many African schools, BRCK has 8-hours of battery life in full power mode and can last even longer is low battery mode. BRCKs are delivered to under-resourced and rural schools in “a hardened, water-resistant, lockable case, the Kio Kit consists of 40 ruggedized Kio tablets, headphones and a BRCK.”14

Mainly used on low-cost mobile phones, Eneza Educationmakes school lessons and assessments available, to both students and instructors, via SMS, web, and app platforms. Students can access locally aligned tutorials, tips and assessments, as well as a leaderboard. Content is directly aligned with the national curriculum. he for-profit company started in Kenya in 2012, and recently raised $1 million in venture funding from Safaricom’s Spark Venture fund. Their vision to make 50 million kids across rural Africa smarter using mobile technology was validated in August 2016 when they passed the 1 million user mark.

13. http ://disrupt-africa.com/2016/02/nigerian-incubator-cchub-launches-relearn-edtech-initiative/

14. http ://www.brck.com/

PlAyers

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Eneza uses a direct sales model, targeting parents and teachers, with students as users. Individual parents, students or teachers can buy a subscription for a low weekly or monthly fee. Costs per user are kept low by focusing on and achieving large economies of scale.

governmenT

"The majority of ICT in education policy initiatives have lit up the sky for a moment before leaving everyone more in the

dark than ever. That's why we work strategically at the level of governments and ministries of education to inculcate schools-

based immersion strategy and scaleable models. Providing leadership development means that those people move

higher to positions of real power and influence on education policy - that is where true sustainability kicks in ."

Jerome Morrissey, cEo of Global eSchools and community initiative (GESci) in Kenya15

National government ministries and agencies are not well-known for innovation in the edtech space but there are a number of projects instituted or funded by governments across the continent.

In Angola, the National Centre for Information Technology (CNIT) launched two projects focused in improving elearning, especially in the poorest and most remote areas of the country. The first, N’Gola Digital, equips classrooms with computers and brings internet access to communities for the first time. The other, ‘Walking with ICT’, launched a mobile computer lab that travels cross-country to teach basic computer literacy skills.16

Malusi Cwele from South Africa’s education provider Impak envisages government playing a major role regarding providing the policy framework to allow edtech to have a positive impact on education. "Most governments are stuck in old curriculum standards and policy that don’t encourage learning but rather passim tests. Governments should allow more flexibility in policy guidelines to allow edtech solutions to improve the outcomes for learners and ensure that we adjust the paradigm to learning and teaching practices that prepare children for the world for the future," says Cwele.17 Many government already

15. http ://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/resources/online-materials/single-view/news/policy_and_training_keep_pace_with_africas_progress_in_mobile_technology/#.WANiBPl966I

16. The state of eLearning readiness in Africa In : Elletson, H. and Burgess, A. (eds) 2015. The eLearning Africa Report 2015, ICWE : Germany

17. Interview

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play in this policy space. In Mozambique, for example, the Ministry of Education developed a Technology Plan for Education which involves the integration of mobile phones in pre-service teacher training across the country18.

In addition to efforts to increase the role that government plays in edtech policy, there are increasing efforts to equip public sector leaders with the capabilities required to lead edtech interventions. The Global E-Schools and Communities Initiative (GESCI), in partnership with the African Union Commission and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland ran the first francophone session of the African Leadership in ICT and Knowledge Society course in 2015. Already boasting over 500 alumni, the course targeted mid-to-senior ranking ministry officials from Côte d'Ivoire, Morocco and Senegal.19

The role of foreign governments as well as their ideological leanings and geopolitical ambitions for African edtech is also non-trivial. In his book Distrusting Educational Technology, Neil Selwyn writes :

“…The fact that educational technology appears to be driven by a set of values focused on the improvement of education

does not preclude it is also serving to support and legitimate wider dominant ideological interests. Indeed, if we take time to unpack the general orthodoxy of educational technology as a ‘positive’ attempt to improve education, then a variety

of different social groups and with different interests, values and agendas are apparent. …While concerned ostensibly with

changing specific aspects of education, all of these different interests could be said to also endorse (or at least provide little

opposition to) notions of libertarianism, neo-liberalism and new forms of capitalism. Thus educational technologies can still be

said to be ‘ideologically freighted’, although this may not always be a primary intention of those involved in promoting their use.”


19. http ://www.adeanet.org/en/news/gesci-expands-leadership-in-ict-and-knowledge-society-course-to-cote-d-ivoire-morocco-and

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ngosThere are many NGOs doing sterling work in the literacy, language development and reading sectors – but few are addressing both literacy and digital content. These initiatives rely on and compete for donor funding largely from the same sources. Low levels of investment make it difficult to gain traction, and there is not enough networking and creation of synergy.

The BridgeIT initiative in Tanzania, which provides teachers with access to digital video content for on-demand screening in class via mobile technologies, and Nokia’s Mobile Mathematics (MoMath) project in South Africa20.

Non-profit African StoryBook Project (ASP) has launched a digital children’s story library with thousands of original stories from across the continent. Users are able to contribute their own stories in their home languages, translate others, illustrate, save and download stories for children of all ages at no cost. ASP has started working with teachers and librarians at 12 pilot sites in Kenya, Uganda, Lesotho and South Africa. Through their commitment to storytelling and story-sharing, they are empowering community libraries, ECD centres and primary schools to write and re-write their own and other�s children�s stories.

Through its mobi platform, the reading agency FundZa Literacy Trust publishes serialised novels and autobiographies for thousands of South African young adults living in rural areas, informal settlements and low-cost housing. When most traditional and ebooks are prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of Africans and a book can cost more than a full day’s work at minimum wage, mobile publishing has enabled these innovators to bring multilingual, quality stories to children, parents and teachers.


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schools

“Online program management and virtual schooling are two of the biggest areas of growth for the company. The

weight of the activity will be in blended learning, and how you combine the benefits of face-to-face with purely online approaches… Technology is not a panacea, it’s just a tool,

and its primary value is in enhancing the power of teaching to reach more people.”

John Fallon, cEo of Pearson

The University of Cape Town may have been the first higher education institution on the continent to explore edtech and elearning as a solution to the high costs of tertiary education, huge demand and limited infrastructure, but it is certainly not the only one. In northern Benin, “Medecine Online” will work with 1,000 students from the University of Parakou’s Medical Faculty as part of a partnership with World Bank-backed youth initiative ”eLearning Benin”21. Cameroon has two virtual university and the World Bank declared University of Yaounde I an African Centre of Excellence in Information and Communication Technologies.

At the regional level, World Links, SchoolNet Africa, and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) e-Schools Initiative were instrumental in developing networks of electronically-supported learning (e earning) practitioners and policy-makers across the AME region. Perhaps one of the most significant projects that emerged from these efforts was the NEPAD e-Schools Demonstration Project, which was a formidable public-private partnership involving the pan-African e-Africa Commission and five consortia, each led by a major multinational company. The project rolled out ‘end-to-end’ ICT solutions, which included personal computer laboratories (PC labs) equipped with curriculum content, teacher training modules and technical support, in six schools per country across sixteen countries in Africa. At the national level, SchoolNet Namibia, Egypt’s Smart School Network and the Jordan Education Initiative (JEI) were among the most prominent programmes. At the provincial level, notable initiatives included the Gauteng Online and Khanya projects in South Africa (Farrell and Isaacs, 2007; Farrell et al., 2007). Collectively, all of these initiatives involved significant financial, technological and human-capital investments, and worked to establish a global community of practice whose purpose was to catalyse a paradigm shift toward ‘twenty-first century learning’ and support the EFA goals at various levels throughout the region’s education systems.22

21. http ://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2015/10/22/elearning-benin-helps-beninese-youth-become-better-prepared-for-the-job-market-through-online-learning


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The PrinciPAl-AgenT Problem in educATionIn education, the ultimate users (students and teachers) are very often different to the buyers and decision makers (administrators, government and donors). Problems arise because the solutions that are best for the classroom, are not always the ones being considered or implemented. Teacher needs differ from politicians’ agendas and donators’ goals, and as a result, solutions that are pushed to schools are not adopted, technology is inefficiently utilised, and education outcomes do not improve.

The typical stakeholders involved in implementing an ed tech solution are :

•PayErS - the person or entity that pays for the product/service; often these are governments or foundations

•adMiniStratorS - responsible for the managing and implementing the solution; often these are district officials or school managers

•Solution ProvidErS - the start-ups, companies and organizations that create and develop the ed tech solutions

•uSErS - the actual consumer of the product/service; often these are the teachers, students and parents

Each stakeholder is solving for different goals and interests. Arguably, the users have the potential to have the highest direct impact on educational outcomes, but have the least political and decision making power in the solution that is developed and chosen. Politicians want a compelling story about how impactful they have been - how they have been effective in bringing exciting and innovative technologies to poor communities. District administrators want to meet their targets - be it graduation rates or standardised test scores - but without increasing costs. Negotiations are often around budgets allocations.

When these goals differ, it’s tricky for the solution provider to focus on any one stakeholder. In order to get the solution funded, implemented

chAllenges

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and adopted, companies often make choices about whose needs they need to satisfy. This compromise, if not checked, falls into the danger of creating a solution that has no impact on educational outcomes.

sysTemATic fAilures in TrAdiTionAl educATion deliveryA number of the fundamental building blocks for a functioning education system are missing in many African countries. In primary, secondary and higher education the challenges of insufficient funding, too few and underqualified teachers, lack of physical school infrastructure including intermittent access to electricity, water and sanitation, and lack of governance or competent system management, among other are clear.

The TeAcher’s Proficiency wiTh Technology And moTivATionThere are very few successful models of ed tech in Africa. The problem of effective adoption of ed tech products and solution, is not primarily a problem of infrastructure or financing. Rather, it is that they are not well integrated into the school system. For example, the Vodafone Foundation and Microsoft have donated a lot of technology (computers, tablets etc.) to schools, but it just isn’t being implemented properly.

In a recent interview with UNESCO Jerome Morrissey, CEO of Global eSchools and Community Initiative (GESCI) in Kenya, summarised the key challenge succinctly : “Historically at school in relation to technology we have not paid enough attention to teachers. Technology is of little use without teachers trained to use it in a pedagogical context.”23

One of the majors issues lies with the teachers :

1. The teachers themselves have limited digital literacy, and understanding of how tech can complement and support their teaching, and

2. The teachers are not motivated to use the new solutions - there is no financial incentive, it is more work, there’s no professional development - and all of this translates into poor motivation

3. Training teachers is not easy either. The costs involved of training a trainer, and then deploying them have proved to be very challenging.

23. http ://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/resources/online-materials/single-view/news/policy_and_training_keep_pace_with_africas_progress_in_mobile_technology/#.WANiBPl966I

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funding

•GlobAl EdTEch InvEsTmEnT AcTIvITy Is slowInG down

Data from CB Insights shows that investment activity in edtech has slowed down from 2015, when deal activity averaged nearly $3.3 billion.

•PrIvATE sEcTor InvEsTmEnT In AfrIcAn EdTEch hAs bEEn low

Measuring the costs and return on investment of edtech interventions is difficult due to the lack of systematic analysis of the costs of development, initial implementation, and ongoing implementation of projects.24 Perhaps as a result of this, there is very little documented private investment in education in Africa. In Disrupt Africa's recent African Tech Startups Funding Report 2015, the results for e-learning startups showed that South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya were the top three destinations for tech investors in 2015, both in terms of numbers of deals and total amount of funding but investment into the edtech sector was “near or non-existent”. Only three investments took place in the e-learning sector in 2015, with total e-learning funding estimated at less than US$500,000.25

Within sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the majority of deals have been for US-based companies with operations in Africa, or large established private education companies. The startup funding in edtech that is active in Silicon Valley is missing in SSA.

24. B. Means, M. Bakia, and R. Murphy, Learning Online. Rutledge, 2014, 2014, pp. 165-177

25. Disrupt Africa African Tech Startups Funding Report 2015

EdtEcH annual FinancinG HiStory

2012-2016 ytd (7/5/16)

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A number of reasons could explain this :

4. Government is the primary funder and employer in education in most African countries. When governments have opaque regulations and unclear support for private education systems, investors shy away from investing in this sector due to unknown risk and political hurdles that must be overcome26.

5. Financial and social returns are difficult to measure – there are many confounding effects, and payback periods for returns are long.

6. Education has long investment timelines – returns and liquidity from investments typically take a very long time to manifest

7. The location and proximity of capital is far from the business operations in Africa, and local African funds are often much less capitalised compared to their international counterparts.

However, there is growing activity. Cape Innovation and Technology Initiative (CiTi) is launching its first edtech cluster27. The cluster/incubator will aim to spur greater innovation in education across South Africa and the wider continent. The Pearson Affordable Learning Fund announced in January 2015 that it would invest $50 million over the next 3 years. It manages investments in South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, India and the Philippines.

There are also opportunities for increased cooperation between private and public players to work together to deliver edtech solutions. Working with public organisations, private investors can incorporate impact metrics into a deal structure. An example could be government providing vouchers to subsidise e-textbooks, that are provided by a private company responsible for platform development and instructor training. Government also becomes a distribution partner, assisting at a policy level, and helping with delivery to schools via school districts.

•TyPEs of InvEsTors

Funding sources can be divided into three broad categories :

•Economic return focused

•Socio-economic return focused

•Social return focused

26. Dalberg Capital (2016), Impact of Private Investment in Education in SSA

27. http ://ventureburn.com/2016/06/citi-announce-africas-first-edtech-cluster/

A4TedTech — P 19

economic reTurn focused

These investors seek full financial market rates of return, and just happens to be in the education sector. Most private equity and venture capital funds, and social seed capital will fall into this category. E.g. Pearson Affordable Learning Fund, Spark Capital, and Curro Holdings. A prominent recent example is the $15 million investment in social learning network, Brainly. According to the company, over 60 million students in 35 countries use Brainly every month. “Naspers Ventures’ remit is to find investment opportunities for Naspers beyond our traditional markets/segments but that are a strategic fit for the company,” said Naspers Ventures CEO Larry Illg. “We are looking for companies and leaders with high potential and the ambition to have significant global impact. Education is a sizeable market that has not yet seen the technology impacts we have seen in other sectors, but we are now seeing dramatic innovations appearing. That makes EdTech a perfect fit for Naspers Ventures.”28

socio-economic reTurn focused

These investors are willing to accept a discount to market returns, for social returns. They often enter when the profit potential is too long, or risk is too high in the short-term. E.g. local government, community debt financing, and The International Finance Corporation.

sociAl reTurn focused

These are usually traditional philanthropic grants or charitable gifts. These initiatives often follow a predictable trajectory : a large cash injection, launch of a pilot phase, monitoring and evaluation are occasionally included in the form of project status reports. Recommendations for scaling impact are made and planning for the next phase begins. Promotional and donor materials suggest that the pilot was successful but after the pilot phase ends, funding dries up and is not able to sustain a full-scale project29. Donor or foundation investors value social returns, and may even view the grant as a transaction for social impact rather than an investment. This seems to reduce the traditional investment requirement of an adequate return on investment. Prominent examples include investments by Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, UNICEF, local government, and venture philanthropy.

28. https ://www.pehub.com/2016/05/3331289/29. Means, B., Peters, V., & Zheng, Y. (2014) Lessons

from Five Years of Funding Digital Courseware : Postsecondary Success Portfolio Review. Menlo Park, CA : SRI Education.

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•TEchnoloGy InfrAsTrucTurE

“Surveys indicate that the African population is willing to engage with new technology-based tools to improve

their education and knowledge. However, the continent’s infrastructure proves to be a large challenge, undermining the long-term benefits of Internet and Mobile learning strategies.

A new mindset is required to adopt ‘Cloud’ technologies, with African youth pushing favorably towards new learning

methodologies that would allow them to catch up with their intercontinental counterparts.”

lorenzo torresin, technical director, allos South africa30.

A 2015 report by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) indicated that one of the most significant barriers to the growth of edtech in Africa remained a lack of electricity, especially in rural areas. Challenges, however, go beyond the lack of electricity. In several countries very few schools have computers or an Internet connection. High costs of data and very scarce high-speed third generation (3G) networks further constraint connectivity. This is especially true in countries such as Burkina Faso, Guinea, Liberia and Madagascar where internet availability is negligible in schools. With 3% of upper secondary schools in Madagascar, and in 3% and 5% of lower and upper secondary schools in Guinea, more than 500 pupils or more on average share a single computer. In Niger the proportion of lower and upper secondary schools with Internet is 2% and 14%, respectively.31

•frAncoPhonE vs. AnGloPhonE counTrIEs

Francophone and Anglophone African countries inherited education systems from Britain and France that were quite different32 :

•The British were interested in containing the costs of their colonies and enlisted the help of mission societies to provide education on their behalf cheaply. Missions had considerable freedom in how they ran schools, recruited teachers, taught religion, and adjusted teaching contents to local conditions. Overall, the educational system was decentralised. Furthermore, the first grades of primary schools instruction was in the local vernacular, with English as a subject.

30. Docebo, E-Learning Market Trends & Forecast 2014 - 2016 Report

31. UNESCO-UIS (2015). ICT in education in Sub-Saharan Africa : A regional analysis of ICT integration and e-readiness. Montreal : UNESCO Institute for Statistics

32. http ://voxeu.org/article/british-and-french-educational-legacies-africa

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•In the French system, schools could not operate without government permission. There were strict guidelines regarding teacher qualification and curriculum, and French was the language of instruction. And following the 1905 Law on the Separation between the State and the Churches, the state essentially became the only provider of education. To this day, Francophone Africa education systems are still tied to the French education system.

When considering the introduction of an ed tech solution, the education system and infrastructure within the country has a very large impact on how solutions are adopted and implemented. The more mixed and flexible British systems allows ed tech companies to easier experiment and innovate new ideas with students and schools, but this flexibility also significantly increases the difficulty of scaling a solution. The more centralised French systems have the potential for rapid adoption and deployment of effective solutions, but this also makes schools less willing (or unable) to experiment, test and innovate - proposed solutions need to work before they are considered.

•wEAlTh And GEndEr

A University of Pennsylvania survey found that nearly 80 percent of Coursera students from developing countries already had a college degree, compared to less than 10 percent of the overall national population. «MOOCs were heralded as a revolution in education access, and to some extent I think that's true,» says Brandon Alcorn, co-author of the study. But it's a complicated truth. «Yes, we're seeing a lot of students from [developing countries], but they are students that have already received an education. They're already the elites in their countries, if you will.» Or, as Trucano puts it : «They're the folks who have already figured out how to learn.»

In addition, companies like Coursera believe that focusing on a country’s most privileged students can boost the entire economy. «People have often asked me, well, aren’t you focusing on the wrong part of the problem?» says Koller. «We all of course are strong believers in the moral imperative of making sure everyone is literate and has access to basic education. But if you think about the economic benefit of taking someone who is pre-literate and giving them four years of education, versus taking someone who’s more or less high school-level and giving them four years of education, the latter have a much bigger effect in terms of the society around them,» whether through entrepreneurship or educating their own families.33

33. http ://www.theverge.com/2015/2/11/8014563/bill-gates-education-future-of-online-courses-third-world

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The usage of mobile phones is predictably skewed by gender, education and proficiency of a European language such as English or French. A 2013 Pew Research survey found that women, the less-educated and those who cannot read or speak English are less likely to have their own mobile phone. Not having one’s own device howver does not mean that these individuals do not still have access to a device : 58% of those without mobile phones indicated that they shared a phone with someone else and 21% of Kenyan mobile phone owner respondents shared their phones with others.34

Social norms and economic realities can make it harder for women to participate in online education — parents can discourage girls from using mobile phones, for example, because they worry mobile phones will become a way for them to secretly communicate with boys. Literacy rates for girls are markedly lower in many developing countries, and girls may be hesitant to actively participate in courses.35

conTenT And lAnguAge

“A device in someone’s hand is just the first step. Potential digital learners then need affordable data, digital literacy, and of course localised content and services that fill what they see

as the gap in their educational opportunities”

nisha ligon, chief executive officer (cEo) of tanzanian edtech startup ubongo.36

While the shift from content to platform may be complete in other parts of the world, African learners are still hungry for relevant, local content. Lack of access to reading material and the absence of a strong reading culture are two major ingredients of this toxic mix that reinforce each other. The majority of children in sub-Saharan Africa lack quality resources for both education and recreation. Children from materially deprived communities suffer not only from lack of access to books and reading material – the sparse resources at their disposal are often unsuitable. African literary, educational and cultural content, even when available, is seldom promoted and is therefore undervalued and ignored. Schools in indigenous communities, especially rural and peri-urban areas, have great difficulty in sourcing appropriate literature for their learners, especially in local languages.

34. Cell Phones in Africa : Communication Lifeline, Pew Research Centre http ://www.pewglobal.org/2015/04/15/cell-phones-in-africa-communication-lifeline/ (Last assess : 8 October 2016)

35. http ://www.theverge.com/2015/2/11/8014563/bill-gates-education-future-of-online-courses-third-world

36. Disrupt Africa African Tech Startups Funding Report 2015

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When learners own or have access to mobile phones, they are often older or lower-end handsets with limited functionalities and small screens. There is a dearth of mobile phone-based educational content and applications, which poses a further impediment to mobile learning in the region. This is especially true in poorer communities where people predominantly possess lower-end phones, for which little educationally-rich content and few educational applications have been developed.37

During a stakeholder’s forum m :Lab East Africa, Njeri Wangari from East Africa Publishers emphasised that some publishers have tried digitizing their work but they face the challenge of generation gap, where the management view the whole digitizing process as a path that sooner or later will pass and people will go back to the manual textbooks. The second challenge is security that is the risk of piracy. The publishers and other content creators were challenged to first understand the end users and consumer preference before creating content.38

The lack of open licenses for online course materials is a significant obstacle for African educators to localise content for African learners. “For most platforms, the course materials are openly accessible but under strict copyright terms, and are not allowed to be copied, translated or reused (in original or revised form). This means that education providers are not allowed to translate and localize the course materials into the local language and culture of a developing region, nor disseminate the materials in a form (e.g. printed version) other than their original online version which is technologically demanding for students to access.”39

A few initiatives and resources have begun to address IPR in education. These include the UNESCO/COL Guidelines for OER in Higher Education, and OER Africa’s Copyright and Licensing Toolkit. 40


38. http ://www.itwebafrica.com/services/sendtoafriend/printit.php?id=231071

39. Leading and managing change in education : Putting transformational leadership into practice by Linda Yin-king Lee and Joseph Kok-long Lee, Studies and Practices for Advancement in Open and Distance Education


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“What excites us about edtech comes down to educational outcomes… It’s still going to require great teachers in the classroom and edtech allows those teachers to potentially

scale what they’re doing.”

Brian dixon, Partner, Kapor capital

mobile TeAcher TrAining And develoPmenT AT scAle

“Just because a pedagogical approach works in the Western hemisphere, it doesn’t mean it’s going to work well in Africa. We need to look at things differently in Africa, and we need

to train educators to think about pedagogy differently”

Solen Feyissa is a Ph.d. candidate at the university of Minnesota

The region currently needs 2.7 million teachers and with a fast-growing school-age population this demand will grow by nearly 50 percent in the next decade or so. The Ghanaian Ministry of Education estimates that around 63,000 of the country�s primary school teachers and a further 31,000 secondary school teachers remain untrained. The lack of resources and the challenges of reaching teachers in remote and geographically dispersed areas makes this a daunting task, all but impossible to achieve using traditional training methodologies, which are time-and-labor intensive by nature.

The solution, some argue, is to leverage technology to bridge that logistics gap and stretch existing resources to meet the demand. And this is precisely what a project called Train for Tomorrow, which was launched by the The Varkey Foundation earlier this year, is aiming to do.

Train for tomorrow is Africa�s first interactive distance learning program aimed specifically at teachers. It works by enabling two-way interactions

41. http ://alicebonasio.com/edtech/can-we-use-technology-to-train-25-million-new-teachers/35. http ://www.theverge.com/2015/2/11/8014563/bill-gates-education-future-of-online-courses-third-world

oPPorTuniTies

A4TedTech — P 25

between trainers and teachers in geographically remote and dispersed locations, meaning they can be reached at a much lower cost. Over the next two years it will use the $2 million grant it received from Dubai Cares to train around 5,000 teachers in Ghana.41

At the same time, the design of mobile learning interventions for teachers should also take advantage of the individualized, personalized and informal ways in which teachers can use mobile phones for their own learning and for peer support. By focusing initially on informal learning, interventions engage with the simplicity that mobile phones enable and are not hamstrung by the institutional inefficiencies that often exist due to severe capacity constraints. However, it is important to keep in mind that peer support may have its limitations. When designing teacher-training models for integrating mobile phones into education, projects like SEMA in Kenya have experienced some difficulties with the cascade model, which relies on newly trained teachers to support and train their colleagues. It may be worthwhile to consider alternative training approaches that draw on self-directed, self-paced learning models for teacher competency development, which are well-suited for a mobile phone environment.42

blended leArning

“Online program management and virtual schooling are two of the biggest areas of growth for the company. The

weight of the activity will be in blended learning, and how you combine the benefits of face-to-face with purely online approaches… Technology is not a panacea, it’s just a tool,

and its primary value is in enhancing the power of teaching to reach more people.”

John Fallon, cEo of Pearson

In 2012, SRI Education evaluated 12 major post-secondary school courseware-related projects funded through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Postsecondary Success initiative. Looking at 137 different SRI performed a quantitative meta-analysis of student outcomes to estimate the impact of digital courseware on student learning. The table below summarises some of the key drivers of positive learning outcomes in digital education.43

42. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Mobile Learning for Teachers in Africa and the Middle East : Exploring the Potential Mobile Technologies to Support Teachers and Improve Practice (2012), Working Paper Series on Mobile Learning (WPS ML)


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According to the report, course implementations using “individualized pacing had more positive impacts than those with class-based or a mixed form of pacing”. Similarly, “courses using a mastery learning approach to individualizing students’ learning paths had greater learning impacts than those that allowed learners to choose their own path through the material. In terms of online pedagogy, practice environments (which tended to be associated with mathematics courses) had more positive learning impacts than environments that called on students to collaborate or explore online resources.”44

The last driver of effective programmes introduces the idea of "blended learning". Blended learning refers to a learning modality where learning is delivered in person as well as in an online environment. Blended learning differs from more unstructured approaches to mixing online and offline learning in its approach to personalisation of learning. The


taBlE : FEaturES aSSociatEd

witH MorE PoSitivE EFFEctS on lEarninG

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technology used allows those who either learn differently, have different learning needs, or have different interests to interact with content in a way that is adequately paced, engaging and meaningful to them. The benefits of blended learning include students that are more engaged during class time (using the online content), and the ability for students to control the pace of their own lessons. For teachers, they can plan for smaller groups, rather than aiming a lesson plan towards the middle of the class. With everyone engaged on computers, the teacher can create smaller, more effective breakout groups to cover different concepts at different paces.

Cwele of South Africa’s Impak believes that many edtech solutions “have infrastructure requirements and challenges in the African context and a few players are trying to think smartly of how you can deliver this at an affordable cost". Impak's own school launching next year called, Arrow Academy, wants to take this a step further to continuously innovate around blended learning by empowering teachers to smartly introduce technology in the learning process where it matters. Cwele describes this in two parts : primarily, "finding places in the learning process of children where technology enhances learning and making sure that they don’t introduce technology where it is not needed or helpful" and secondly, "Focusing on how the whole child developed from a cognitive, social, emotional perspective and seeing technology as a helpful tool than a threat to teaching."45

Early adopters such as Spark Schools and Streetlight Schools in South Africa have led the push for blended learning in low cost environment are some examples to look at, as well as the push by the Gauteng Department of Education with their digital classrooms. There are some cool examples in Kenya and Ghana (can’t remember the names).

SPARK Schools in South Africa uses the lab rotation style of blended learning, where students have access to a computer lab to incorporate their online content. Students access these labs for about an hour each day, and work through software that focuses and mathematics and literacy. Their progress is analysed and recorded by the software, and the teacher is able to see their progress and challenges.

Carol Twigg, leader of the NCAT/CTE project, for example, argues that a blended approach with face-to-face access to an instructor or teaching assistant is necessary for low-achieving students : We believe the face-to-face component is critical. We don’t think teaching developmental math in a fully online environment will work for most students. Human contact, keeping them on point and encouraging them, is critical.46

45. Inteview46. Means, B., Peters, V., & Zheng, Y. (2014) Lessons

from Five Years of Funding Digital Courseware : Postsecondary Success Portfolio Review. Menlo Park, CA : SRI Education.

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Kepler, an experimental nonprofit education program in Rwanda, is a blend of Western MOOCs and on-the-ground teaching : Kepler is pioneering a new way to lower the cost of university while maintaining quality : pair digital content with a team of expert local teachers. Without the need to hire expensive faculty, Kepler is priced for students from all backgrounds. Starting with 50 students in 2013, it currently serves 150, and CEO Chris Hedrick says the organization is recruiting another 160 for the next class. Students are placed in dorms with electricity and internet connections, where they’ll have access to both MOOC course materials and support from Rwandan instructors. «I don’t want to have any Americans involved at the local level three years from now,» says Hedrick. In August 2015, Kepler opened a branch campus at the Kiziba Refugee Camp in western Rwanda, dramatically expanding access to higher education for one of the world’s most disadvantaged populations.47

All Kepler graduates earn a degree from our partner Southern New Hampshire University—a credential that gives students an advantage on the job market. 98% of Kepler students who earned their AA within 2 years. 81% of third year Kepler students who have been offered a full-time job. Kepler expects to increase the range of specializations within the next two years, with a focus on business and IT.48

«Just introducing technology into education doesn't actually act as a silver bullet,» says Ronda Zelezny-Green, a mobile learning expert and PhD candidate at Royal Holloway, University of London. Zelezny-Green thinks online education can be transformative, but she’s skeptical of centralized MOOCs. «With a lot of the edtech rollouts, people approach it as if we in the developed world have it all figured out,» she says. «We need to take a bit more of a nuanced approach to develop a way of integrating technology that actually makes sense for the local context.»49

A school-in-A-box : bridge inTernATionAl AcAdemiesAn organisation that has achieved a lot of success over the last few years, but has also recently been the subject of a lot of controversy, is the Bridge International Academies. Started in Nairobi, Kenya in 2009, Bridge now serves more than 100 000 students in more than 400 nursery and primary schools in Africa. With a mission of Knowledge for all, Bridge plans to educate 10,000,000 children across a dozen countries by 2025.

47. http ://www.kepler.org/48. http ://www.kepler.org/academics/49. http ://www.theverge.com/2015/2/11/8014563/bill-

gates-education-future-of-online-courses-third-world

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Bridge hires and trains teachers from local communities. These teachers are provided with a tablet, with guided lessons which are pushed to the tablet from Bridge’s headquarters. These scripted lesson plans significantly reduce the amount of lesson preparation and teaching experience required by the teacher. Teacher and student performance can also be monitored in real time.

Results show that Bridge pupils gain an additional 0.34 standard deviation on core reading skills and an additional 0.51 standard deviation on maths compared to their peers in neighboring schools, based on USAID-designed exams administered by an independent monitoring and evaluation company – this translated into over 250 additional days of learning. Thanks to economies of scale, Bridge is able to charge just $6 a month per pupil on average with academies reaching operational sustainability after just one year.

However, Bridge has recently been in the news. In March this year50, Liberia’s minister of education minister announced that the entire pre-primary and primary education system would be outsourced to Bridge International Academies to manage. The deal will see the government of Liberia direct public funding for education to support services subcontracted to the private, for-profit, US-based company.

The UN’s Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Kishore Singh, is against this. He noted that provision of public education of good quality is a core function of the State, and that “abandoning this to the commercial benefit of a private company constitutes a gross violation of the right to education.”

In August this year51, Uganda’s education minister announced that the government was closing a controversial chain of for-profit nursery and primary schools because, she said, national standards were being ignored and the “life and safety” of some 12,000 children were endangered because of poor hygiene and sanitation.

50. http ://mgafrica.com/article/2016-03-31-liberia-plans-to-outsource-its-entire-education-system-to-a-private-company-why-this-is-a-very-big-deal-and-africa-should-pay-attention

51. http ://www.publicfinanceinternational.org/news/2016/08/ugandan-government-close-controversial-bridge-academy-schools

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fliPPing clAssrooms : smArTesT Person in The room is The roomDavid Weinberger, an American technologist, author and senior researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, once wrote “The smartest person in the room isn’t the person standing at the front lecturing us, and isn’t the collective wisdom of those in the room. The smartest person in the room is the room itself : the network that joins the people and ideas in the room, and connects to those outside of it.”52

virTuAl reAliTy And AugmenTed reAliTyIn under-resourced classrooms where children are unlikely to be able to leave their villages or towns to explore the world to further their education, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) create opportunities to be present and engage with a number of topics in the curriculum. The interactive element of VR/AR is what makes it interesting – lesson concepts become tangible, because learners are able to engage with, move around, and explore beyond what can be described in a textbook or blackboard. Google Cardboard is an inexpensive mobile VR product that allows anyone with a smartphone, for less than $20, to experience virtual reality. Developers have created fantastic content for Google Cardboard for educational purposes.

Some examples include Discovery VR allows students to explore our world through 360° immersive videos – for example swimming in shark-infested shipwrecks. Titans of Space provides a tour of the planets in our solar system in VR, allowing students to zoom in on Saturn and orbit its moons. NearPod allows students to take a trip to Italy to visit the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or ride the rollercoaster on Santa Monica pier.

Technical vocational education and training (TVET) institutions and centres face similar challenges to other mainstream education delivery in Africa including :

•Insufficient educational foundation in basic education to enable learners to transition to vocational or higher education

•Lack of trained teachers/lecturers with practical knowledge and on-the-job experience

52. David Weinberger, Too Big to Know : Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren’t the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room (2014)

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•Limited reach of TVETs and other institutions of vocational higher learning outside of major cities and economic hubs

•Poor link between private sector needs (vocational, artisanal, service sector skills) and TVET curriculum

• Lack of detailed, realistic, funded, and integrated implementation plan with clear national owner

Augmented reality may play a role in at least helping students practically experience and experiment in their field of choice, without the actual physical infrastructure or teachers with on-the-job experience.

The role of PArenT's engAgemenT in educATionEngaging and equipping parents in their households to be able to support their children’s education, is an aspect that does not get a lot of attention in Africa. Organisations like Ubongo, produce engaging video and radio content covering maths, literacy and communication. Originally started in Tanzania, they now have 2.8 million weekly viewers, and have started expanding in Kenya. MindSprout is a US based mobile product that helps parents with early childhood development, suggesting beneficial activities for kids to help their development.

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governAnce needs To come from governmenT, innovATion needs To come from The locAl PrivATe secTorIn terms of innovation, innovation needs to come from the private sector; from within the local context of the country. Governments are not good incubators of innovation - they do not have the flexibility and agility that a small startup has. And therefore, strides in ed tech innovation must come from the private sector. The challenge is that it is not possible to just copy and paste a solution from the US or Europe. The culture and circumstances are different enough that this hasn’t worked.

This is a lot more difficult than we think it is.

conclusions

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edTech cAn mAgnify educATors’ imPAcT, buT noT suPPlAnT iT

“What excites us about edtech comes down to educational outcomes… It’s still going to require great teachers in the classroom and edtech allows those teachers to potentially

scale what they’re doing.”

Brian dixon, Partner, Kapor capital

Countries in Africa need to take a long, hard look at their own infrastructure and education systems before investing in widescale edtech solutions. Tech cannot replace or change the fundamental requirements of a functioning education system thus investment in edtech may not be appropriate for all economies at this point in time.Without fundamental education resources to leverage,regardless of the amount of edtech a system or start-up invests in, the results will be underwhelming : 2000% increase on a base of zero is still nothing. One cannot just leapfrog anything without having the basics in place.

McKinsey and Company’s research as part of the “How the world’s most improved school systems keep getting better” report suggests six key interventions common to all improving education systems :

1. Building the instructional skills of teachers and management skills of principals

2. Assessing students

3. Improving data systems

4. Facilitating improvement through the introduction of policy documents and education laws

5. Revising standards and curriculum

6. Ensuring an appropriate reward and remuneration structure for teachers and principals

The future for African education is most certainly digital but it will have to be a different kind of digital : less about computers, ebooks and iPads and more sensitive to the socio-economic realities of the continent. To achieve widespread, affordable development, distribution, and sale of a variety of African edtech solutions, content providers will have to combine multiple platforms including mobile phones, social networks, radio and print to make an impact. There is much work to be done over the next decade but the potential impact on billions of young Africans is well worth the effort.

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PrEconFErEncE PaPEr

Written by Bontle Senne and Richard Cheng

With the contribution of : Malusi Cwele (Arrow Academy) Dr. Stephan-Eloise Gras, CEO & co-founder Africa 4 Tech

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