Technology can provide scale to solutions of the actual life challenges in Africa and redistribute opportunity, argues Rapelang Rabana, Co-CEO of the non-governmental organization (NGO) Imagine Worldwide. Rapelang chats with Aisha Schnellmann about how the disruptive power of EdTech that offers high quality and personalised and cost effective learning experiences to the children in disadvantaged settings is transforming the education sector in Sub-Saharan Africa. What do you consider to be the greatest challenges of children in Sub-Saharan Africa? Aisha Schnellmann: I consider lack of access to quality education, healthcare, and basic services to be among the most pressing issues. The Economic Effects of poverty and limited infrastructure only worsen these challenges.
Education, issues to do with health care and poverty to be the greatest challenges facing the children of Sub-Saharan Africa. Rapelang Rabana: I grew up in Botswana and education has played a central part in my development through the years as a businesswoman and as a leader. I have never stopped believing that technology has the potential to bring the answer to the actual problems in Africa at scale, and, in this way, shift the opportunity. Every child is of great potential and yet millions of them do not receive good education. Literacy and numeracy belong to the basic level, and they transform lives.
Increasing investments in technology for education
Change health, earnings and social prospects of the children as well as the next generations. However, in Sub-Saharan Africa, eight out of 10 children fail to read with comprehension when they turn 10 years old and even display comparable weaknesses in mathematics In the countries where we operate, early grades pupils experience many challenges to learning: the overcrowding of the classrooms, the inadequately trained teachers, the inappropriate learning materials, and schools lacking basic amenities such as electricity and internet connectivity.
The initiatives to overcome these difficulties such as construction of additional schools or employment of additional teachers have not been quick, too expensive and were inefficient in closing the existing gaps in learning outcomes. Since in 2030 almost 50 percent of the global population under the age of 18 will be African, solving these problems is becoming an even more urgent necessity. EdTech can be very significant when created to purposefully fit the requirements of kids.
Education transformation needs all hands on deck
Especially those in the toughest of conditions. Our see-through EdTech technology at Imagine Worldwide enables students to thrive and gives them access to quality personalised and affordable learning in any environment and in the most difficult conditions. Children require tools which are effective in their spaces. In bloated classes, teachers find it difficult to attend to all children in a way that they need.
Our adaptive software employs the language of instruction that is local and targets the lesson to the individual child when it comes to skill level and pace, thus the students take charge in their education as it is not exclusive to teacher instruction. The children should have lasting programs. We reduced our costs considerably, and as a result, we can offer the solution at less than 7 dollars per child per year, so that the schools can afford to maintain the program. Children must have tools that are effective. Our strategy is supported by the studies that are based on solid evidence.
The power of exchange
Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) on our tablet software carried out in nine countries have demonstrated dramatic learning improvements in a variety of contexts and using different languages. A 2 year RCT conducted in Malawi revealed that within only 13 months, at least 50 percent more children are passing the reading standards and 70 percent of children are passing their levels in Math. The program has also led to an increased number of children enrolled in schools, number of children attending schools and positive attitude towards schooling. Noteworthy, Girls are achieving both short-term and long-term.
Benefits equal to those of boys performance, which has been associated with increased health, decreased marriages, and augmented incomes of the girls. The program captivates teachers and parents as the most important collaborators along the way of student success. The results in a recent research study across Malawi were that 93 percent of the teachers reported that they were enjoying the teaching lesson more and the parents told stories of how the children had made quite remarkable progress. On this success, Imagine Worldwide is expanding fast.
Conclusion
The government of Malawi has planned a national roll-out of the program that is to cover all the public primary schools nationally by 2029 and will impact more than 4 million students every year. The penetration of the program to the total number of countries in which it is performed has increased by 2022: 6,000 students and in early 2025: 700,000. It also intends to expand the model into other countries such as Sierra Leone and Tanzania. Through revolutionary changes in i.e. educating them wherever they need to be, and providing them with tools that they require.
We can make children meet their potential and become great. We have expanded our programs nationally and learned that we will have to do more and more supply chain management, logistics and aggregation of data. Such large programs need strong site and device management platform. And that is why we are thrilled to be able to speed up development of our Open Learning Architecture This platform will offer operational management of thousands of schools, hundreds of thousands of devices, and millions of learners even in places of lack of access to the internet and power.
