Education

Many children received no education after schools closed all across the continent in March 2020 and lots of the children had no instruction, feedback, or interaction with their teachers. Some classes were taught over radio or television, but the program was standardized for everyone and therefore too difficult to understand for the younger learners. While edtech solutions brought some good ideas into the remote-education world, they relied on technologies that many families didn’t have the access to.

The other problem was poor and expensive data connectivity, which made students prioritize the educational material they downloaded to more complex topics like science or math. Studying independently caused lots of stress and anxiety to the students- when the contact with the school community disappeared- students felt alone and without the support to navigate through this difficult journey.

It’s clear that education remains as one of the top priorities in the continent with the youngest population in the whole world- over 200 million people are aged between 15 and 24. In a continent where the quality of education varies a lot, eventually, everyone had to find a way for distance learning.

That’s why, we are collecting the bold ideas in all the following categories:

• Virtual classrooms for universities and high schools.
• Communication tools for teachers and parents in the rural areas to ensure continuity of education.
• Relevant age appropriate educational materials via television or radio channels, which is more accessible to the general populace.
• Platforms and programs to educate the teachers and teach them digital skills.
• Quality ICT education resources and systems to teach students the skills needed to thrive in the actual rapid changing labor market.
• Access to learning tools to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by digitization.
• Tools that help the students and teachers to cope with the emotional stress of distance learning.
• Programs to ease the digital divide.
• Programs to help girls, who face unique barriers to continue to follow formal education from a distance.