Mobile phones expand access to education in Africa

By Johan Burger

Good connectivity has been highlighted as of crucial importance during the Covid-19 pandemic. School closures in Africa in 2020 and 2021 meant that children had to stay at home, leaving them reliant on remote learning. The digital divide meant that students who could access the internet were better placed to continue with their learning. Ed-tech in Africa is a US$1.5bn market and is growing.

In November 2021, Airtel Africa and UNICEF announced their intention to accelerate the roll-out of digital learning through connecting schools to the internet and ensuring free access to learning platforms across 13 countries over the next five years. The goal of their partnership is to provide access to quality digital learning to all.

Airtel Africa has committed US$57m to UNICEF’s ‘Reimagine Education’. It will be delivered in the form of financial and in-kind contribution over five years. The programme will connect schools and communities to the internet and enable free access to online education to millions of mobile users. The immediate focus is on delivering learning to users in Chad, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.

In April 2021, Airtel partnered with Nigerian ed-tech startup ScholarX to launch a new mobile learning platform, LearnAM. LearnAM provides skills training content to improve learning outcomes and allows users to select parameters and search lists of available scholarships that match their requirements.

LearnAM provides audio and visual content to improve digital and vocational skills of Africans so they can access decent work. It provides learning opportunities, assessment to measure competency, and a marketplace that connects users to jobs, customers, and apprenticeships.

ScholarX received funding from the GSMA Innovation Fund for Mobile Internet Adoption and Digital Inclusion, which it will use to fund its project with Airtel, including platform development, content development, sourcing, and early user adoption.

The startup will use the huge retail and digital footprints of Airtel Nigeria to deliver its content.

Airtel Africa is not the only telco to support online learning. In August 2021 Safaricom announced it had partnered with UNICEF, the Kenyan Ministries of Education and ICT, and Nokia to connect 90 schools to the internet in Kenya. The collaboration aims to address the Kenyan government’s aim to connect all schools with broadband by 2030.

The connected schools are spread across rural and informal urban settlements in Kenya, serving an estimated 32,670 students. These schools are using Nokia’s FastMile 4G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) broadband solution delivered over Safaricom’s 4G/LTE network. Nokia’s meshed WiFi Beacon technology is used to boost the internet signal in selected classrooms and computer labs.

Safaricom is not a new player in the field of virtual classrooms. It had already in December 2018 partnered with Eneza to launch Shupavu291 in Kenya, a virtual classroom available on any mobile phone. Eneza Education provides school-level courses on a mobile app, through SMS or USSD, to 4.9 million mobile users with feature phones across Africa. By December 2018, Eneza had partnered with MTN Ghana, Tigo Ghana, and Orange Côte d’Ivoire.

Vodacom Business and Microsoft South Africa announced in June 2021 they had partnered to provide access to continuous, connected digital learning for South Africa’s education institutions, educators, and learners. These groups are connected to digital learning through the Connected Digital Education initiative of Vodacom and Microsoft. The initiative addresses the growing need for affordable online learning solutions through secure connections and educational tools and resources, while also considering the long-term need to transform education. The solution provides access to cost-effective data and educational apps and resources through Vodacom Business’s Edu Data Bundle and Microsoft Office 365 Education.

MTN is another South African-based mobile operator that has entered the field of online education. It launched MTN Online School, a new free online education portal, in October 2021. The portal provides digital curriculum for grades R to 12 and additional features like video lessons, assessments, and extra-tuition lessons for Grade 10 to 12 learners. It is also aimed at closing the digital gap in access to quality education among the youth. A smartphone app will be available from October 2022 onwards for Android users and iOS.

MTN developed the solution in partnership with South Africa's Department of Basic Education (DBE) and the National Education Collaboration Trust (NECT).

The portal is supported and housed on the MTN network and is zero-rated for MTN customers, which means it can be used without any mobile data.

MTN views the move into education as aligned with its "Ambition 2025" strategy to move from being just a telco to a digital solutions provider. The group planned to roll out the solution outside of South Africa in future.

Another partnership between a telco and edtech startup is that of OpenClassrooms and Orange. This partnership provides digital training across Africa to tackle unemployment. Students have access to OpenClassrooms courses via the mobile network.

Like Safaricom’s M-Pesa became a competitor to the banks in Kenya, mobile phone operators can also develop into a formidable competitor to the existing education providers. Some of these mobile operators have a huge subscription base. By partnering with a university from anywhere in the world, preferably one with an attractive brand, the telco can offer an education value proposition second to none in that country. Africa has many countries where such a model can potentially work well. As a matter of fact, this is not just the case for Africa, but also for many other countries in the world. The Covid-19 pandemic has shown how resilient students are and how easily they have adapted to the world of digital education technology. Local universities are now competing not only against other local universities, but against all other universities (or providers of education value propositions) form anywhere in the world.

 

Additional readings:

Anon. 2021. Delivering digital learning for children across Africa. Total Telecom. 1 November 2021. Available at https://www.totaltele.com/511516/Delivering-digital-learning-for-children-across-Africa.  Accessed 21 November 2021.

Anon. 2018. Mobile technologies for the SDGs. GSMA. 2018. Available at https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/How-EdTech-start-ups-in-emerging-markets-are-using-mobile-technology-to-tackle-the-SDGs.pdf.  Accessed 21 November 2021.

Gilbert, P. 2021. MTN Online School launches in SA. Connecting Africa. 21 October 2021. Available at http://www.connectingafrica.com/author.asp?section_id=761&doc_id=772945.  Accessed 21 November 2021.

Jackson, T. 2021. Nigerian ed-tech startup ScholarX partners Airtel to launch mobile learning platform. Disrupt Africa. 13 April 2021. Available at https://disrupt-africa.com/2021/04/13/nigerian-ed-tech-startup-scholarx-partners-airtel-to-launch-mobile-learning-platform/?utm_source=Africa.com&utm_campaign=c8efff4362-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_06_22_02_06_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_12683c81a6-c8efff4362-29147709.  Accessed 21 November 2021.

O’Grady, V. 2021. Telecoms groups and government come together to help Kenyan schools. Developing Telecoms. 17 August 2021. Available at https://developingtelecoms.com/telecom-technology/wireless-networks/11716-telecoms-groups-and-government-come-together-to-help-kenyan-schools.html.  Accessed 21 November 2021.

Vodacom Business and Microsoft SA. 2020. Vodacom Business and Microsoft SA partner to deliver a digital education platform. Connecting Africa. 23 June 2020. Available at http://www.connectingafrica.com/document.asp?doc_id=761894.  Accessed 21 November 2021.