5 Challenges Affecting EdTech Adoption in Developing Countries

Borne out of the living conditions in the developing countries, parents strive to provide the best quality education for their children. They believe that if their children get it, their own social-economic status will improve.

For learners to be relevant when they grow up, educators have to prepare them for the future of works. To achieve that, learners should be exposed to the 21 century and modern life skills teaching. 

According to Niall McNulty, educational technology services help learners to flesh out their life learning and literacy skills through self-directed study. This self-direction requires discipline, time management and perseverance, and its inclusion with digital skills will help learners become more relevant in later lives.

However, developing countries fall short in their subscription to the edTech services. Here are the five challenges that affect the adoption in developing countries.

Electrical Power

The world bank points that by 2040, nearly 530 million people in Sub Saharan Africa will not have access to electricity due to population growth. As of now, connecting the poor and hard-to-reach households in developing countries with off-grid solutions is difficult. Nigeria has massive electrical power issues even in arguably developed places. This makes it taxing to adopt edTech solution.

In the international school where I teach, we employ interactive boards to make multimedia classes engaging and participating for students. The top of the problems teachers face while using it is the intermittent interruption in learning when power suppliers switch. Stable electrical power will render edTech adoption seamless.

Internet Connectivity

Internet, mobile or broadband is expensive in most developing countries. In Nigeria, it costs $3 per gigabyte. That’s on a small scale. For heavy data that is capable of streaming compressed videos and pulling heavy graphics, it’s more expensive.

Three years ago, I reached out to Education City edTech company to subscribe to their effective learning resource for instruction. It was a long talk with their representative, Jessica Patton. I got a demo of the product which was absolutely awesome. To advance the sales, I got a one-week free demo but we couldn’t utilise it due to the poor strength of the broadband. Should that have been smooth, adopting the edTech product would have been a success.  

Curriculum and Educational Policy

The fear of government sanction has kept many schools out of innovation. A school paid a fine of two hundred and fifty thousand Naira ($850) because they alter the local calendar to accommodate their dual curriculum. Deviate from the National curriculum or ignore any policy in developing countries and you’ll be sure to pay, no questions asked. Whereas, most of the so-called experts making these policies are experienced but lack the modern knowledge and best practices of preparing learners for the future. Do they know what design thinking is?

I almost got suspended because I tried to create a virtual classroom - thanks to “empatico”. I was paired with a science teacher, Noel from North Carolina, and we did our best to have a cross border classroom. While internet connectivity messed the event up for us, I almost paid for the lost 45 minutes with my job coin.

The concept fascinated my students and they wanted more of such classes. However, the curriculum and educational policies guiding our environment may hinder their experiences.  

Value of Teachers

Are teachers in developing countries valuable? 

With the statistics of unemployed graduate in developing countries especially Nigeria, you can almost tell that the value of teachers is at a nosedive. This is because everyone sees a teaching job as the easiest job to keep up at a minimal level. 

The standard entry-level certification for a teaching job in Nigeria is the NCE - National Certificate in Education. If you interact with some NCE graduates, you’d be discouraged to trust your child’s education in their hands. Meanwhile, those that are smarter, are not passionate about the job.

This menace creates the dire need for teachers who are ready to up their skills and fit into the scheme of educational updates so they can rub the value on their students. Teachers of such will seek beyond classroom resource and rich experience that will make the learners gain. That teacher will definitely subscribe to an edTech service. 

Training and Professional Development

On the job training are hardly taught in school. If the electrical power, internet connectivity and educational policies are not clogs, teachers should be trained to use edTech devices and services. Despite the importance of this 21st-century teaching, not all teachers are tech-comfortable and keen on personal development, which shouldn’t be their usual.

That said, teachers need to overlook their busy schedules and ditch the storytelling conferences where they get to learn only the theoretical part of educational technology. They should subscribe to workshops and activity-based training where they roll up their sleeves and get the practical knowledge needed to create an interactive classroom for learners.

Unfortunately, time, money and mindset have increasingly been a major challenge for a most experienced teacher to key into this technological growth.

Until these problems are adequately solved, edTech adoption in developing countries will not cease to be a challenge.