Making online education a reality in Africa

Online education has the potential to make a dramatic impact on people's lives in Africa.  It has the potential to empower people; to lift them out of poverty, to give people the tools to innovate, to improve quality of living, by providing access to better paying jobs.

In the previous post, we explored some of the online content and education providers available today.  In this post we are going to address some of the challenges usually raised when EDUCATION and AFRICA is mentioned in the same sentence.  

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
Nelson Mandela

I've been working in ICT in Africa for more than 15 years, and I have only seen a few successful ICT enabled education projects, on a small scale.  We have not yet been successful in creating a massive ICT/Education program that can have a big impact on the young people of Africa.

What I am presenting here today, can be replicated at scale, and when done correctly, could change the face of the continent, forever.

Complexity

The problem we are trying to solve is to get well-structured, quality education to people in Africa, who do not currently have access to it.  This is a vast and a complex problem.  Not only are the numbers staggering, but current cultural mindsets do not necessarily grasp the absolute vital nature of this issue. 

Education is the ONE THING that could have an inter-generational knock-on effect, by lifting successive generations into ever higher paying jobs.

In Africa we have extreme poverty, vast territories and distances, and many different languages.  Our power grid is available and reliable in some of the bigger cities, but most rural areas have limited access to electric power, which is a big inhibitor to growth.

In Africa, we also have a lot of intelligent, driven children who live in these environments.  Most of these kids do not have access to great education, and it's these kids we would primarily like to help.  We believe that if they can get access to great education that they could grow up and be the innovators and entrepreneurs of our world.

The Outcome

If we start from a central premise that the outcome we want to achieve is to produce self-confident young people who have the skills to participate in the 21st century (knowledge-based) economy, the big picture could look something like this.

As can be seen, there are many interrelated factors that need to be addressed to achieve the desired outcome.  Let us explore these in more detail.

High Quality Curriculum

The beauty of online education is that the best minds from around the world can be contracted to create a curriculum suitable for every different geographical/cultural group of students.  Currently these students have either no access to any meaningful curriculum, or the material available is at best mediocre.

The platform proposed is Google Classroom, in combination with Google Education.  The videos below explains part of the concept.

Independent Assessment

The education ecosystem proposed here should have an independent assessment framework, to separate the learning from the testing.  In this way, the reputation of the program will be enhanced, since the risk of collusion between these two aspects is completely removed from the environment.

The value of a qualification is largely dependent on the reputation of the institution that grants it.

This is current a very real and pressing problem in a lot of education environments in the developing world; students doing favours for the teacher or paying to pass.  The worst aspect of this is that the student knows that he did not actually deserve the qualification, and he goes through life questioning his worth, never knowing what his actual potential is.

Great Facilities, Reliable Electrical Power and Bandwidth

The environment where the greatest need is, is usually quite harsh.  Heat, dust, accessibility etc make it difficult for complex systems to survive for long periods of time.  The design of such a facility therefore needs to be as simple as possible, with the absolute minimum maintenance required.  Theft is also a concern, and therefore the design should be of a nature to discourage it.

It is proposed that these learning facilities are built using standard 40' shipping containers, as illustrated below.  These containers can be pre-fitted, are easily transportable, are robust, and require very little maintenance.

The first picture shows the power requirements for a naturally cooled unit.

The second picture shows the power requirements for an air conditioned unit.

Keeping the facility off-grid on renewable energy, increases reliability, and hopefully increases user confidence, in that they know the facility is always operational.

A facility like this will need a minimum of 10Mbps dedicated capacity for the kids to have a great experience.  Anything less than that will detract substantially from the potential learning that should be taking place.

Motivated People

For this project to work well, there shouldn't be too many assumptions.  

There is a lot of work to be done prior to kicking off the project, getting parents teachers/facilitators and students to realize the value of the system, and to get their long term buy-in.  There must be training in this regard, teaching people amongst other things, the following:

• Why good education is important
• Why accountability and timeliness are important
• How the curriculum works
• Why the facilities were designed the way they were
• How to care for the facility
• How to behave online

When there is buy-in from all groups on the outcome (prior to commencement), the program should have a great chance of success.

Government Support and Funding

It goes without saying that any project of this nature will need government approval.  A bonus will be government funding.  Often however, we think that these kind of problems are not do-able if the government is not funding them.

I do believe however that projects like these could be funded from a multiple of sources, if the owners of the project can offer a compelling value proposition to different funding sources.  An example below.

Conclusion

The purpose of this article is to invite debate, and to make the model better.  Let's do something big for the children of Africa.  Let's bring them into the 21st century.

It always seems impossible until it's done.
Nelson Mandela