Can digital reinvent basic education in Africa?

The digital revolution underway in the region is leading to a proliferation of experiments integrating information and communication technologies in education (ICTE) in and out of class.

The irresistible digital revolution

Access to the means of communication is now an integral part of the daily lives of the vast majority of Africans. The fall in the price of mobile terminals and the cost of communications has increased the penetration rate of mobile telephony from 5% in 2003 to 73% in 2014.

The African continent now has 650 million mobile phone owners (more than the United States and Europe combined) and 3G mobile networks are expanding very rapidly. Thanks to submarine cables linking Africa with fiber optics and recent satellite connection plans, costs are falling and rural areas will soon be able to be reached.

While with 11% of households connected, the rate of access to wired Internet is still low, access to mobile Internet is already allowing the region to catch up; the smartphone penetration rate is expected to reach 20% in 2017. This rapid spread of mobile Internet services is already contributing to the region's economic and social development, particularly through activities targeting financial inclusion, health and the productivity of farmers.

Mobile telephony offers significant educational opportunities. Given its wide availability in the population and the functions of mobile phones (voice exchange, SMS) and smartphones (text and document reader, mp3, image and video), the potential for educational uses is very important to improve the access and quality of educational services.

M-learning (or m-education) – i.e. educational services via a connected mobile device – is the main lever of the ICT dynamic to make content available for learning (teacher training, learner-centred pedagogy, assessments) or to compensate for the lack of data for the management of the education system.

New technologies for learning

Mass communication technologies were used as a first educational vector from the end of the 1960s.

Countries such as Côte d'Ivoire, Niger and Senegal have thus developed major national programs that have used radio (school radio) and then television (educational television) to promote basic education , improve teacher training, and even teach children directly. While these programs have made it possible to reach a very large number of individuals at a fairly low initial cost, the results in terms of school performance remain difficult to assess.

Digital technology at the service of education in Africa.

The massive distribution of computer equipment then took over from the 1990s. Many national and international programs then focused on equipping schools with computer equipment (computer laboratories) to enable training in computers and to offer new educational supports via educational software and CD-ROMs. The uses were then mainly centered on the school, but the experiments were however often launched without clear educational objectives and a framework for action set by the State.

The appearance of personal computers in the 2000s made it possible to gradually individualize school computing. Thus, the American project “One laptop per child” (OLPC), launched in several African countries in 2005, aimed to equip schools with laptops at low cost. Nearly 2 million educators and students are now involved in this program around the world and more than 2.4 million computers (priced at around $200 per unit including an open educational platform) have been issued.

The “One laptop per child” operation has equipped thousands of African schoolchildren since 2005.One laptop per child/Flickr

Evaluations on the subject show, however, that the use of fixed computers or laptops in the classroom has little effect on a student's academic performance, but can positively impact certain cognitive abilities if students can use their computers at home in the evening.

Content and uses

Since 2010, the large-scale dissemination of mobile communication technology has transformed practices with easier access to educational resources both at school and in the extracurricular environment . The arrival of low-cost, low-energy smartphones and tablets is gradually taking ICTE out of the school environment.

From an approach centered on the tool, we are moving to an approach based on content and use. These nomadic tools (tablets in particular) offer significant opportunities in particular to deal with the shortage of textbooks and books. Thus the distribution of e-readers (Kindle type) to 600,000 children in nine African countries has demonstrated a significant impact on reading and on the results of children in educational tests. Sending SMS containing short lessons, MCQs or audio recordings have also shown significant effects on teachers, as have MOOCs (massive open online courses) adapted to the needs and capacities of African countries.

The hybridization of pedagogical models and tools today broadens the potential of ICTE in the educational context. Some technologies, perceived as obsolete, are now experiencing a certain revival, thanks to the combination of different media in the service of the same project.

Courses can thus be offered on different combined media. Inexpensive and with large audiences, educational radio and educational television programs combined with the Internet and mobile phones are showing promising results. The BBC Janala cross-media English learning program in Bangladesh is an emblematic example of cooperation between a wide variety of actors.

The diversity of multimedia tools increases educational possibilities with students as well as with learners in general. However, the integration of ICTE does not depend so much on technological advances as on the educational appropriation of these technologies by users.

What does success depend on?

If the vast majority of African countries express an interest in ICTE, a set of conditions must be met to guarantee an effective and equitable deployment of these technologies in the landscape educative.

For ICTE to be a real lever for development in Africa, it therefore seems necessary to respond to technical and economic constraints, to meet the needs of users and to build their capacities; to find sustainable funding models and to facilitate effective and lasting multi-stakeholder collaboration.

ICT in general and mobile-learning in particular offer access to educational resources at low cost, added value compared to traditional education and a complementary solution to teacher training.

Immense potential exists to reach those excluded from education systems and improve the quality of the knowledge and skills transmitted. The dramatic drop in costs and the hybridization of pedagogical models and tools offer new possibilities.

If the time for innovation through experimentation is never over, it is time to put in place the mechanisms and strategies that allow a change of scale, in particular through the creation of coalitions of actors. ICTE will not solve all the problems of education in Africa but can participate in profoundly modifying the current paradigm of skills acquisition systems.

This text is based on No. 17 of the Common Knowledge publication, "Digital technology at the service of education in Africa", written by David Ménascé and Flore Clément, led by the French Development Agency (AFD ), the Francophonie University Agency (AUF), Orange and Unesco.

The original version of this article was published on The Conversation.

The opinions expressed on this site are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of their institution or that of AFD.