Tackling the Challenges of EdTech in Africa
by Arinze Obiezue ALU’15
I’ve always had an interest in education. This interest stems from my view of education as a tool not just for the elevation of the intellectual mind, but also an instrument for the subversion of oppression and the liberation of a people. Edtech (or educational technology) is a subfield of education which has particularly intrigued me due to its integration of digital tools into the pedagogical process to make learning easier, more effective, and more fun.
Over the years, I noticed that most conversations around edtech revolved around the West. In order to bring these conversations home to an African context, I had a chat with one of my classmates, Hossam Hamdy ’15, who runs an edtech startup in Egypt which was selected in 2018 as one of the 1,000 most promising business ideas in Africa by the prestigious Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme. Beyond his startup, Hossam has also conducted research on the educational landscape in Africa in collaboration with INSEAD and the Educational Sub-Saharan Africa Charity (ESSA). Later in 2018, he was named an African Leaders Fellow by the Obama Foundation.
In this article, Hossam shares his views on the overall opportunities and challenges in the African edtech industry.
Arinze O.: Just to provide a bit of context, how would you describe the edtech landscape in Africa?
Hossam H.: It’s a massive market with massive opportunities. As a continent, we know we might not have enough resources to build quality brick-and-mortar educational institutions fast enough. So as we think of ways to make quality education accessible and impactful, we’d find that there’s no running away from edtech. However, one thing I’ve observed is that most teachers are not yet ready to be teaching through smart technology. So even though some governments are trying to push for the mainstream implementation of edtech within their countries, scaling is still an issue due to the inadequate technical know-how and financial infrastructures needed to sustain educational technologies. But with every challenge lies an opportunity, so I believe there’s a real opportunity here for entrepreneurs to tackle these problems.
AO: Let’s say you’re pitching to an investor — which isn’t uncommon for you — , which opportunities would you mention that justifies the viability of the edtech industry in Africa today?
HH: I think the first opportunity relates to the demographic potential of the African market. Africa is currently the youngest continent in the world and as we undergo a population boom over the next decades, we would need to provide quality education at scale. So the question we should be asking ourselves as entrepreneurs and investors is “How can we ensure that the next generation will be trained with the right curriculum, with the right tools, and in the right context?” Another opportunity here is the segmentation of the different markets for edtech: primary-level education, secondary-level education, university-level education, and professional education. So edtech is not just for physics and math, but can also be applied to teach and learn many vocational skills which, by the way, drastically reduce the odds for an individual to be unemployed.
AO: And what would you say some of the key challenges are?
HH: The first challenge would have to be access to technological infrastructure because even though smartphones have penetrated the African markets quite widely, our internet speeds have not quite caught up yet. I mention this as a problem because it greatly limits access to online educational content which are mostly in video formats and, as a result, consume large amounts of data and require fast internet connections. The second is the education of the teachers themselves. Most of our teachers, who are supposed to be leveraging edtech tools to teach, are still being trained with old methods and outdated principles. So I think there’s a real need for us to completely redesign the curricula we are using to train the new generation of teachers so that they are able to use these new technologies to deliver educational content to students. I also understand that solving these challenges will be extremely complex because there are a lot of stakeholders involved from governments to accreditation agencies to educational institutions, the students themselves, and even their parents, there’s a lot to consider. However, these are conversations we need to be having in our countries, within our regions and definitely across Africa.
AO: What would you say is one challenge that if removed, would greatly increase the chances of success of edtech on the continent?
HH: I would say bureaucracy. Our governments need to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset by becoming more open to pilot ideas, fail and learn, and function as an agile enterprise in order to be able to effectively introduce new innovations. If I could squeeze another challenge in, it would be online payments. It’s incredibly challenging for people on the continent to pay for online educational content especially when a significant percentage of the population in most African countries is unbanked.
AO: So when we speak of solutions to these challenges, how best do you think we can tackle them and who do you think should be responsible?
HH: I know there’s currently an emergence of VC-backed incubators specifically for edtech startups. I know of a couple in South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya. So that’s definitely a step in the right track. In that vein, I think the best way to incentivise entrepreneurs to get into edtech is to provide some form of support because this is usually the most overlooked hurdle. I think that should be the responsibility of everyone: governments, investors, and entrepreneurs alike. I also think we need to change how we think about edtech companies in Africa, not as charity organisations or a social enterprise but as a fully functional for-profit business. This would require edtech entrepreneurs to redesign their business models and for governments to provide recognition for edtech as tangible businesses and not merely a buzzword in political manifestos.
AO: Is there anything else you’d like to share with people who’ll be reading this?
HH: Not really. I’d just challenge them to support the edtech entrepreneurs around them. It doesn’t have to be financial; inviting them for networking events or connecting them with other edtech entrepreneurs or investors could also go a long way.
To learn more about Hossam’s work in edtech, check out his startup, Oshbook, and the work he’s been doing to make learning more accessible in Egypt.
