Africa Online School

According to UNICEF, There are over 72 million children in Africa that are not attending school today! And while over 60 million children are in school, they grapple with insufficient learning materials, high student to teacher ratio, and lack of access to information. Internet access also remains a challenge  as 2011 estimates show only 13.5% of the population has access to internet. 

In order to create a better and scalable learning environment, there is a need to incorporate digital technology and improve access on the continent. Africa Online School is a learning destination of all courses, subjects created by African teachers, to provide learners with educational resources.

In order to reduce gender inequalities in education, online learning will provide a safe learning environment for girls to learn from home, at school and other community learning centers without worry of discrimination and harassment, especially during menstruation,. 

Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates of education exclusion. Over one-fifth of children of ages 6 and 11 are out of school, followed by one-third of youth ages of about 12 and 14. Almost 60% of youth between the ages of about 15 and 17 are not in school. Overall 56% of the out-of-school children are girls. Girls encounter so many challenges including harassment and discrimination, unsafe learning environments that result in sexual exploitation, teenage pregnancy and HIV/AIDS. 

This article summarizes the disparities in education on the continent, and even though Africa has registered high enrollments in lower education (almost 80%), this is not translating into high quality education, since systems and resources are not in place to manage such numbers. The teachers do not receive high quality training, and have no access to teaching resources that they could use to facilitate learning. 

Low secondary and tertiary enrollment is a vast challenge. Only four out of every 100 children in Africa are expected to enter a graduate and postgraduate institution. In Uganda, 7 out of 10 children (manly girls will don't complete primary education and this is majorly due to limited household incomes, which limit children’s access to education. 

Africa Online School is a premier destination for all online and offline learning on the African continent. We are building an online environment that allows African teachers to create content and store it on our online database in form of courses. And then we give access to learners across the continent to use this content for their education. 

The second tier is to install it in computer labs in schools across the continent, so that students can access these tools at their schools just like how an offline encyclopedia works. 

The third tier is to partner with nonprofit organizations that focus on education, to create learning hubs where children not in school can access learning materials. 

The final tier is getting accreditation from relevant ministries of education to ensure that children learning through this platform can actually sit for national examinations and obtain the national certificate,diploma or degree. 

Africa Online School brings the African teacher to the African student at the comfort of their smartphone, tablet, computer whether in school or not.

A robust online and offline e-learning environment that girls, disabled children, and children out of school creates a safety net where children can learn without fear or discrimination.

Africa Online School launched in Uganda, and will certainly scale across sub-Saharan Africa. Our community includes children, teachers and schools, who are in dire need of learning resources. At the onset of building this database, we engaged several teachers and collected their ideas on the feasibility of the project. 

We have built teacher collaboration teams to improve the quality of resources we are uploading online, and our teachers have test all curriculum with their students before it is uploaded. Teachers developing the courses have right of ownership to the materials with their co-instructors, and are engaged to improve and update such content from time to time. 

Teachers are finding Africa Online School a great resource in their teaching efforts. Although we are only available online currently, they are optimistic that with helping funding partners, we will be able to purchase the tools we need to bring to bring this technology offline, in their classrooms. 

Students that participated in prototyping were excited about the opportunity to access their lecture notes from any device, contact their teachers remotely, and connect with their peers to solve academic issues together through course forums. Overall, the user friendliness of the platform is making learning fun. 

The major barrier to education in most African societies is access. And this takes many forms including lack of access to a school because there is none, lack of access to education content in an existing school, lack of access to high quality teachers, and generally lack of access due to poverty. 

Africa Online School aligns well with increasing the number of women and girls attaining any form of education. Since it can be accessed anywhere, it is safer and free for girls, taking away all barriers that come with brick and mortar forms of education in Africa.