Soma

Our solution is an app which is designed to complement school learning for rural students in East Africa. It aims to tackle the lack of technology skills, overcrowded classrooms, and poor English skills which are all issues facing rural students. 

The app is designed to run alongside normal classes to allow students to learn at their own pace with minimal supervision to prevent further overstretching teachers. All content is in Swahili and English, as requested by multiple teachers and students in the design stage, so as to allow students to learn in their own language whilst becoming familiar with English terms for their exams. It can be downloaded from a local server and shared peer-to-peer, eliminating the need for a strong network which is lacking in rural settings. Although it has been tested in Tanzania, this solution could be used to help rural students further throughout East Africa.

Students in rural Tanzania who do not live in towns experience three main challenges. The first is access to technology. Many students that Smart Villages works with will have never held a smartphone or seen a computer before, but are still expected to take exams in ICT. In contrast, students in urban areas generally have greater access to technology. The second is overcrowding. The student:teacher ratio in rural schools is typically very high. The school we have been testing our solution in typically has 80 students in a class with one teacher. .The third challenge is language. Although secondary school in Tanzania  is taught in English, very few students speak it well, meaning that they struggle to learn, and find it impossible to write their final exams in English. Aside from these problems, many students also suffer from a lack of confidence and enthusiasm towards their studies due to parental pressure, poor teaching, or cultural expectations such as that it is not valuable for a girl to have an education. 

Our solution is an app which will be used in rural schools. It is currently being tested in Tanzania with secondary school students, but we plan to expand this further throughout Swahili-speaking East Africa to students at different stages of their schooling. 

It is intended to be used not as a replacement for regular lessons, but to release the burden on teachers who are expected to teach class sizes of up to 80 students. Pupils will use the app in sessions outside class with minimal supervision to revise topics which they have not understood in class. They can watch videos explaining the topics and do practice questions. 

It currently contains elements of the Tanzanian mathematics curriculum, and will be expanded to contain other subjects as requested by students and teachers in rural schools that we have worked with. It works on Android phones, and can be downloaded from a local server. It will be shared peer-to-peer between phones to mitigate the need for a strong network, which is lacking in many rural areas.

This app is intended to be used by rural pupils in East Africa. Many of the students we work with currently are not expected to do well in school, and some are actively encouraged by their parents to fail their exams so that they need not attend secondary school, but can instead help on their family farms. Many are married early, or miss several years of schooling to assist in family businesses. In one particularly school that Smart Villages has worked with, every child failed their final year secondary school mathematics exam. 

In order to understand their needs, Smart Villages has been working in communities with local partners in Tanzania. We focus on an integrated development approach, and make concerted efforts to understand as much as possible of all problems that face the communities with whom we work. We run focus groups with different sectors of each community, and learn quantitative data on their needs and preferences for improving their lives. Lack of education has consistently arisen as a priority problem in these focus groups. Teachers have spoken with us to identify the problems facing rural education which are described in this application. 

This solution has been developed through constant iteration with students in rural schools. We have performed 3 phases of testing so far. Phase 1 involved testing different teaching apps with students to discover more about their learning preferences and needs. Phase 2 tested an initial version of the app in English and Swahili, and Phase 3 tested the current version of the app. We are currently in Phase 4, which involves implementing technology locally such as installing and testing a local server from which students can download learning content. We have also notified the District Education officer for the district in which we are working of our ongoing testing in schools. 

This solution has been tested in the Simanjiro district in Tanzania. In 2018, there were over 2.2 million secondary school students in Tanzania (1), and approximately 66% of the population lived rurally (2). It is difficult to know the exact percentage of rural children that attend school, as truancy and drop-out rates are high, but these figures still represent the chance for our solution to reach a high number of pupils. These figures also focus only on Tanzania, and do not represent the opportunity to expand particularly to other Swahili-speaking regions in East Africa. 

1. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/factsheet/2020/03/31/tanzania-secondary-education-quality-improvement-program-sequip

2. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.RUR.TOTL.ZS?locations=TZ

This solution is specifically designed for remote environments, as it does not require a strong network but can instead be downloaded from a local server and shared peer-to-peer. It is also tailored to teach technology and secondary school skills with minimal supervision, as lack of technology skills and poor teacher:student ratio are particular problems in rural environments, hence the focus on guided independent work. 

The solution is currently in the fourth phase of testing in a secondary school in rural Tanzania. The first phase was initial research of similar solutions, the second was testing of an initial version of our solution, and the third was a longer test in which students were given devices containing the app to use with minimal supervision for six weeks. The fourth phase focuses on installing the local server and testing the technology. 

The solution is further than the ‘Prototype’ phase as it has already been tested, but not as far as the ‘Growth’ stage as it is not a fully established product. It requires further content and completion of the fourth phase of testing.

Our solution is innovative in that existing e-learning solutions in East Africa are not designed for off-grid, rural school students who do not have a high level of English or technology skills. As our solution will deliver learning outcomes in a local language as well as English, students will be able to understand content and learn much more effectively. Although the language of secondary school instruction in Tanzania is English, many students and even teachers struggle with the language, making learning incredibly challenging. By giving the option of learning in English and Swahili, students are able to first understand concepts, and then learn English by applying it to concepts that they already understand. 

In addition, by mitigating the need for an internet connection to access learning materials, rural school students will not be at a disadvantage with this solution. There is a large disparity in the level of internet connection between urban and rural areas in Tanzania, so this is a very important part of our solution. The local server, stored in a central location, can be used to download the app. If this is inaccessible, as the rural population is often spread out, the app can also be shared peer-to-peer from one device to another.

The pilot study system has been trialled with 30 students at various stages. In one year we plan to have expanded to six further school classes, so approximately 200 more students. In five years we plan to have expanded to 10,000 students. In order to facilitate this, we will work with the District Officers in the Education department to reach out to teachers and demonstrate the solution in multiple schools. It is important to reach many schools at an early stage in order to get different opinions from children of varying backgrounds and improve the app at an early stage. 

These impact goals will be measured through student results and feedback surveys, to keep track of the number of students and schools impacted, and on their experience of using our solution. Teacher surveys will also provide invaluable advice on how to improve our solution. We will use long-term attainment datasets to see how the students’ learning outcomes have been impacted by the solution, and data on the number of students pursuing the next level of education. In the long term, we would use income data for students to understand if using this solution has had an impact on their earning potential. 

We have one full time, five part time, two technical contractors and one local NGO partner. 

Smart Villages has been working on this solution for 9 months in rural Tanzania. As a company, however, we have been working in this area since 2014, and have formed strong partnerships with local institutions. In addition to this, we are currently running seven projects throughout Southern and East Africa. Our team backgrounds are in engineering, computing and electronics, and our company has a strong focus on integrated development and working closely with local communities. 

Due to the work that we have done in international development both in this company and in previous jobs, we are well-positioned to face the barriers that will accompany this project, as listed in a previous question.

Smart Villages has a majority female workforce and gender-balanced senior management. We have a significant track-record in GESI, and have authored numerous reports and papers on gender and inclusion in rural development. 

This represents an excellent opportunity for Smart Villages to gain guidance and advice in furthering our solution, which we believe has great potential to impact many lives, as seen through the evidence in our feasibility study, and from priorities highlighted by the communities we work in. 

The timing of this challenge perfectly aligns with the end of our current funding cycle, helping us to continue to develop our solution from its current stage to a point where it is widely applied throughout East Africa. It represents an opportunity to work with an organisation who are not ‘just’ a funder, but an organisation with whom we hope we could create a degree of partnership, opening up further opportunities to learn, and from whose wider expertise we could benefit from. With assistance, we will be able to generate a wider network and new contacts who could help us bring our solution to more communities faster and more effectively, generating even greater impact.

We are looking for financial assistance in that we would like advice on revenue streams, funding applications and potential investors. This will be key in the initial years of our solution as we attempt to expand the product itself, in particular through creating content for multiple subjects. We are also looking for assistance with product/service distribution, in particular advice on taking a solution from a pilot study through further growth stages. Although we do have contacts within the District that we currently operate in, we are looking to expand further and would value support in this. 

We have already made contact with the Tanzanian district primary and secondary education officers, with the intention to work with them to roll out the project across schools in the district, both during development, and as a final solution. In the longer term, once more content has been created and we have more evidence to support the approach, we will look to partner with the regional education officers across Tanzania and other East African countries.

We are looking to partner with technologists who specialise in off-grid network solutions and e-Education who may wish to be involved in our content creation and rollout. We are also interested in partnering with challenge alumni and contacts who could help and advise us on further funding, and partners in funding agencies, NGOs and other governments who may be able to increase the speed and international scope of our roll out…

We are also looking to partner with donor organisations aiming to support education in developing countries. We would work with them to provide the technical infrastructure required for the app to function (smart phones and a remote server) to the rural schools in need of equipment.

To aid us with content development, we are looking to partner with local teachers in Tanzania, teaching them to use the technology required to create education videos and questions. We are also interested in partnering with other extra-curricular education providers, such as Khan Academy (not currently available in Tanzania) and Tanzanian-specific providers including  Ubongo Kids, Shule Direct and ‘Akili and Me’. They would be able to help guide us in content creation, with possible sharing of resources, and advice on how best to make learning engaging for Tanzanian students.

We are qualified to receive this award as we strongly agree with the GM Prize's goal to make STEM education accessible and equitable. As has been demonstrated throughout our application, this solution is designed to help students in rural areas who generally have less access to technology, lower English skills and poorer student:teacher ratios than their urban counterparts in Tanzania. Our solution is an app which is designed to be used alongside normal lessons with minimal supervision to avoid further overstretching school teachers. It will provide lessons and opportunities to practise topics taught in classes, and will eventually cover the entire Tanzanian curriculum. Importantly, all content will be provided in both Swahili and English, a key factor missing in other competing apps. It will also boost students' technology skills, confidence in their abilities, and enthusiasm for the subjects that they learn by giving them a chance to control their own learning pace and interact with their subjects in an entirely new and exciting way. 

In doing so, Soma - our solution- will help to lessen the gap in achievement and provide more opportunities for higher education and better employment for rural students by providing them with quality education. 

We are qualified to receive this award as our solution aims to decrease the difference in the quality of education received between students in rural and urban parts of Tanzania, and further through East Africa. It is is designed to help students in rural areas who do generally have less access to technology, lower English skills and poorer student:teacher ratios than their urban counterparts in Tanzania. Our solution is an app which is designed to be used alongside normal lessons with minimal supervision to avoid further overstretching school teachers. It will not require a strong network, which is often lacking in rural areas, but can be downloaded from a local server or transferred peer-to-peer between smart devices. 

The app will provide lessons and opportunities to practise topics taught in classes, and will eventually cover the entire Tanzanian curriculum. Importantly, all content will be provided in both Swahili and English, a key factor missing in other competing apps. It will also boost students' technology skills, confidence in their abilities, and enthusiasm for the subjects that they learn by giving them a chance to control their own learning pace and interact with their subjects in an entirely new and exciting way. 

In doing so, Soma - our solution- will help to lessen the gap in achievement and provide more opportunities for higher education and better employment for rural students by providing them with quality education.