The education market in Africa is complex and fragmented. There are 54 countries across the continent, with strikingly different education policies, academic standards, and language needs.
The demands for products and services coming from different countries and regions are influenced by a variety of factors, and there are vast disparities in learning opportunities for students, depending on where they live.
Despite those barriers, education companies with innovative products can find opportunities in Africa — if they’re adept at navigating barriers to entering markets and can think creatively about how their products mesh with school needs.
About This Analyst
Krista Davidson is the executive director of Injini, an ed-tech accelerator and think tank based in South Africa. Davidson studied at Wake Forest University and completed an international honors program on global public health in India, South Africa, and Brazil. She has designed all active programs and interventions at Injini, transitioning the business from ed-tech incubation to acceleration. She also spearheaded the Injini Think Tank, focusing on localized industry research and advisory services.
There are clear opportunities for organizations that grasp the nuances of working across countries with dissimilar needs: The working-age and school-age population across sub-Saharan Africa is expected to grow considerably over the next few years. And the annual growth rate in the education market is projected to be almost 8.5 percent over the next five years, by one estimate.
Yet there are also significant challenges across the continent. More than one-fifth of children ages 6-11 in sub-Saharan Africa are out of school, as are one-third of children ages 12-14. It’s one of the highest-levels of nonparticipation in school in the world.
EdWeek Market Brief Staff Writer Alexandria Ng recently spoke to Krista Davidson, the executive director of Injini, an African ed-tech accelerator and think tank based in South Africa. Davidson talked about emerging trends in education across the continent, including attitudes toward artificial intelligence, broad shifts in education policy, and what schools and government agencies serving them are looking to purchase.
What are the most important things for education companies that are looking to introduce their products in Africa to know?
What is very different in our market compared to many others, particularly in the (wealthy, industrialized nations such as those in Europe and North America is that) consumers generally don’t have a lot of appetite to pay. So there needs to be more of a consideration to innovative business models because business-to-consumer isn’t as easy as it is in the U.S.
Thinking about ways to either sell to the government or partner with companies is kind of the only way to get the volumes and the scale that is required to actually make an impact.
Why is that the reality in the African education market?
There just isn’t the means. Consumers have less disposable income that is available for supplementary education products. That’s very much a generalization and not the case across all of the continent, which is extremely nuanced and very complex.
There is definitely a reality that the majority of families are operating below the poverty line, and in those instances, getting a cool tech product is not necessarily going to be at the top of the list, particularly if they’re already stretching their means to get their child to school.
Can you give a practical example of those economic limitations?
Unfortunately, the South African schooling system is failing most of our learners, and 97 percent of our learners are in public schools, which are underfunded, under-resourced, and not getting the educational outcomes that we need our learners to come out of school with in order to be productive members of the economy. Despite parents believing they’re doing the best that they can for their children and just getting them to school, the schools are then failing them.
We have a relatively low absentee rate, but the quality of the system is just so poor. We require ed tech, but that’s a really difficult narrative to educate consumers with, especially because the means are very limited. There’s also the cultural connotation that education should be free. But if the education they’re getting is not sufficient, then people sort of lose trust and hope in the entire sector. It’s a very complicated space, and consumers are definitely not at fault. It’s just a system that has failed people.
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What are some of the most important trends across education systems in Africa that education companies hoping to work there need to be aware of?
Not too dissimilarly from elsewhere in the world is the trend toward more personalized learning. In terms of technological trends, AI is everywhere. If you’re not somehow incorporating AI into your solution, partners are not going to look at you. Unfortunately, many companies just claim that their products use AI without really doing so in a way that is valuable for their consumer.
There is also a trend toward working more with education implementers earlier on in the process. (I see) a lot more teacher engagement than I had seen when I first came into the space a few years back. It’s seeming like that’s less of a nice-to-have, and more of a non-negotiable going forward.
What other new expectations do you see being put on vendors working in different countries?
Impact is also a non-negotiable, if you are looking for scale. You can’t get away with anecdotes about how your product works. It’s putting in place rigorous data analysis from the beginning, which is becoming more and more critical for real growth and investment and customer acquisition. You’ve got to speak to the evidence that your product is doing what you say it does, which is not always the case, especially here, where there are a lot of claims that aren’t supported by facts.
Many AI products are being developed for U.S. schools, even though educators seem to have mixed feelings about the technology. You mentioned rising interest in AI in Africa. What are you seeing?
The caveat is that districts and schools, for the most part, aren’t actually buying the products. So those aren’t the consumers I’m necessarily referring to. It’s more like the corporations and the investors — the bigger organizations who want to be able to brag about these investments or these initiatives that they’re supporting. They want to be able to say that they’re at the cutting edge of of education. It’s a little bit more about bragging rights and ego than it is about the effectiveness of the initiative in some cases.
You can’t get away with anecdotes about how your product works. It’s putting in place rigorous data analysis from the beginning, which is becoming more and more critical for real growth and investment and customer acquisition.
At the country and school level, how much interest is there in AI?
There is a trend toward more data and more focus on evidence that is still there. Over the last year, there’s been so much excitement about AI. Particularly in the African context, where teacher shortages are such an issue, there’s this notion that AI can come to the rescue and fill these gaps that are otherwise not going to be filled in the next decade or so. That shortage is just projected to get worse and worse. People are trying to figure out, how can we make truly scalable solutions?
There’s also another trend, which is very Africa-specific. It’s that there has to be offline-online compatibility and access. While AI is a huge focus in some areas, it’s also just not practical to get connectivity, so that balance is super tricky. People are expecting a lot from it.
What’s the overall level of enthusiasm or skepticism about the technology?
There is certainly reluctance or hesitance from many teachers and school administrators about the unknown. But I don’t necessarily think we’re in the same point of discourse as the U.S. around the ethics, like privacy and all of those concerns. We’re still a couple steps behind, where we’re just thinking about the practicality of adopting technology in this way and making it available to the masses, and not disadvantaging or furthering the widening of the digital divide, which is such a problem.
South Africa, specifically, is such an inequitable society, and there’s a very tiny number of very rich individuals and households, and those children already get some of the best of the best education. The rest of the country is in a very different situation. To think that that little bubble is now getting access to even more opportunity, that’s obviously presenting some ethical issues, but the conversation remains less on the privacy concerns, but rather what it could mean to be interacting with an AI teacher or tutor.
Many education companies need to be aware of academic standards, because it affects whether schools can use their products. How much do curriculum standards differ across African countries?
A lot. Because of colonization, different countries mirror different standards of curriculum. It can be very different depending on where you are. Even within a single country, there might be multiple curriculums that are at play, which is very confusing and difficult for anyone who’s trying to play in that space to really wrap their heads around.
Kenya, a few years back, rolled out a competency-based curriculum, which is quite different to their previous curriculum. The idea was to move away from standardized testing, but it hasn’t necessarily happened in practice. There’s a big push in Kenya specifically to align everything with the competency-based curriculum, which is was quite a big transition from how they were previously doing things.
Every country in Africa is sort of doing things differently. Those that follow the British system — it’s a little bit easier to align products across those countries, but again, even within one of those countries, it doesn’t guarantee that all of the schools operating within that system are using the same curriculum.
Anything that has offline accessibility as core to its design is also very much in demand in order to reach the hard-to-reach and rural communities.
So education standards can vary greatly within individual countries, too?
It’s so nuanced and so different in every country. South Africa specifically, is so far behind where it should be in terms of even considering technology. In South Africa, the most recent whitepaper on e-learning was published in 2007, maybe even 2003 honestly. You can imagine the relevance of that information today. Even if it was published in 2015, it would be completely redundant at this point. There just hasn’t been urgency to update any sort of information and communication technology strategy in line with the development of technology because there’s so many competing priorities.
On one hand, you can be compassionate and understand why that is happening. But on the other hand, there is rampant corruption and resources going into the wrong places. So it becomes a bit frustrating that there’s not been the right amount of attention given to really important topics and making sure that our learners are keeping pace with the rest of the world.
What kinds of broader policy changes do you see unfolding that will have a major impact on education policy and learning?
One example locally, they did introduce a robotics and coding addition to the curriculum, which is meant to be rolled out within the next year. But there was zero plan on how to actually do that effectively. Most schools, particularly in rural areas, don’t even have electricity, much less internet connectivity or computer labs. To think that we are skipping all of these fundamental steps and just saying everyone needs to learn robotics is very much a like a publicity campaign to get people to think that South Africa is super tech-forward and progressive, but without doing the work to get the building blocks in place first in order to make that actually a success.
There are a lot of conflicting stories in the ecosystem, but for the most part, policy is not keeping pace with the Global North. But there are some really great initiatives from international development agencies, like the World Bank and the African Development and Emergency Organization, which are supporting policymakers across the continent to consider things like information and communication technology policies in education and to just overhaul curriculum and education policies more generally, as well. It’s like quite a big data policy workshop that’s happening across the continent.
What are the biggest school purchasing trends you see playing out?
The government has a big interest in ensuring that languages are really accessible. We have 12 national languages in South Africa, so there is obviously quite a lot of diversity, and that is the way that our curriculum works. The language of instruction here becomes English in grade four, so all of these learners who have been learning in their native languages suddenly just have to switch into learning in English. That transition is really difficult. We know from a pedagogical standpoint that learning in your mother tongue is more effective, especially as a young child.
So there are a lot of questions and requests for that specific problem to be addressed by technology. How can we make all educational content more accessible in all of the languages that people speak? That’s something that’s been coming up a lot in our conversations with government
Anything that has offline accessibility as core to its design is also very much in demand in order to reach the hard-to-reach and rural communities. But again, we’re not a very consumer-focused market. It’s more about what businesses and foundations and corporations are looking to pay for and their impact priorities.
Partner with local organizations. The hurdle to understand the context and localize is just so massive.
Given the needs you see within schools, how do you think education companies from outside Africa might contribute?
There is this opportunity for technology to come in and provide support and make teachers’ jobs easier. For instance, taking away the administrative burden to allow them to spend more time with learners, to help (teachers) feel more confident when teaching the subject matter that they’re responsible for, to help them stay on track, and building lesson plans.
There are so many use cases for the teacher once they get the technology to actually use it to their benefit and to the learners’ benefit. There’s a massive opportunity in supporting teachers’ developing and growing, but also attracting teachers to the profession. It’s similar to the U.S., where teaching isn’t a super-appealing profession because teachers are generally underpaid.
But, there are places in the world in which that’s not the case. I know of a few ed-tech solutions that are building incentive programs for teachers and using other customers to fund those incentives to make the teaching profession something that is not only purposeful and fulfilling, but also can support you and your family. Unfortunately, it’s the public’s responsibility to get that right. But in the meantime, there’s some gaps that can be plugged by private sector and by the startup community.
Going back to the personalized learning theme trend, teachers only have so much capacity, and classrooms are overcrowded, and student-teacher ratios are so poor. There’s the opportunity to use AI tutors and other sort of teaching assistants that are technological in their design and allow children to actually get the support that they require, and hopefully will start bridging those gaps and learning losses that have taken place over the years, especially since COVID.
What other factors will contribute to what the education market in Africa will look like in the next few years?
The youth bulge and the growing youth population in Africa. Very soon, if not already, we’ll have more youth than anywhere else in the world. It’s quite a triangular-shaped population, which means that more and more support is required for learning outcomes to get to where they need to be in order to keep up with the economic demands that will be coming when those youth come into the workforce.
What advice would you give to vendors who are looking to break into the African market?
Partner with local organizations. The hurdle to understand the context and localize is just so massive. I’ve seen so many big tech players do it wrong and leave people behind and not understand why it’s not working, and yet, there’s no one based on the continent that’s on these teams.
It’s not something that you can understand from desktop research and just send a product into market in Africa and expect it to work. That’s guaranteed failure.
If you can’t afford to have a local team where you’re hiring local people to work in that market, find one of the many brilliant teams that already exist on the continent, build a partnership agreement, and work with them because they’ll definitely know more about the market than you can if you’re not here.
What other nuances about working in the African education space tend to get overlooked?
It’s very complex, and unfortunately, a bit fragmented. In many places, there are a lot of people and companies trying to do really good work but doing it in a pretty siloed and disconnected way. It’s hopefully improving, but there’s definitely a lot of room for further efficiencies and effectiveness.