Equity Group Foundation will contribute to a Sh1.3 billion ($10 million) prize for best education technology innovation in Africa in a bid to improve early childhood learning on the continent.
The lender’s charity arm, known for its flagship Wings to Fly education scholarship programme, on Thursday announced its collaboration with XPrize Foundation in the upcoming XPrize Accellerate Learning Competition during the on-going G20 Social Summit in South Africa.
The prize seeks to reward an innovation with the best learning outcomes for the most students and at the lowest cost, yet scalable and can enable young learners to achieve literacy and numeracy within a year.
“Africa’s demographic promise will only become a dividend if we prepare our children for a future driven by science, technology, entrepreneurship, and governance,” said Equity Group chief executive officer James Mwangi.
Other than rewarding the best technology in education innovation, the prize is part of a larger effort to equip African youth with requisite job skills for the job market, expanding from just literacy and numeracy to science and technology skills as well.
Currently, it is estimated that about 85 percent of Africa’s 10-year-olds cannot read and understand text, which is one of the challenges the prize is trying to solve.
“If we want Africa’s children to lead in the jobs of the future, we must begin with early learning. This prize calls on the world’s brightest minds to design solutions that can uplift millions, accelerating Africa’s future,” said Alexander Nicholas, vice president for learning and society at XPrize.
