A delegation from ProFuturo and the Kukah Centre met this week with Kashim Shettima, Vice President of Nigeria. As reported by various international media outlets, Shettima announced his intention to further advance the digital transformation of Nigeria’s basic education sector by proposing the adoption of ProFuturo’s digital learning model nationwide, following the significant progress the program has made in schools across the country.

The vice president described the program as a practical complement to President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda and the government’s push for competency-based education.

Impressed by the program’s achievements, the vice president stated that its success demonstrated the potential of technology-driven learning to address educational gaps and prepare Nigerian children for a rapidly evolving global economy. However, he noted that Nigeria’s population growth and pressure on available resources make it imperative to expand initiatives capable of broadening access to quality education.

ProFuturo launched in Nigeria in 2017. In Abuja, the country’s capital, a partnership agreement was signed with Kashim Shettima, the Archbishop of Kaduna, Matthew Man-oso Ndagoso, representing the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, and Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, founder of the Kukah Center. To date, the program has benefited more than 72,000 students, trained 1,150 teachers, and reached 123 schools across 13 states.

West and Central Africa are two of the regions in the world with the lowest school enrollment rates among children aged 6 to 11; one in five children is out of school. In Nigeria alone, there are some 80 million children, 13 million of whom do not attend school. Poverty, corruption, and Boko Haram terrorism are behind these figures.