Coinciding with Africa Day, which is celebrated every 25 May, at ProFuturo we will spend next week talking about the role that technology and educational innovation play in the future of the continent, which to a large extent also depends on the future of the younger generations. Following the success of last year’s event around this important date for our education programme, we are once again celebrating the transformative power of e-ducation in Africa. 

Leading experts and protagonists from the African education community will participate in a series of conversations that will be published daily on our website, social networks and on our ProFuturo YouTube channel from 23 May.

A week of inspiring conversations

Monday started with the testimony of Elijah Mpona Mubikayi, a Congolese refugee teacher in Malawi who works in the only primary school in Dzaleka, a refugee camp located 40 km from the capital Lilongwe. Thanks to a Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) project in collaboration with Entreculturas and ProFuturo, this former programmer teaches in a digital classroom that is transforming the learning experience of thousands of students in a refugee context.

On Tuesday it was the turn of Max Boqwana, CEO of the Thabo Mbeki Foundation, whose vision is to be a catalyst for an “African renaissance”. The foundation, created by former South African President Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki, focuses much of its efforts on promoting education to facilitate economic growth and social development in the region.

On Wednesday, in the framework of the ProFuturo Observatory, Folawe Omikunle talked about her experience as CEO of Teach For Nigeria, where he has been working for more than seven years to solve educational challenges and especially to promote teacher training in the sub-Saharan country. In 2017 she was selected among the 100 most influential young Nigerians.

On Thursday, ProFuturo CEO Magdalena Brier interviewed Ousman Umar, founder of NASCO Feeding Minds, an NGO that seeks to “feed minds” by facilitating digital education in rural Ghana. Umar was recognised in 2021 with the Princess of Girona Social Foundation Award and, through his own story of overcoming obstacles, he carries out important work to raise awareness about the immigration of people from Africa.

Finally, on Friday, the director of World Vision Spain, Javier Ruiz, shared the point of view and experience of this NGO that has been committed to education as a tool for empowering children in fragile contexts in Africa and the rest of the world for more than 70 years.

ProFuturo: one million African students 

ProFuturo has a long and transformative track record in Africa. Our education project was launched in Angola in 2016. Nearly six years later, it has improved the educational quality for nearly one million children – 984,546 students – and trained 31,538 teachers in digital skills across the continent. Today, the digital education programme is present in 2,056 schools in 17 African countries. 

In this region, two major lines of work also stand out: the implementation of the Model in Humanitarian Contexts, which is already helping to improve the educational quality for people in refugee situations in Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Nigeria; and the expansion of a teacher professional development project that, since 2020, ProFuturo and Empieza Por Educar, together with the international network Teach For All, have been carrying out on the continent. Thanks to this initiative, 28,156 teachers from seven countries have already been trained: Kenya, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Tanzania and Liberia.

The partnership between ProFuturo and UNESCO, in the framework of the Global Teacher Campus initiative that seeks to provide training opportunities and pedagogical skill for teachers and educators through the use of ICTs, will also enable more than 100 trainers in Liberia, Namibia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Togo and Zambia to cascade train 10,000 teachers between 2022 and 2023.

As an expert in digital education, ProFuturo also participates in a working group convened by the African Union to advise on the design of the Digital Education Strategy for Africa– carried out in collaboration with the European Union- in line with the Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA 16-25), which is part of Agenda 2063.