African public-private partnerships are fast-tracking education improvement from primary school to university, potentially levelling the playing field for millions of students in the Middle East and worldwide.
“Africa is one the world’s most dynamic education markets. Public-private partnerships show best practices for using technology to reach marginalised students with technology that students use in their daily lives. Africa presents exciting business opportunities for education technology vendors and startups worldwide,” said Trixie LohMirmand, Senior Vice-President, for Exhibitions and Events Management at Dubai World Trade Centre.
Supporting technology investment in Africa, GITEX Technology Week will host the Africa Investment Forum, in partnership with Nigeria’s National Information Technology Development Authority. Over 20 African countries will show how technology can enhance verticals, support foreign direct investment in ICT, and drive economic growth.
The Rumie Initiative, a Canada-based NGO, has produced the Rumie tablet that is in the hands of more than 3,000 children in Africa, including in Benin, Egypt, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Kenya, Liberia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda.
“Rumie saw an opportunity to give disadvantaged students access to the kind of free digital learning materials that had been available only to affluent schools in the past,” said Tariq Fancy, the Founder and Executive Director of The Rumie Initiative, and one of dozens of educational luminaries speaking at GITEX’s Education Vertical Days conference programme.
The affordable Rumie tablet is pre-loaded with USD 5,000 worth of crowdsourced educational software and textbooks, with the impact of every dollar spent delivering 100 times the impact.
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