African Union Awards Three Outstanding Education Innovations At Rewired Summit

African Innovators in the education sector took center stage at the 2021 RewirEd summit, which took place at the Expo 2020 Dubai.

The summit, led by Dubai Cares, and delivered in partnership with global stakeholders; presented an opportunity for the global education community to gather as a collective to scale and jumpstart some of the positive change the sector wants to see in education.

The African Union presented to the world, gathered at Expo 2020 Dubai, this year’s finalists in the Innovating Education in Africa (IEA) challenge.

Five innovators, who made it to the finale, had the priviledge of pitching their ideas to a global audience.

The Innovating Education in Africa (IEA) is a flagship programme of the African Union Commission and Partners, intended to identify and promote practical social and technological innovations aimed at enhancing access, quality, relevance and inclusion in education in order to release the potential for empowerment, employability and inventiveness, as stipulated in the Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA 16-25).

Since its establishment in 2018, the IEA program has identified 140 innovations from over 40 African countries and invested up to 500,000 USD to promote and support their growth.

The Acting Head of the Education Division, Hambani Masheleni, highlighted the critical need for adopting innovations within Africa’s education systems and the need to ensure quality, relevance, and inclusion from the early years.

He underscored the importance of public-private partnerships to build and sustain ecosystems that support scaling of innovations and education outcomes, to drive Africa’s development agenda under Agenda 2063.

Out of the five finalists, three innovators were awarded grants that will be used to undertake pilot projects in collaboration with African Union Member States, to create reference points for scaling innovation in education and training.

Ghana’s Rudolf Ampopo, CEO of Craft Education, a teletherapy platform that allows African parents and teachers to help children with learning difficulties received a $100 000 reward and injection.

Democratic Republic Congo’ Elijah Lubala, Co-founder of SOLAR-FI, collected a $70 000 reward towards their project.

Samson W. Muwanguzi of Yiya Air Science, received $40 000 towards their innovation which provides remote learning via widely accessible technology.

Speaking of the innovators’ remarkable achievements, the AU’s Expo 2020 Deputy Commissioner General, Charles Chiumya, congratulated the winners, and all who participated throughout the challenge.