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Africa EdTech 2030 Press Release – 10 Feb

respectMarch 12, 20266 min read

–FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – 

Heads of State Endorse AUDA-NEPAD’s Africa EdTech 2030: Vision & Plan 

Africa EdTech 2030: Vision & Plan establishes a clear roadmap for an integrated continental system that could transform education for more than 200 million learners

ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – February, 10th 2026 – African Heads of State have endorsed the AUDA-NEPAD’s Africa EdTech 2030: Vision & Plan, the continent’s unified blueprint to deliver high-quality interactive digital courseware for every African learner through a shared Digital Public Infrastructure for Education (DPI-Ed).

The Vision commits that by 2030, every African learner will have affordable access to high-quality, localised digital learning resources, within an inclusive, interoperable pan-African EdTech ecosystem.

For decades, world-class digital learning tools have been trapped in isolated pilots rather than scaled solutions across the continent. Africa’s education leaders have recognised that breaking this cycle requires a systemic approach to simultaneously address the policy, technology, data and economic sustainability barriers that have prevented universal access.  

The endorsement of the Vision & Plan at the African Union Summit’s Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Week represents a critical milestone as the continent moves from design to delivery.

“Africa is building the infrastructure that will finally deliver high-quality, contextually relevant interactive digital courseware to every learner, not just those in well-resourced schools,” said H.E. Nardos Thomas Bekele, CEO of AUDA-NEPAD. “The Vision & Plan provides the policy framework and catalyses the technical standards to enable our best digital courseware to work across borders, languages, and contexts. We’ve designed a system that, for the first time, lowers the barriers to scale simultaneously. This is how we move from fragmented experiments to continental systems.”

“Africa is building the infrastructure that will finally deliver high-quality, contextually relevant interactive digital courseware to every learner, not just those in well-resourced schools,” said Dr. Msingathi Sipuka, Chief of Staff at AUDA-NEPAD, speaking on behalf of CEO H.E. Nardos Thomas Bekele. “The Vision & Plan provides the policy framework and catalyses the technical standards to enable our best digital courseware to work across borders, languages, and contexts. We’ve designed a system that, for the first time, lowers the barriers to scale simultaneously. This is how we move from fragmented experiments to continental systems.”

Continental architecture that enables scale

The Vision & Plan extends existing African Union frameworks, including Agenda 2063, the Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA), the Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa (2020-2030), and the 2022 Digital Education Strategy. It establishes two foundational instruments that will enable interoperability and scale across Member States.

  • First, a Continental Policy Framework promotes standards-based, vendor-neutral EdTech that creates coherence across national systems. AUDA-NEPAD will support harmonisation task forces at Africa’s Regional Economic Communities to help Member States in contextualised adoption whilst maintaining cross-border compatibility.
  • Second, Africa’s Digital Public Infrastructure for Education (DPI-Ed) provides the shared technical foundation that enables educational content, assessment, and analytics to flow seamlessly across borders. Interoperability standards, reusable building blocks, and open APIs allow different educational systems to connect and share data securely.

“The Vision & Plan lowers the policy, technology and data barriers that have prevented Edtech from scaling in Africa, and enables new economic models to emerge. That is progress we should celebrate,” said H.E. Professor Pierre Gomez, Minister of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology (MoHERST), Gambia. “Now the work starts to implement the system at scale. The DPI-Ed has been created, and we must accelerate investment in the courseware that works within it. That will make it easy for African governments to provide the same courseware to learners whether they are online or offline.”

A transformed education experience

When we break the cycle of limited, national-level pilots and deliver continental level architecture, we fundamentally change the education experience for our children, their families, and their teachers. 

A child in rural Ghana will be able to choose from a range of world-class chemistry lessons in Twi on a basic smartphone. A teacher in Lagos with 60 students and limited textbooks will have cutting-edge resources to engage her students. A parent in Nairobi will watch her daughter learn mathematics from the same platform being used by students in the best schools in Africa. 

A catalytic breakthrough

In a passionate call to action at the launch of the Vision & Plan, Barbara Glover, its lead author, said: “Africa’s commitment to a coordinated, continental, systems-based approach puts it in a unique position. The Breakthrough has happened: the System has been designed. Now we must all work together to deliver it. If we are successful, then Africa will bypass traditional EdTech infrastructure constraints to deliver outcomes that not only serve local needs, but compete globally.”

  • AUDA-NEPAD’s Africa EdTech 2030: Vision & Plan and supporting documentation are available here. 

— ENDS —

Notes to Editors

  • About AUDA-NEPAD
    The African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) is the implementing arm of the African Union, mandated to coordinate and execute priority regional and continental development projects to promote regional integration towards the accelerated realisation of Agenda 2063—Africa’s blueprint for transformation.
  • About Africa EdTech 2030: Vision & Plan
    The AUDA-NEPAD’S Africa EdTech 2030: Vision & Plan commits to ensuring that by 2030, every African learner will have equitable access to world-class, localised digital learning content on affordable, reliable devices, supported by an interoperable pan-African EdTech ecosystem.
  • About Digital Public Infrastructure for Education (DPI-Ed)
    Africa’s Digital Public Infrastructure for Education is a free and open source, interoperable framework designed to host scalable, sustainable EdTech applications built in Africa, for Africa. Africa’s DPI-Ed implements shared technical standards, AUDA-NEPAD’s EdTech Policy Framework, and sustainable business models that enable educational innovations to scale across borders whilst maintaining quality and protecting learner data.

For information on the AUDA-NEPAD Vision & Plan:

  • Barbara Glover | Programme Officer-Integrated Vector Management Programme (IVM), AUDA-NEPAD | barbarag@auda-nepad.org 

For media enquiries and interviews:

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