The Luqmān Project
Investing Arabia’s Wisdom in Africa’s Digital Public Infrastructure for Education
#25 in a series of 29 on Africa’s EdTech Breakthrough System & Project.
Executive Summary
The Luqmān Project is a proposed Arab–African partnership to anchor Africa’s Digital Public Infrastructure for Education (DPI-Ed) in long-term, values-driven stewardship. It proposes a Convening Partner role for a coordinated effort through which Arab philanthropy and development finance can play a decisive, catalytic role in Africa’s educational transformation.
Africa’s DPI-Ed—being led by AUDA-NEPAD and implemented through the RESPECT™ Platform—is designed to ensure that every African learner can access free, high-quality, locally relevant digital learning, online or offline, in their mother tongue, on the devices that they already have (or can easily get). The opportunity now is not merely to fund projects, but to help establish the shared infrastructure, governance, and ecosystem that will sustain learning at continental scale for decades.
The Luqmān Project provides a structured mechanism to do so. Through a multi-donor Luqmān Fund, supported by a trusted fiduciary institution, and a Convening Secretariat, the Project aligns Arab philanthropic, concessional, and development finance behind a single AU-led DPI-Ed trajectory. This approach offers exceptional leverage: modest, well-timed investments unlock large-scale national adoption, multilateral co-financing, and private-sector participation, while generating durable educational, data, and soft-power dividends.
Named for Luqmān al-Ḥakīm, the Project reflects a commitment to wisdom, stewardship, and partnership across generations. It offers Arab institutions a ground-floor role in shaping a world-class Digital Public Infrastructure—one that serves Africa first, while establishing a model with relevance well beyond the continent.
Scope of the Convenor’s Mandate
The Convenor’s mandate is global: to aggregate philanthropic and development finance capital from all sources worldwide behind Africa’s DPI-Ed. The Luqmān Project is the inaugural campaign under that mandate, targeting Arab philanthropy and development finance because these partners are uniquely positioned to demonstrate leadership through early, decisive commitments that catalyze broader participation. Early funding establishes the Luqmān Fund, proves the fiduciary model, and creates the visible momentum that attracts subsequent donors from other regions and traditions. The Arab-African focus described in this essay is therefore a starting point, not a boundary.
1. Introduction
Africa is at a pivotal moment in the evolution of its education systems. The African EdTech 2030 Vision & Plan, led by AUDA-NEPAD, establishes a continental commitment to move beyond fragmented projects toward shared, interoperable Digital Public Infrastructure for Education (DPI-Ed). Implementation of this vision—through the RESPECT™ Platform developed by the Spix Foundation—is now accelerating.
This transition creates a distinct opportunity for partnership. Building DPI-Ed at continental scale requires not only technology, but aligned financing, institutional coordination, and long-term stewardship. These enabling conditions are essential to translate policy ambition into durable delivery, yet they are not naturally owned by any single platform, country, or donor.
The Luqmān Project responds to this gap. It proposes a structured Convening Partner role for a collaborative Arab–African initiative that supports Africa’s DPI-Ed during its critical years of establishment and scale-up. The Project is designed to align Arab philanthropic and development finance with AU-led priorities, while ensuring transparency, accountability, and strategic coherence.
At its core, the Luqmān Project is not a parallel program, but an enabling framework—one that allows African ministries, developers, localizers, and educators to build and sustain a shared digital learning foundation. In doing so, it offers a practical way for Arab institutions to invest in Africa’s future as partners in a common endeavor, grounded in mutual respect, long-term value creation, and shared responsibility.
Just as Africa’s EdTech Breakthrough System is designed to serve Africa’s needs and then to scale out beyond Africa, the Luqmān Project’s Convenor’s role starts with a focus on the Arab world (due to its capacity for decisive leadership) and then scales out beyond Arabia to the rest of the world.
2. Purpose and Vision
The Luqmān Project seeks to:
- Mobilize and align Arab philanthropic and development funding behind a unified African DPI-Ed platform, on which any EdTech app (e.g., courseware, Learning Management System, school management software, etc.) can run on any old, used smartphone — online or offline — across Africa.
- Strengthen Africa–Arab collaboration in education technology, promoting digital inclusion, mother-tongue learning, and Arabic language resources.
- Demonstrate and leverage the effectiveness of said Platform and its apps in improving access, learning outcomes, and data-driven policymaking.
- Amplify Arabia’s strategic soft power through education—investing in the continent’s next generation as partners, not patrons.
Like Luqmān al-Ḥakīm, the initiative establishes a bridge between Africa and Arabia, facilitating the transmission of knowledge, discernment, and stewardship across generations.
3. Structure and Governance
1. The Luqmān Fund
A multi-donor fund designed to blend philanthropic, concessional, and DFI capital to strengthen Africa’s DPI-Ed Ecosystem.
- Fiduciary Trustee (proposed options): Candidates with Global South preference include BADEA, the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), the World Bank, and the African Development Bank (AfDB), each offering trusted governance, co-financing capacity, and global credibility.
- Scope of Investment: policy support, support for research into new DPI-Ed features and their implementation, support for national implementations, support for DPI-Ed-generated data’s federation into a continent-scale database, support for the EdTech Ecosystem, and Africa-based capacity building.
- Accountability: transparent monitoring and evaluation, with outcome-based disbursements tied to objective metrics.
2. The Convening Secretariat
Hosted by the Convening Partner, the Secretariat will:
- Serve as the neutral convener and knowledge broker between Gulf donors, African governments, and multilateral partners;
- Commission research, coordinate pilots, and manage stakeholder communications;
- Receive cost-recovery and performance-based incentives, ensuring sustainability and neutrality.
Its role is not fiduciary, but catalytic—aligning capital with opportunity and credibility.
4. Strategic Rationale
- Ground-Floor Entry into Africa’s DPI-Ed Platform Play
Africa’s DPI-Ed is at the “blueprint” stage—its framework approved by AUDA-NEPAD, and its first reference implementation (by the Spix Foundation, as RESPECT™) now accelerating. Joining at this stage allows Arab Development Partners to shape the standards, partnerships, and visibility of a continent-wide EdTech Ecosystem that could reach 600 million learners by 2030—and determine the Ecosystem’s first expansion beyond Africa, perhaps including the Islamic LMICs.
- Exceptional Return on Investment
- Systemic leverage: each dollar invested in DPI-Ed infrastructure can be expected to unlock many dollars in local, multilateral, and private co-financing.
- Data dividends: investments yield high-quality educational data to inform future policy and innovation.
- Soft-power impact: visible Arab leadership in Africa’s most inclusive transformation—education—builds goodwill, trust, and enduring partnerships.
- Alignment with Arab and Islamic Development Priorities
The Luqmān Project directly advances the priorities of Vision 2030 strategies across the GCC—education, youth, innovation, and South-South collaboration. It operationalizes calls for Arab institutions to champion knowledge diplomacy and shared digital infrastructure for sustainable development.
5. Next Steps
- The Convening Partner to host a founding roundtable with AUDA-NEPAD, the Convening Partner’s choice of Fiduciary Partner, and early potential philanthropic partners.
- Commission a joint scoping study on fund design and DPI-Ed investment pathways, in collaboration with AUDA-NEPAD and African Union Member States.
- Launch the Luqmān Fund Charter at eLearning Africa (3-5 June 2026), announcing funding from at least one entity, and inviting formal participation by Arab donors and DFIs.
6. Conclusion
The Luqmān Project offers a generational opportunity for Arab philanthropy to anchor Africa’s digital learning future in shared values of wisdom, dignity, and partnership.
Through the Convening Partner’s leadership and the fiduciary stewardship of a trusted institution such as BADEA or IsDB, Arabia can plant the first palm whose shade will shelter millions of young Africans and cement a new era of Africa–Arab educational collaboration.
“He who teaches a child sows a seed for eternity.”
The next essay in this series is 26. Sun and Planets: The Architecture of Africa’s EdTech Breakthrough Project.
