When we say “school” what do you think about? Blackboards, books, and stationary? For us, school also means digital tablets that we give to schools in Africa, which often have no books or an internet connection. At these schools more than 500,000 children can now access essential educational content using tablets. Beginning with a handful of initiatives in 2014, this project has become a fully-fledged digital education drive: the "Digital Schools" program.

Primarily, it's a kit that includes a mini server of educational content connected to 25 tablets. We give each school tablets (25), a laptop, a video projector, a Bluetooth speaker, and many accessories. The children use them to instantly access hundreds of items of essential content: books from the school curriculum and also:

Khan Academy lessons
the Wikipedia encyclopedia
the Wiktionary dictionary
the Gutenberg project, a library with more than 42,000 free digital books in English
online MOOC courses
Nomad Education quizzes
educational content from the YouScribe library
Africatik application
Math Matthews
Plume writing application
Vikidia
Education et Numerique resources, etc.

We create these programs in partnership with the Ministry of Education in each country. They work with us to identify the most appropriate school text books for their pupils, which we then upload into the kit.

Our employees volunteering in the field

Because we are convinced that the human factor is central to digital solidarity, we train educational representatives in how to use the kits. Our volunteer employees mentor the schools in their region and deliver training and technical support for the teachers and pupils.

16 countries, 1,400 schools, 500,000 pupils

In 2014 our Digital Schools program included 100 schools in 5 countries: Madagascar led the way, then Senegal, Niger, Cameroon and Tunisia and other countries joined the adventure. In 2021/2022, 500,000 pupils benefited from the digital education program. How many in the future?