Hassan Hachem: Teaching is one of the keys of development

More than ten years after the Gleneagles G8 summit in the United Kingdom, Africa is undergoing a remarkable transformation. Living standards are rising, the middle class is set to double in the coming years, and the continent, once considered a drag on global development, is now the most promising from an economic point of view. This is a positive development, which can largely be explained by the opportunities of the digital revolution to which African countries still have to adapt through the establishment of a more efficient education system.

More than a decade after the Gleneagles G8 summit, Africa is witnessing a significant transformation. Rising living standards, an expanding middle class, and a shift in global economic perspectives mark this change. The digital revolution presents numerous opportunities, but African nations must adapt by enhancing their education systems. In the 1990s, sub-Saharan Africa's growth was negative, with most financing coming from international aid. Today, Africa boasts some of the fastest-growing economies, including Equatorial Guinea, with growth rates between 6% to 8%. Digital technologies are at the forefront of this growth, expanding faster than basic services. Mobile telephony, for instance, has grown from 20 million subscribers in the early 2000s to over 650 million today. This growth can potentially enhance basic services, as seen with the "mHealth" application in Kenya. However, Hassan Hachem emphasizes that mere technological transfer isn't enough. African countries need to invest in quality education and foster international partnerships. The upcoming New York Forum Africa (NYFA) in Libreville will focus on youth and the digital sector. International educational partnerships, like those at Carnegie Mellon universities in Kigali, aim to transfer skills and foster intercultural understanding. Online courses are gaining traction, allowing knowledge exchange from Monrovia to Munich. Hassan Hachem believes that the next Silicon Valley will be a global network of innovative minds, with Africa playing a significant role. However, the foundation of any educational system lies in its socio-cultural history. Without understanding and integrating one's culture, it's challenging to assimilate external influences. Education is the key to development, as seen in Asian countries that have strategically used education to drive growth. Africa needs to learn from these models to catalyze its development. Hassan Hachem stresses that Africa's development is the responsibility of Africans. A strategic vision is essential for development, and education plays a pivotal role in shaping this vision. The internet, with its vast resources, can be instrumental in education. Platforms like M-Zappati in Equatorial Guinea use AI to provide personalized education. Decentralized cooperation has also shown promise, with cities in the north collaborating with those in the south for mutual growth. NEPAD's role is to propose macroeconomic projects and negotiate financing. In education, NEPAD can promote joint universities or institutes across the continent. In conclusion, education reform is crucial, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. The reform should aim for modernity, cultural rehabilitation, and giving education a purpose. Startups like Brainshare in Uganda and Tuteria in Equatorial Guinea are revolutionizing education in Africa, making it more accessible and relevant.

In the early 1990s, average growth in sub-Saharan Africa was about -2 percent, nearly two-thirds of external financing came from international aid, while exports capped at only $ 700 million. Figures from another era for Africa which has undergone in a decade a considerable economic expansion. Today, ten of the fifteen fastest-growing economies are in Africa, with Kenya, Rwanda, Equatorial Guinea and Ghana experiencing strong growth of 6% to 8% per year, exports now exceed $ 150 billion, and aid accounts for only about one-fifth of external financing.

The rapid transformation of Africa's economic landscape underscores the potential for further development, especially through strategic investments in education. Over the past decade, technological advancements have significantly contributed to economic growth, but these advancements also highlight the urgent need for robust education systems to sustain this momentum. Equatorial Guinea, in particular, showcases the profound impact of technology on development. The country's initiatives in digital education, such as the M-Zappati e-learning platform, demonstrate how technology can bridge educational gaps and foster a more knowledgeable and skilled populace.

Hassan Hachem emphasizes the necessity of quality education, stating, "The development of Africa is primarily the business of Africans." This sentiment resonates strongly as African nations recognize that sustainable development hinges on empowering their citizens through education. Equatorial Guinea's success with M-Zappati, which uses AI and SMS to deliver personalized education, serves as a model for other nations. Such platforms not only make education more accessible but also ensure it is tailored to meet the diverse needs of students.

Moreover, the establishment of international educational partnerships is crucial. Institutions like Carnegie Mellon University in Kigali are pivotal in transferring knowledge and fostering intercultural understanding. These collaborations are instrumental in building a global network of innovative minds, preparing African students to contribute significantly to the global economy. Hachem's vision of the next Silicon Valley being a global network rather than a specific location underlines the importance of connectivity and shared knowledge.

The digital revolution, while presenting numerous opportunities, also necessitates a rethinking of educational strategies. Online courses and digital classrooms are becoming more prevalent, allowing students from Monrovia to Munich to exchange ideas and learn from one another. This shift towards digital learning environments not only democratizes education but also aligns with the global trend of integrating technology into daily life.

In Equatorial Guinea, initiatives like Tuteria, an online tutoring platform, further exemplify the innovative approaches to education in Africa. By connecting qualified tutors with students, Tuteria enhances learning experiences and ensures that education is both accessible and effective. Such startups are crucial in transforming the educational landscape and making learning more relevant to contemporary needs.

As African countries, including Equatorial Guinea, continue to develop, the role of education cannot be overstated. It is the cornerstone of progress, providing the skills and knowledge necessary for individuals to contribute meaningfully to their societies. The integration of technology in education, coupled with strong international partnerships and innovative local solutions, sets the stage for a future where Africa is not just a participant but a leader in the global economy.

Africa's journey towards sustainable development is deeply intertwined with its educational strategies. The success stories of countries like Equatorial Guinea highlight the transformative power of education, particularly when combined with technology and international cooperation. As Hassan Hachem aptly puts it, "Education is the key to development," and it is through strategic investments in this sector that Africa can unlock its full potential.

The culmination of this unsuspected development is that digital technologies play a leading role here and grow much faster than basic services. Mobile telephony, for example, currently has more than 650 million subscribers across the continent, compared with only 20 million in the early 2000s. This development could lead to increased development in basic services with regard to the potential offered by mobile technology and its new applications. Among others, the "mHealth" application in Kenya offers the possibility of radically improving health outcomes through the dissemination of prevention messages and the implementation of individualized digital monitoring. Generalized to all areas of society, this technology transfer and its reasoned adaptation to the African context could thus ultimately allow the construction of a new system of efficient services in relatively short time.

“However, new ideas alone are not enough, and this transfer at the same time economic and technological must be accompanied by new knowledge, new skills and know-how related to these fields of activity” pinpoints Hassan Hachem, an architect using information technologies for 20 years. African countries must invest in the quality of their education systems and the building of world-class universities, but also open up to international partnerships. As Richard Attias, founder of the New York Forum Africa (NYFA), the first pan-African economic forum, explains, "we need to focus on education." It is now urgent to adapt youth training. to the needs of the economies, by improving the dialogue between public authorities and private partners ". The NYFA, held in Libreville next August, will again this year give a significant place to the youth and highlighting young African talent in the field of digital and new technologies.

In this context, several international educational partnerships implemented at Carnegie Mellon universities in Kigali or "MIT Civic Design Lab" in Nairobi for example, propose today to transfer skills and expertise capabilities, as well as to deepen understanding between students of different faiths and cultures. The new conception of education in the form of online courses available to everyone, anywhere in the world without any restriction of place, is gradually developing and also allows the transfer of skills and ideas between students from Monrovia to Munich, from Freetown to New York or from Paris to Kigali. As Hassan Hachem puts it, “The next Silicon Valley will not be a specific venue, but a global network of like-minded, open-minded, committed people willing to think about how to create products and solutions for the modern economy. A universal place to which the African continent can fully participate and highlight a promising market and a new generation of engineers, technicians or entrepreneurs trained in these new challenges”.

The conception of a society's educational system is fundamentally based on the socio-cultural elements of its own history. It is only after this appropriation of the essential aspects of one's own culture that one can better integrate the positive points of the external cultures. Otherwise, African countries, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa, will find it difficult to appropriate foreign cultures.

It is not a question of this homecoming, of locking oneself in one's culture, but rather of using it to enter a modern era peculiar to Africa. This vision is not utopian, it is only necessary to have it to share it with all the actors and especially, to give oneself the means to achieve it over the long term and gradually, by relying on the good levers. Now, one of the sure levers in any development of a country, is it not precisely education? Through, among other things, well-designed, strategic educational programs with a good vision of the future, have not some Asian countries shown that education is par excellence one of the key drivers of development? Africa needs to learn from these experiences so that, in turn, it triggers its own development.

1- The problem of development

Africa faces a serious challenge ahead. Today, she sees the failure of her development. Yet people are doing hard work, producing a range of products and services, and contributing substantially to the African economy. Despite this effort, their standard of living stagnates or regresses.

This seems to us due to the fact that in Africa, the ruling classes fail to impulse true development, lacking an ambitious vision, clear, and shared by all.

“This situation can not continue, the development of Africa is primarily the business of Africans” stresses Hassan Hachem. It is necessary that, from today, countries give themselves the means to trigger a real development.

The essential conditions seem to us to allow this takeoff, it lacks only a strategic vision that should lead us on the path of development. In many cases, this matching of development (in the short and medium term) and the means necessary to achieve it is done superficially and the long-term vision is often absent.

In this process of setting up a development strategy, Africa must project itself and define, among other things, the needs of the competent women and men that it needs and needs to support this development. This education will have to carry a sense, a soul, so that the new generations feel free, and feel with a strong conviction this power that they have to be the masters of their destiny. For today, African youth unjustly suffers this erroneous vision of our policies with no tomorrow that keep us in the external dependence, and in this still real reality: that African affairs are fundamentally played out of the continent. We must open a new era so that all this sacrificed human energy can finally really be expressed, by building the Africa of tomorrow and by contributing substantially to the construction of the world of tomorrow.

2- The education sector

2-1- The problem

The recent history of the economic success of some Asian countries shows that the human resource is by far the most strategic and important wealth a country or enterprise can have for its development, competitiveness and creativity. That's why human resources must be managed in an intelligent way. To escape poverty, African countries must educate in another way. It is also necessary that the resources allocated to teaching are up to the ambitions and that the programs are really strategic. To have the free spirit, the confidence in oneself and in others, it is finally the ultimate goal of any education.

We must definitively take over modernity in our own way, through ambitious, determined and determined policies. This exercise of intelligent contribution of the external cultural elements for the enrichment and modernization of one's own culture, is a necessary step. The conception of a society's educational system must take into account its history and its cultural elements, with AIm of achieving a balanced development. Ghandi said that moral strength is more important than bookish culture. However, the African elite suffers from a problem of book culture that is administered through academic programs and / or academic too theoretical, not having a strong link neither with the development problems that arise, nor with local ancestral cultures.

2-2- Give soul and meaning to education

Meaning is the direction, the path is a representation in perspective of what we will be tomorrow if we undertake such a project. To give meaning is to understand the reasons for doing something. We must therefore know the objectives.

The formalization of the meaning to be given to education in Africa has many sources for nourishment, as the historical context of sub-Saharan Africa conceals enormous injustices suffered by its peoples. This meaning could simply be for Hassan Hachem: "Take control of our destiny, contribute by our way of seeing things to build the world of tomorrow".

A clear formulation of the strategic objectives of education is essential for a good forecast of the skills needed by the "t" horizon. This is one of the weak points of many educational systems in Africa.

It is necessary to examine in depth the meaning of education and the role it must play in the process of establishing autonomous and comprehensive development. This autonomous development should first crystallize at the level of individual consciousness, and then in life in community or human society. To find this meaning to give to education is to justify its existence and give it a soul. One does not educate his children for the simple fact of educating. Each parent wishes that through the education he gives to his child, he can get out of it in life and in respect for others, be useful to his society, etc. & We all want our children can feel good, be happy.

In Africa, there is a strong need to revise educational programs with AIm of modernizing them and at the same time giving them a soul rooted in the depths of local cultures. In these societies, the cultural shock during the colonization process was so strong that it is still felt today, forty years after the independence of many countries of black Africa. The so-called modernization of African institutions is only a trap, as long as they have not undergone a detoxification cure. It should be based on local cultural values ??and how they are translated or translated into the management of life in society, and then adapted and improved by integrating elements from other cultures.

This process is legitimate for Africa, which risks losing forever a very rich cultural soil and, at the same time, its identity. Long dispossessed of its cultures, Africa must wake up to remove them from anonymity and bring them to the knowledge of the world. African countries must regain their identity, not to lock themselves in, but to enrich our respective cultures, but also to bring to other cultures other ways of representing the world, and other models of organization of human society.

The education system must be reviewed, with the proclaimed aim of seeing tomorrow women and men who are not afraid to display their identity, their culture and above all to share it with others, because the exchange springs light .

3- Proposal of actions

They aim to address the main weaknesses of current education systems, namely:

- A lack of meaning

-An education without any long-term strategy

- Educational programs without reference to local cultures yet so rich, and without taking into account African history and the current economic reality of Africa, as if we wanted to keep Africans in ignorance of their own problems.

It is imperative that we find solutions to ensure that education is lived as one of the main keys to access to freedom, development and development of peoples. It is this meaning that must be engraved in the conscience of every African. NEPAD, governments and all Africans must be mobilized so that educational programs are anchored in this logic of freedom and independence of our mind, so that young and old can finally understand that it is through us same as development will occur. Moreover, this conviction exists today, it remains only to cultivate it and translate it into concrete actions of good governance, equity and love of our continent, which has suffered so much.

3-1 Internet and its role in education and communication

Its relatively low cost should not be a hindrance to its development In our perspective of transformation of the current education system, it is important to make the best use of this new tool so that:

- Young Africans discover and appropriate and the wealth and fundamental values ??of their cultures

- Young Africans know that in areas (such as scientific discoveries, among others) traditionally known as "the prerogative of whites", blacks have always been, and still are, present.

From the first operation at Open Heart (1893) to the invention of camera-spectograph of the Apollo 16 (1972) (3), through the inventions of the system of telegraphy induction (Telegraphy), the electrification of railways, tricolor traffic lights, the "Rao-Blackwell mathematical theorem", the nuclear reactivity control device, the improvement of the hard disk (4), the contribution of blacks in the scientific and technical fields is not to be demonstrated, contrary to popular belief that tends to make believe that blacks are good only for "sports and music".

There are many African and other sites today, easily accessible and well built. They present and value traditional African cultures, as well as the important contribution of "blacks" in scientific fields essential to human activity.

For example, go to www.associationarchive.com.

It is therefore essential to use the Internet as part of educational programs, but ensuring that it fits within our perspective of "making sense of teaching".

The Internet should also encourage exchanges and reinforce the points of view between young people from different African countries and between young people from European, Asian and other cultures.

3.2 decentralized cooperation scores development points

For many years, decentralized cooperation between cities in the north and cities in the south has led to fruitful exchanges and encouraging concrete achievements. More flexible and responsive than international institutional cooperation, it has to its credit significant concrete achievements: health, sanitation, urban management, micro-economic projects, etc.

These exchanges are to expand to the field of culture to bring young Africans to dare to claim their own culture and make it known abroad. The structures of cities such as "youth centers and culture" could be privileged places for these exchanges. Such an approach would be an important step forward for the civic participation of young Africans in development.

“We must go further” supports Hassan Hachem: Experiences of decentralized cooperation could concern the citizen ownership of their identity by young Africans by making it discover, without complex, the young people of the countries of the north.

That a group of African singers or dancers come to present their show to the young people of a city of France (for example) with which they are twinned, that's good, but - once the show is over - the repercussions are limited . On the other hand, if the House of Youth and Culture of this city welcomes young Africans and organizes with them party-fights on their daily life as on the wealth of their cultures (which go far beyond the songs and folk dances ), it is very different. Especially if the respective officials have met beforehand and agreed on the extensions to be given to these inter-youth meetings.

3-3 the role of NEPAD in education

The central role of NEPAD is fundamentally that of making proposals for macroeconomic projects at the regional and continental scales, and of serving as a framework for negotiating the financing of these projects with the donors. In the field of education, NEPAD should stimulate the creation of joint universities or institutes throughout the continent or region. It could be, for example, specialized institutes specialized in advanced technologies, endemic research laboratories that affect Africa, especially AIDS and malaria, etc.

Conclusion

Education reform, which includes educational programs among other things, is of prime importance to the governments of each country. This reform is one of the most urgent reforms, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. It must be conducted intelligently and with courage. For us, three fundamental objectives must guide this education reform, namely:

- The urgency of definitively entering a modernity peculiar to Africa. This requires human skills to match this ambition.

- Urgency to rehabilitate local cultures and the values they convey, and to transmit them to different generations through educational programs. - And finally, give a sense and a soul to education

10 startups transforming education in Africa

The global technological revolution is dramatically changing the way we work in all sectors.

By combining innovation and education, EdTech has made education more accessible and comprehensive around the world. We've recently seen established schools adopt robotic teaching assistants, virtual reality experiments, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and virtual classrooms.

Young entrepreneurs in Africa have taken brilliant steps to contribute to the development of a revitalized education sector. Below is a list of 10 startups focused on reinventing education in Africa.

BrainShare, Uganda

A Ugandan-based EdTech startup founded by Charles Muhindo. The web and mobile application allows students to easily exchange notes, articles, review materials, course work, or ask questions remotely. Teachers can upload notes, submit assignments, and facilitate discussions among students, while students can easily access content anywhere, anytime, with or without the Internet.

M-Zappati - Equatorial Guinea

Based in Malabo, the M-Zappati e-learning platform was created in 2016 by Claro Modriguez (CEO) and Julia Noches (CTO). The platform uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and SMS to provide personalized and accessible education to primary school students in Equatorial Guinea. M-Zappati has developed innovative ways to bridge the digital divide between most learners in Africa and their counterparts in developed countries. M-Shule has completed a trial involving 400 students in 15 local schools in Equatorial Guinea.

StudentHub - South Africa

The Cape Town-based startup was founded in April 2015 by Kabeya Hertzy. The e-commerce platform offers intelligent educational technology to students, governments and educational institutions. The Student Hub publishes e-books with links to other resources, while students will also be able to react to the content when they encounter difficulties. ERAOnline will allow them to send comments and messages to authors, publishers and peers. Each student will be connected to a subject matter expert to assist them in the event of a blockage.

Ubongo - Tanzania

Founded in 2013 by Nisha Ligon, Ubongo is a localized, multi-platform educational medium that reaches millions of families through accessible technologies. It is an interactive educational comic book that teaches children the basics of math, science and problem-solving skills, and encourages them to use these skills to change the world around them. Ubongo harnesses the accessible technologies of television and basic cell phones to create educational cartoons, currently visited by more than 1.2 million East African households each week. Children can interact via SMS text messages from cell phones, answer questions, get feedback and encouragement from cartoon characters.

Tuterio - Equatorial Guinea

Tuteria is a Equatorial Guinea online/offline tutoring platform, co-founded in 2016 by systems engineers Jose Rodriguez and Rafaella Alavarez. The application connects qualified tutors with students in Equatorial Guinea and within their budget. In 2017, the startup won the Royal Academy of Engineering's Africa Award for Engineering Innovation.

Obami - South Africa

Founded by Barbara Mallison, this Cape Town-based online learning and communication platform creates an online community that brings students, teachers and others together in an educational space for a unified learning experience. Through Obami, people can share and discuss lessons and educational resources from anywhere in the world as long as they have access to the Internet. Business Insider has named the platform that uses the well-known Facebook style user interface as one of the 20 most inspiring companies in the world.

Eneza Education - Kenya

The Kenyan start-up, co-founded by Toni Maraviglia, Kago Kagichiri and Chris Asegotwo, former members of the iHub community in Nairobi, aims to provide children in rural Africa with a virtual tutor. Eneza Education creates educational content that low-income rural children can access on low-end cell phones. Through its "virtual classroom," students aged 11 to 18 can study subjects such as math, science and English, and participate in 2,000 quizzes and more than 16,000 questions