Technology-Led Early Learning in Africa

We will introduce the Keep It Simple (KIS) technology an innovative software application aimed at digitalizing and strengthening early learning for children attending early childhood development and primary education system in Sub-Saharan Africa for dramatically increased educational outcomes for vulnerable children.  Our innovation will refine models of community-driven innovations and introduce new technology to accelerate early learning as well as replication in Malawi and scale-up in Sub-Saharan Africa with a particular focus on vulnerable children living among last-mile populations as well as the girl child and children living with disabilities. By introducing KIS technology into integrated Early Childhood Development (ECD) and Early Learning Approaches (ELA), our innovation will be tackling some of the greatest challenges facing the quality, access, affordability, expansion, and cost-effectiveness of early learning and early childhood development for millions of children in Malawi and Sub-Saharan Africa. We will start in Malawi and scale up across Africa. 

The problems our innovation is addressing is two-fold: (i). children aged 3-5 years attending ECD as well those aged 6-13 years attending primary schools and whose parents live below the $1.90 poverty line in Malawi face chronic childhood poverty, malnutrition, and lack of quality Early Childhood Development (ECD)and Early Learning Approaches (ELA) to enable them to survive and thrive, and (ii). lack of technology innovation expands the digital divide and severely limits children’s access to modernized and quality ECD services. The innovation will directly benefit 10,000 children, 30,000 teachers, caregivers and parents, and 100 Community-Based Organizations (CBOs).  

Barriers include: (i) unskilled teachers and caregivers; (ii) Under-resourcing by governments; (iii) Inadequate and insufficient learning materials; and (iv). Lack of capacity to develop related education support that builds lasting impact on children. ECD remains the least prioritized and resourced component of the education sector in Africa, with less than 12% of the children accessing quality ECD services (UNESCO: 2006). Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates of education exclusion with one-fifth of children between the ages of about 6 and 11 and one-third of youth between the ages of about 12 and 14 out of school (UNESCO: Internet Accessed 29 May 2021). 

KIS technology is an innovative software application aimed at digitalizing and strengthening the early learning education system in middle- and low-income countries for dramatically increased educational outcomes for millions of children.  Its back-end system stores data on millions of children and has the capacity for data analytics that helps track of both individualized and comparative learner performance. The software replaces the traditional chalk and talk approaches to teaching and learning processes and removes the dreaded exam stigma through continuous learner-based performance measurements. It is a powerful learning innovation based on sound psychological principals that build confidence and self-esteem in children by enabling them to learn at their own speed while setting them up to succeed at their lessons. Its multi-dimensional design allows teachers to identify student strengths and weaknesses and to focus on child-centered needs based on the extensive data that is stored in the system on each learner. The software provides technology innovation training for teachers, parents, and caregivers. It reduces the amount of human, time, financial, and capital resources required to supervise the teaching workforce since its centralized data enables education executives and managers to track teacher presence and performance remotely – including real-time and student-centered data. 

Its audio system enables self-learning for all children, particularly those whose parents are illiterate. The software can be used by both typical and children with special needs and therefore eliminates disability as a discrimination factor in the educational and learning processes. This is particularly critical to the severely impaired children in Africa who are routinely excluded from the mainstream education system. In its current form, the software is suitable for children aged 2.5 to 8 years attending early childhood development centers, pre-primary classes, and grades 1-4 grades of primary education in Africa. It is being further developed to cater for learners in upper primary schools aged up to 13-14 years and this is an integral part of the next phase of this technology-driven learning software. It provides children with opportunities to start early, learn through technology innovations, and thrive through the country’s mainstream education system. Because of the design and ability to maintain individualized data, it has the capacity to identify special needs in children. This includes identification of learning and sensory disabilities such as dyslexia and color blindness in early years. Additionally, it provides teaching and learning diagnostics by storing individualized and measurable data on each child and teacher.

The KIS technology innovation has the capacity to operate in rugged, off-grid, last-mile regions and enables play-based learning for children 1.5 to 8 years old attending ECD, pre-primary, and lower primary classes in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is will also be fully adapted to the learning needs of students in the entire primary school system, based on local curriculum contents. The KIS software can be used in both a formal school setting under teacher/caregiver supervision and at the household level under parent, guardian, or older sibling supervision. We are addressing the intractable technology and digital divide in early learning education systems. 

KIS technology  been implemented at the Autism Treatment Strategy Center, the Alternative Teaching Strategy Center and many government schools in USA and has benefited 300 students. It will be further piloted in Mangochi District in Southern Malawi which has the highest percentage of women and men with no education - 4% of women and 1% of men in the Northern region have no education compared with 12% of women and 6% of men who live in the Central region and 14% of women and 6% of men in the Southern region. The percentage of women and men who have completed secondary school or higher increases by wealth quintile; less than 1% of women and 3% of men in the lowest wealth quintile completed secondary school or higher compared with 31% of women and 41% of men in the highest wealth quintile and live beyond the $1.90 -a-day poverty line. 

Africa lacks early learning technology innovations. Compared to the USA, the KIS software will be rolled out in Africa at a discounted rate of over 96%. Its audio system enables self-learning for all children, particularly those whose parents are illiterate. The software can be used by both typical and children with special needs and eliminates disability as a discrimination factor in the educational and learning processes. This is particularly critical for the severely impaired children in Africa who are routinely excluded from the mainstream education system. In its current form, the software is suitable for children aged 3 to 8 years attending early childhood development center, pre-primary classes, and primary education learners. It provides children with opportunities to start early, learn through technology innovations, and thrive through the country’s mainstream education system. Because of the design and ability to maintain individualized data, it has the capacity to identify certain special needs in children. This includes identification of learning disabilities such as dyslexia and color blindness in early years. In contrast to the traditional educational methods that utilize cohort-focused evaluation of children based on a uniform curriculum and collective teaching and assessment methods, the software tracks and maintains data on each child’s learning speed. This data is remotely available to teachers and education administrators and it does not require their presence at the child’s specific location. For disabled children who require intense teacher interaction, it can also track teacher performance, particularly the quality of teacher-student interactions to the day and time. 

There are two integrated levels of reach for the proposed innovation. The first is the refinement and expansion of support to CBOs to implement quality community-driven center-based ECD and early learning programs, and the second is the integration, and positioning of the KIS technology as a pathway for replication and scale up of the proven ECD, primary education, and early learning technology-driven models in the target area initially and across Malawi over the next 3-5 years. In the initial 1-2 years the KIS technology will sharply focus on a cohort of 5,000 children to depth and quality of documentation to support further scale up. In the next 1-2 years, NACC will benefit approximately 20,000 children of 3-8 year by supporting CBOs to: (i). Develop a Community-Based ECD Centre Quality Improvement Model for children aged 4-6 years that will be deepened in Malawi and adopted in Tanzania and Zambia; (ii). Support child-centered and child-friendly community ECD centers to balance school-readiness with developmentally appropriate and play-based methods for children aged 4-8 years preparing to join pre- or primary school; and address barriers to quality, play-based ECD and early learning education, including training of teachers, caregivers, and adoption of teaching and learning resources that are developmentally appropriate and lay a strong foundation for children’s lifelong learning. In the next 2-3 years, the KIS technology will be fully adapted to address all levels of ECD and primary education to create a seamless pathway for 1 million children aged 3-14 years eligible for early learning. 

Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) will be an integral part of our innovation and will include baseline-line surveys, midline-reviews, and end-line evaluation and documentation. Data will be gathered through the project implementation cycle. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that progress will include will be used to measure reading and typing skills. The total correct number of words each student can label the given photo with 100% accuracy will be collected and then averaged to indicate the reading skills acquired. It should be noted that in the USA and most developed nations this number is less than 10 for 5 year-olds and less than 1 for 3 and 4 year-olds. Typing skill will be measured by the number of correct letters per minute each student can type and then averaged to measure the group achievement. For comparison purposes in developed nations 3 and 4 year old can only identify a few letters and so the typing rate is less than 1 and for 5 year-olds who are still learning letters it would be less than 2. We call keep a call/transaction log to monitor the frequency and types of requests for help from teacher and partners and use to problem solve. We will train all early learning teachers who will oversee the implementation of the project. The KIS software provides teaching and learning diagnostics by storing individualized and measurable data on each child and teacher and thus enabling education managers to track and strengthen the overall learning and teaching approaches and outcomes. 

The core team will include the CRANE MD who will be the innovations director, the CEO of KIS Publishing LLC who will be the technology technical director, and the Executive Director of NACC who will oversee implementation in Malawi. NACC has a diverse project, finance, and administration team of 50+.

Josh Kyallo, will be the overall ECD and early learning technical adviser and capacity building lead for the overall project. He is an international development specialist who for over 25 years has served in senior leadership roles and led multi-million-dollar programs funded by all the major bi- and multi-lateral donors, foundations, and private sector in multiple countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. He is an education, child protection, health, and ECD specialist who has served some of the world’s leading child-focused NGOs like Save the Children UK where he served in leadership roles for 6.5 years. 

Gary Shkedy, will be the Project Technical Director and the CEO of KIS Publishing. He is an inventor, mathematician, software developer and finance expert. He is currently the CEO of KIS Publishing and the CFO of Alternative Teaching Strategy Center. He has designed and built software for education, real-time trading and risk management, portfolio management and optimization. 

Saeed Wame, the Executive Director of NACC Malawi will spearhead all aspects of project implementation and be responsible for the project team and partners. He is a child development and early learning specialist and has 24 years of working experience in child development. This involves designing, planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluation. As a Community Development Expert, he has been mobilizing communities to identify and address challenges facing children and their communities, especially ECD, primary education, and early learning. Saeed has been leading grassroots development for over two decades. He is the founding ED of NACC and is respected globally.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the core of the founding, vision, and mission of Community Rising Africa Network (CRANE). CRANE is an Africa-led, owned, established, managed, and controlled global education, health, and development network that focuses on building the leadership, innovation, partnership, technical, and financial capacity of indigenous Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) to improve education, health, and social sector system performance and sustainability by addressing the gap between the peripheral system serving underserved populations through collaboration with all of the relevant stakeholders, including governments, donors, the private sector, communities, and civil society. CRANE brings together established African NGOs and leading African global development professionals working together at the country and regional level to catalyze transformative development in Africa as a pathway to a sustainable Journey to Self-Reliance. 

CRANE Vision: Engender self-reliance by connecting African innovators with global resources and regional partnerships to create sustainable solutions for education, health, social sector, and development challenges affecting millions of vulnerable populations in Africa. 

Our Mission: Build the capacity and network of African NGOs and experts working towards sustainable global education, health, social sector and development for self-reliance in Africa.

The lead team is led by professionals born in Kenya, South Africa, and Malawi. The NACC team that will spearhead the implementation of this project are all Malawians and they comprise of strong gender-balance at all levels of the organization. Additionally, our innovation prioritizes girls, children living with disabilities, and vulnerable children living on the margins of communities. 

I am applying to Solve for many a variety of reasons, including but not limited, to the ones discussed below.

1). Visibility and profile improvement in order to secure the necessary financial and partnership support to enable us refine our innovation and position it for replication in Malawi and scale up across Africa. Although we have been applying for grants, the focus has been on a severely limited donor base that although focused on innovation is still very much structured in the highly restrictive project-mode with pre-determined parameters that do not facilitate free-thinking innovation.  CRANE believes that Solve platform and networks would add great value to our fundraising efforts.

2). The second reason is to address the market barriers that make it much more difficult for new technology innovations driven by entrepreneurs from the global south such as ours to thrive and find a pathway for breakthrough and next-level success. Based on our experience over the past 12 months or so, it is very hard for new innovators like us to unlock doors through hard and cold donor-by-donor approaches. Majority of the funders we have gone to have pre-determined innovation priorities and preferred partners and are less likely to even understand and consider applications from new innovators. This in itself is a major disincentive for innovation, particularly when majority of the online applications to donors like USAID, GIF and FID never provide reasons for rejecting ideas. 

The other reason it to gain access for partnership with tech companies like Apple. 

We are open to gaining access to and building partnership with supportive donors, innovators, market specialists, and philanthropists who are willing and able to give a chance to new and bold ideas and provide support for these innovations to go to the next level.

The first thing we need is money to support our core costs and enable us to refine and roll out our innovation. Despite our relentless fundraising efforts in the past 15 months, we are yet to make the financial breakthroughs much-needed to enable us to pilot this innovation in Malawi, refine it, and position it for replication and scale across Sub-Saharan Africa with public and private funding. Our project leadership has been working on this with zero salaries for years and this is not easy for any organization or innovation. Raising funds to support and sustain our core innovation team and support the core implementation costs as outlined in the previous section is critical to our success. 

Secondly, we want to use the Solve platform and networks to address the market barriers and forces that unfortunately tend to be less inclined to fund or support innovators from the global south. Although our core team brings over 100+ years of collective experience in the education, technology innovation, and global development sectors, breaking the glass ceiling in the technology innovation and fundraising market space has been extremely difficult, if discouraging. W

Solve will also expose us to tech companies like Apple that can help access affordable hardware - iPADS.

We would like to partner with all the relevant and willing partners who are willing and able to help us grow our innovation and take it to the next level.  We believe we have a ground-breaking innovation that can catapult early learning educational outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa to unprecedented levels. We are therefore open to support and guidance on the most relevant and supportive actors that we can partner with and who could meaningfully help us take our innovation to the next level.

We are open to partnering with MIT faculty or initiatives in a way that would add value to our innovation, develop synergies, and propel us to the next level of innovation and scale. This partnership could help with refining our brand, opening the market space, leveraging technical capabilities, and expanding our global partnership networks and links. 

We are equally interested in Solve partners that could provide complementarity to our innovation. This would include further exposure to like-minded innovations in the early learning sector that we could leverage, build partnership synergies with, and learn from each other. 

In terms of organizations, we are interested in bilateral, philanthropies, and corporate sectors that are dedicated to funding technology innovations in the early learning education sector in Sub-Saharan Africa. This would include warm introductions to diverse donors who are in a position to provide flexible funding that would us to take mitigated risks, further develop our brand and innovation, and dream big and go to the next level with our innovation.

Our innovation meets the ASA Prize for Equitable Education criteria because of mission alignment. For over a decade, KIS Publishing has been building and implementing will digital solutions tailored to U.S.-based primary and secondary classrooms that provide career exploration or experimentation with a specific focus on autistic children. KIS solutions are embedded as part of core curriculum and utilize project based learning. Our objective is to ensure equitable access for children with disability and to support teacher professional development. KIS technology is aims to help students with autism as well as regular children to discover themselves, explore their options, and make informed decisions to achieve their education and career goals.  Overall, our solutions includes equitable classrooms challenge and digital inclusion challenge. Our innovation is aimed at removing all forms of barriers to learning for children from vulnerable communities, including racism, ethnicity, and all other forms of discrimination in USA and Africa. 

Keep It Simple (KIS) Publishing Learning System, a personalized learning system that enables accelerated learning by increasing each student's self-esteem and attention span. The system was originally developed in San Diego, California (USA), to teach students with severe autism to learn to read, type and communicate. Testing in public pre-schools and elementary schools showed that the same techniques are very effective in teaching typical students as well as students with other disabilities. Unlike traditional approaches to learning, the KIS system utilizes a non-linear curriculum coupled with a micro-teaching structure to create an individual optimized learning pathway for each student. 

The KIS technology is adaptable for children in all settings, including and especially refugee children. Although the initial pilot phase in malawi will not include refugee settings, our next phase of development will scale up to include all children living in extremely difficult environments. In fact, part of the initial testing of the KIS technology software was piloted among South Sudanese refugees in Northern Uganda- https://kispublishing.com/africa/

Our innovation qualifies for the The Andan Prize for Innovation in Refugee Inclusion because by addressing early learning for refugee children, our technology-driven solution advances the educational, economic, financial, and political inclusion of refugees. The priority countries in which the KIS technology will be implemented are key hosts of refugees from multiple countries in Eastern and Southern Africa including South Sudanese, Somalis, Ethiopians, Eritreans, and Democratic Republic of Congo.  Our innovation  promotes refugee resilience, self-reliance and integration. For example, Somali refugees have been living in Kenya since the former government of Siad Barre fell in 1991. All the children eligible for ECD, pre-primary, and primary education who will benefit from our technology were born and raised in the refugee camps in Kenya and their access to basic early learning opportunities (let alone technology innovations) is severely limited. 

Overall, we are introducing a unique and comprehensive teaching tool with the capacity to accelerate play-based learning for all children in the early learning category that will leapfrog innovative learning in Malawi and provide sustainable solutions that can be scaled up nationally and replicated across Sub-Saharan Africa. 

The KIS technology innovation meets the qualification criteria for the The GM Prize. It seeks to address the digital divide in low- and middle-income countries that has created avoidable barriers and exclusion of millions of vulnerable children seeking accessible and quality early learning opportunities in Sub-Saharan Africa. To that extent, our KIS technology   is aimed at creating smart, safe, and sustainable communities around the world by advancing technology innovation in the education sector. We are promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion by making education more accessible and equitable for children living with disability and those that are marginalized. Our innovation addresses all the core pillars of this prize, including antiracist technology in the US, equitable classrooms, and resilient ecosystems challenges globally.

Overall, the software provides 360-degree analytics on performance and learning dynamics and environment, including break periods in the learning process.  It quantifies efforts, time, and outcomes and demonstrates an integrated co-relation between individual child learning, environment, and dynamics. Its solution-based learning approach in which the learner’s difficulty is adjusted in tandem with their demonstrated growing learning capacity creates an inherent learner-centered reward system that acts as learning incentives for the individual child without the actual use of external rewards. The software tracks response vis-à-vis correct answers and difficulty rates.  Each learning area is broken into multiple levels of difficulty and adjusted in accordance of the growing capacity and confidence of the individual child. The software utilizes the major ways of learning, including visual, audio, and tactile senses adaptable to  learners.

There is mission alignment between the vision of this prize and that of CRANE as well as the specific objectives of the KIS technology because of the respective prioritization of women and girls. The girl-child is a top priority of our innovation that is aimed at providing accessible, gender-sensitive, and equitable early learning opportunities for children aged 3 to 14 years, which is the most crucial formation age for all girls in Sub-Saharan Africa. Enabling girls to survive and thrive through these crucial ages will not only provide education opportunities but will also address some of the barriers that contribute to high dropout and wastage of girls through the entire educational system in Africa. Giving girls early start and equal chances as boys through affirmative actions will address some of the socio-cultural barriers including childhood marriages, early pregnancies, and gender-based violence. Similarly, our innovation prioritizes training of female teachers, caregivers and parents in the application of the KIS software to enable them provide immediate support to the girl-child at home and in school. 

Therefore, our solutions uses innovative technology to improve quality of life for women and girls in Sub-Saharan Africa. CRANE is also seeking tech companies like the Vodafone Americas Foundation that supports technology-focused projects that advance the needs of women and girls like ours to enable us refine and take the KIS technology to the next level. Overall, CRANE is using this innovation  to promote a world where women’s voices can be celebrated, and therefore deserves this prize. 

Our innovation qualifies and merits the AI for Humanity Prize because our solution is leveraging data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to benefit humanity. CRANE is also using KIS technology to address the global digital divide that faces million of children eligible for early learning in Sub-Sahara Africa.  There is a perfect mission alignment because CRANE is planning to use the KIS technology innovation to amplify early learning impact for millions of children in Sub-Saharan Africa. Like the The The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, CRANE is committed to advancing AI and data solutions to create a thriving, equitable, and sustainable future for all for millions of vulnerable children and their communities across Sub-Saharan Africa. KIS technology is an innovative software application aimed at digitalizing and strengthening the early learning education system in middle- and low-income countries for dramatically increased educational outcomes for millions of children. Compared to USA, the software will be rolled out in Africa at a discounted rate of over 96%. 

This technology innovation targets children in the range of ages 3 to 14 years in last mile populations who have limited access to quality learning opportunities, and particularly children from ultra-poor families, those with disabilities, and those who are often excluded from the mainstream early learning systems. The pilot phase will be implemented in the Southern region of Malawi in Mangochi District which has the highest percentage of women and men with no education and where majority households live beyond the WorldBank $1.90 -a-day poverty line.

As explained above, our innovation is qualified for this prize and there is striking mission alignment. Our team will use The AI for Humanity Prize to advance your solution by supporting its piloting in Malawi and positioning for its replication across Malawi and in Sub-Saharan Africa. In contrast to the traditional educational methods that utilize cohort-focused evaluation of children based on a uniform curriculum and collective teaching and assessment methods, the software tracks and maintains data on each child’s learning speed and brain activity. This data is remotely available to teachers and education administrators and it does not require their presence at the child’s specific location. It also tracks teacher performance, particularly the quality of teacher-student interactions to the day and time. It therefore enables correlations to be drawn between the individual child’s performance and all the influencing drivers and factors such as teacher interactions, intrinsic and external influencers in the different times of the day, and other environmental or school factors. It also enables teachers to track each child’s performance by lessons, subject, or unique area of concentration. It provides detailed and prompt examination of performance, including words and speed in both verbal and written language acquisition. 

This technology bridges the gap and can actually help with school, Centre, and home based implementations of education. We will also adapt this technology to cover higher primary and secondary levels of education and to address all major subjects delivered by the core national curriculum in the public education system in Africa

Yes we are fully qualified for this grant because of the mission alignment between our innovation and the purpose of the GSR prize. 

KIS software's  aimed at digitalizing and strengthening the education system in middle- and low-come countries for increased educational outcomes for millions of children.  Its back-end system stores data on millions of children and has the capacity for data analytics that helps track  both individualized and comparative learner performance. The software replaces the traditional chalk and talk approaches to teaching and learning and removes the dreaded exam stigma through continuous learner-based performance measurements. It is a powerful play-based learning innovation that builds confidence and self-esteem in children by enabling them to learn at their own speed. Its multi-dimensional design allows teachers to identify student strengths and weaknesses and to focus on child-centered needs based on the massive data that is stored in the system on each learner. it provides training for teachers, parents, and caregivers. It reduces the amount of human, time, financial, and capital resources required to supervise the teaching workforce since its centralized data enables education executives and managers to track teacher presence and performance remotely – including real-time data on if the teacher is in the classroom and performance. Compared to USA, the software will be rolled out in Africa at a discounted rate of over 96%. Its audio system enables self-learning for all children, particularly those whose parents are illiterate. The software can be used by both typical and children with special needs.