Using Blockchain Technology To Transform Africa’s Education Sector
COVID 19 Pandemic has exposed the imbalance in the education sector globally and especially in the developing countries.
More especially, several challenges have been enumerated in the education sector of Africa this is compounded by the poor infrastructure for online learning. Challenges such as academic theft, insecurity, document forgery, and low enrollments have besieged Africa’s education. For example, UNICEF stated that just 79% of primary-school-age kids were enrolled in schools in sub-Saharan Africa in 2018. Furthermore, statistics from the World Bank indicate that the number of college-age students registered in tertiary institutions is lower than 10%. These numbers highlight the number of problems curtailing the growth of the education sector in Africa.
Partially, the socio-economic status of African families is responsible for some of these issues raised above. On the other hand, the poor setting in place for tracking the educational development of a child is also to blame.
Blockchain can be used to fill this missing gap in tracking an African child’s education can be filled by revolutionary technology. Blockchain technology is proving increasingly versatile in the current world setting with the technology been applied to many industries and sectors. Just as blockchain has been disrupting the other sectors and is doing so too to the educational sector. The African government can utilize this technology to obtain data about students, analyze the learning techniques, and methodologies been used. As well as track the students on their progression and learning improvement.
How will this be achieved by blockchain technology exactly? Tracking a child’s education in Africa has to start from birth, where all their data are obtained and stored on the blockchain with an identifier allocated to each of these children. A system is then set up where this stored information is updated as the child progresses through school accompanied by a progress report. The systems are designed in a way that they are connected with other learning institutions and technologies to create a centrally managed information network. This way, there is a clear picture of the student’s interest area and growth that can be used to chart the best field where the student can progress.
As interesting as this sound, this blockchain-based solution is not without its own challenges. One key challenge the system is likely to face is capturing details right from birth. This is due to the porous nature of the healthcare system in Africa with poor health infrastructure to properly capture these details.
