To improve education and expand access to clean energy, a firm, Ignite Energy Access Nigeria, has completed a solar electrification project in 34 schools across rural communities in 19 states, providing thousands of students with stable power for learning and digital education.

The initiative, which deployed high-quality MySol solar systems, targeted schools with little or no access to the national grid, enabling continuous power supply for classrooms, laboratories, and digital learning equipment.

The firm noted that the project transformed learning environments that had long depended on irregular or non-existent electricity. Managing Director of Ignite Energy Access Nigeria and Regional Director, West Africa, Mangiza Phiri, said the project reflected the firm’s commitment to bridging educational inequality through renewable energy.

The Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) has said the Federal Government’s student loan scheme has crossed one million applications on its official portal. The organisation said this marked one of the biggest uptake levels for a government-backed social scheme since the start of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration.

A statement yesterday in Abuja by its Director of Strategic Communications, Oseyemi Oluwatuyi, said the milestone comes barely one year after the programme’s launch on May 24, 2024. The statement described the development as proof that the student loan initiative is gaining strong national traction and public trust.

It stated that over N116 billion has so far been disbursed to students across universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education in Nigeria, covering institutional charges and upkeep allowances. The agency’s Managing Director, Akintunde Sawyerr, said the development reflected the impact of President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope policy drive on access to higher education.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has entered our lecture halls, grading systems and research labs with astonishing speed. It now drafts essays, summarises readings and generates lesson plans in seconds. Yet, beneath this fluency lies a troubling question: whose intelligence, whose language, whose world does AI serve?

AI arrives in societies already marked by inequality. In Africa and across the Global South, access to reliable internet, computing power and digital literacy is profoundly uneven. The danger is that AI will not only mirror these inequalities, but will magnify them. If we are not vigilant, the algorithm will become the new frontier of exclusion.

AI tools promise efficiency, but they often amplify structural divides. Students in well-resourced institutions gain instant access to personalised tutoring and data-driven feedback. At the same time, those in underfunded schools and universities are left with broken connectivity and outdated devices.

The African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) opened its fifth Biennial International Conference at Makerere University in Uganda on 29 October, marking both the organisation’s 10th anniversary and Africa’s deepening engagement with artificial intelligence (AI).

The three-day gathering, hosted with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, brings together vice-chancellors, researchers, policymakers and partners from across the continent and beyond under the theme, ‘Research, Innovation and Artificial Intelligence for Africa’s Transformation’.

“AI’s accelerating ubiquity presents immense opportunities and serious responsibilities,” Professor Sizwe Mabizela, the ARUA board chair and the vice-chancellor of Rhodes University, said. He added: “We mustn’t adopt AI uncritically; we must shape just, inclusive and sustainable frameworks that serve humanity.”

Universities in Africa should strive to build public trust in higher education institutions and, to achieve this, they have to rethink the role higher education institutions must play in nurturing minds that will drive the development of the continent’s ever-evolving societies.

Universities also need to move away from the traditional way of teaching and learning. “The future of teaching and learning for the continent is really about innovation, about bringing in practical skills, and applying theory to practice. It is about trying to experiment, and to become more solution-focused.

It is about being more active, rather than passive, in their learning process,” said Dr DeBrenna LaFa Agbényiga, provost and vice-president for academic affairs of the International University of Grand Bassam, Côte d’Ivoire.

The Federal Government has commenced the disbursement of funds under the Tertiary Institution Staff Support Fund (TISSF), designed to strengthen staff welfare, institutional productivity, and innovation across Nigeria’s tertiary education system.

This is contained in a statement made in Abuja on Friday by the Director of Press and Public Relations, Federal Ministry of Education, Mrs Folasade Boriowo. Boriowo, while quoting the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, on the milestone, said the welfare was an initiative of President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda.

Alausa said the programme had transitioned from planning to full implementation, with more than 9,000 staff of tertiary institutions receiving payments in the first year. This, he said, represented 28 per cent of the 33,000 verified applicants drawn from 219 federal and state tertiary institutions across the federation.

It is estimated that 90% of African children in school are unable to read or write, and the situation is worse in conflict-affected areas. Benjamin Piper, the Director of Global Education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, described this learning crisis as "a heartbreaking statistic." He said that the situation reflects a system that has not yet fully oriented itself toward learning.

'How did we get here?' he asked. "We got here because the system has not fully oriented itself to learning," Piper said. "There are many things that education systems do, but we haven't yet gotten everyone's head focused on the core question of whether or not every child in rural Africa can actually have these basic skills."

Piper said that weak goal-setting, inadequate resources, and neglect of learning and instruction have contributed to the crisis. He said that while large class sizes are a challenge, successful interventions have shown that progress is possible even under difficult conditions.

Pottermore Publishing and Worldreader's BookSmart platform have partnered to promote literacy in Kenya through a nationwide digital reading initiative targeting families and children. The campaign, dubbed the Get Kenya Reading Initiative, aims to address Kenya's literacy gap, with data showing that nearly 80 percent of 10-year-olds struggle to read and understand a simple story due to limited access to age-appropriate books.

As part of the initiative, the two organizations will host a celebration tea party on December 6, 2025, at Imaara Mall in Nairobi, honoring 300 young readers who completed Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone through the free BookSmart app.

Worldreader's BookSmart app currently features more than 2,700 free digital books in English and Kiswahili, enabling families to turn any smartphone into a personal library. Research by Worldreader indicates that reading for just ten minutes a day with a parent or guardian can significantly improve a child's vocabulary, empathy, and school readiness.

In a bold step toward transforming the country’s education landscape, the Malawi Institute of Education (MIE) has unveiled a new National Curriculum Framework that promises to redefine how Malawians learn, teach, and build futures aligning with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, which calls for inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all.

The landmark reform officially launched by MIE Executive Director Dr. Frank Mtemang’ombe alongside Principal Secretary for Education, Dr. Ken Ndala marks a historic shift from outdated learning models to a dynamic, skills-based system designed to make education more relevant, inclusive, and globally competitive.

“This curriculum is about equipping learners not just to pass exams, but to live, work, and innovate in a fast-changing world,” said Dr. Mtemang’ombe. “It is a curriculum for Malawi’s future relevant, inclusive, and globally competitive.”

The Ministry of Education, in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), has launched a digital monitoring tool to enhance the country’s efforts to ensure that every child acquires the foundational skills essential for lifelong learning and success.

The tool, known as the Foundational Learning Action Tracker (FLAT), provides crucial insights to accelerate progress in literacy, numeracy and socio-emotional skills among children across the country, supporting Ghana’s pursuit of its national education targets and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

FLAT monitors national progress using the RAPID Framework, which focuses on five key areas — reaching every child and keeping them in school, assessing learning levels, prioritising the teaching of fundamentals, increasing instructional efficiency, and promoting psychosocial health and well-being.

In a strategic partnership aimed at bridging the gap between academic theory and industry practice, Datamaker Ghana Limited has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the University of Ghana's Department of Computer Science.

The agreement establishes a framework for curriculum enrichment, hands-on training and creating pathways for students to gain real-world experience before graduation. The Managing Director of Datamaker Ghana Limited, Kim Minhong, and the Head of the Department of Computer Science, UG, Prof. Ebenezer Owusu, signed for their respective institutions.

The agreement takes effect with the upcoming school year of the University of Ghana, with both parties expressing hope to expand the partnership to include Master's programmes in the future. Under the MoU, the university will integrate practical AI and data annotation training into existing courses, facilitate student access to Datamaker's workshops and collaborate on joint research initiatives.

The Minister of Education Haruna Iddrisu, who announced this, said the transformation would focus on curriculum review, teacher and school leadership development, structures for integrating educational technology in foundational learning and building a strong evidence generation, utilization and monitoring ecosystem to aid informed policy making and implementation.

Speaking at the on-going three-day 2025 Triennale on Education and Training of the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) in Accra on Wednesday [Oct 29], he explained that the Ghana government, through his ministry sees foundational learning as a priority investment area.

The minister stressed that Ghana has an unwavering commitment towards building strong partnerships in foundational learning, “as we position our country as a Champion in digital-indexed foundational learning provision and delivery in Africa.”