Often we get young entrepreneurs with charitable hearts eager to help Africa. Unfortunately, they often forget the basics. Such as a school without quality teachers is simply a building; a classroom without adequate textbooks is merely a room full of children.
These charities erecting buildings make it easy to forget the essential problem – unequal access to quality instruction. I commend their noble ideals but their misunderstanding of the actual problems detracts from creating substantial solutions.
Here are a few ideas to tackle these shortfalls.
1. Online syllabi – this is not a novel idea, in fact there is already an industry waiting in the shadows, hoping it becomes a viable market so they can jump in. While they wait for this major breakthrough, which will be soon giving the advances made in electronic reading devices, they should forge ahead with charity organizations. They should find a way to create curriculum that provides standard equitable education while remaining region sensitive and ensuring local content is adequately taught. I know more about Western history than my African past because the books available were tailored to that.
2. Laptops – the hundred laptops per child is commendable, but their marketing has not been. The way airlines provide the option to erase your carbon footprint at the end of each transaction is the way these guys should collaborate with major computer retailers. This way if you buy a laptop, you can simply add $100 to your transaction and one is sent to a little kid in the developing world. Equally as important, I feel the creation of notebooks is timely in ensuring compact computing units at a cheaper cost. I believe all major makers of computers should look into tailoring this technology adequately because even children in the developed world from poorer neighborhoods also face technological disadvantages.
3. T.I.A – similar to the Teach For America scheme, this Teach In Africa, will bring expatriate graduates home on teaching assignments. Not only does this bring an influx of quality personnel with novel ideas and dynamic methods, it also brings fresh ideas to local problems. Although I feel this should initially be restricted to émigrés and their home countries for the simple sake of building interest and empowerment, it can later be broadened to all those qualified and interested.
If we have all these in place, we have hit at the root of educational pitfalls. The cost of schooling will be greatly reduced as a child can be sponsored with a laptop and download textbooks at no cost. In addition, there will be improved Internet access that creates an avenue of necessary exposure in a rapidly globalizing world.

By Tomi Lamikanra

Call it culture shock but I was in a daze here for the first few days of getting into the American classroom! It was not the blackboards or the nice seats, afterall we have those where I was coming from in some schools:), and who has not seen a blackboard before? Even children in Kewu classes have blackboards! It was the attitudes of students to the teachers and the teachers to the students that made me stare so much. Read the full story

I first met Ory Okolloh (photo courtesy TED.com) as a forwarded link in my email in mid-November 2008. My friend Jagila had sent me her 2007 presentation at the TED Conference in Arusha, Tanzania where she talked about her experience using the internet as a tool for activism.

The 33-year-old is a mother of two, who used to consult on legal matters for nonprofits. She has since left that to focus her energies full time on turning Ushahidi into a free open-source platform so that other activists are able to use the software to monitor everything from NGO aid delivery to elections. Ushahidi was used by Al Jazeera to monitor the war in Gaza when all media personnel were ordered out of the region. It was used again by the UN to monitor the War in Congo and is being used in monitoring relief efforts for the earthquake in Haiti.

She stands at about 5-feet 10-inches and wears her hair the only way a female African activist does – curly and natural. This is an excerpt of a longer interview in which she discusses where education in Africa is failing its people.

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Patrick Awuah (photo courtesy of TED.com) founded Ashesi University, the first liberal arts college in Ghana. He recalls what it took to start the university, challenges with re-acclimating to life in Ghana after decades in Seattle, and his experience dealing with corruption – not just something prevalent in the older generation, but a serious problem with young people also.

Please excuse the sounds of planes leaving from the airport in the background.

Name: Fred Swaniker
Age: 32
City: Johannesburg

At 26, an employee of business consulting giant, McKinsey & Co., Fred dreamt of a school to train young African leaders. In 2007, that dream came true. We met at Life, a restaurant in Sandton City Mall near Mandela Square in Johannesburg.

S.A.: WHEN DID YOU START HASHING THE PLAN FOR THE SCHOOL?

FRED: Almost six years ago. I went to Nigeria to do an internship in Lagos. Read the full story