Why even the best online learning can’t overcome Africa’s offline barriers

Online learning can put young Africans on the global stage, but only if we solve critical infrastructure challenges

In 2021, during what now seem like the good ol’ days, African tech twitter was filled with optimism.  There was a line of conversation that went like this: yes, African governments are terrible and our cities dysfunctional, but we can escape that reality by becoming citizens of digital “network states.”  Young Africans were circumventing restrictive monetary policy with crypto. It seemed possible that we might build digital enclaves to insulate ourselves from the physical. It was in this milieu that Kibo taught its first pilot class in August 2021. The class was a huge success and I saw the potential to build an IP rich, capital light education institution. I gained stronger conviction that fully online learning for young Africans was not only possible, but could be much better than in-person. 

I was wrong. 

What changed? In October 2022, we enrolled nearly 70 students in Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria in an online bachelor’s degree in computer science. We’ve also taught 1000+ African learners in free online classes.  We’ve learned that the biggest impediments to online learning are offline. 

We need hard infrastructure to build soft infrastructure

During a recent team retreat, we invited one of our students to share her Kibo journey with the team. She described her first learning experience with Kibo, when she enrolled in a free Python class. We require students to attend orientation to enroll, but her network was terrible and so she missed orientation. She described crying uncontrollably, certain that she’d missed the chance to join. Thankfully, she reached out to explain what happened and we made an exception. 

During the class, she would go to a betting shop to find a computer to complete her work. She went on to become one of our top performing students. She applied to and enrolled in the full-time degree program, and has become a mentor to other learners. Although Kibo provided her a laptop to use in the degree program, the infrastructure challenges are ongoing. The electricity is so poor where she lives – she recently had no light for over a week – that she runs around town looking for a business that has a generator and will enable her to charge her laptop.  

There is plenty of talk in economic development circles about the need to strengthen Africa’s hard infrastructure: roads, bridges, power, housing, etc. I used to chafe at these conversations, because I wanted to spend more time talking about the “soft infrastructure” of human development. Africa is the world’s youngest and fastest growing continent. In the next 25 years, a third of the world’s young people will be African. Given this demographic trend, the key development question is how to prepare young Africans to be the main participants in the global workforce. 

Education is a prerequisite for long-term economic prosperity, and technology can improve the supply and quality of education available to young Africans. But without consistent power, strong and affordable bandwidth and adequate facilities, the vision of tech-enabled education will never materialize.

Last October, during a visit to the Obasanjo Library complex in Abeokuta, I walked into a tiny room with about 40 young people crammed and huddled over their laptops. They were there because the complex provided a free space to study with consistent power.  

Consistent electricity is most challenging for our Nigerian learners. Those in Ghana and Kenya struggle more with slow and expensive bandwidth. When we asked students at the end of the last term what the biggest challenge was that impacted their studies,  50% of them cited bandwidth or electricity as their top challenge. 80% of students cited infrastructure as one of their top 2 challenges.

Infrastructure challenges extend beyond online learning and into remote work.  I’ve hired and worked with many people throughout the continent. You get used to the fact that videos will be off because the network is poor, or people might drop in and out of calls. 

You can't join the global online workforce if power cuts out during every presentation you're trying to give, or bandwidth makes it impossible for you to communicate effectively during an interview.  As our students prepare for internships, I worry that infrastructure will put them at a disadvantage, and make them appear less prepared for the workforce than they truly are.

A well-functioning physical environment is necessary for a thriving digital economy.

Tackling the infrastructure challenge at Kibo

Our plan for Kibo has always included an on-ground component. While we allow students anywhere in Africa to join our free programs, we limited the cities and countries from which students can enroll in the degree program. We did this to enable us to support students locally, and hired on-the-ground student advisors before the first degree student was admitted.

The original vision for Kibo included opening physical co-learning spaces. Community and sense of belonging are critical to our model, and we hoped that physical spaces would primarily serve as hubs of community. But community has not been a problem. The sense of camaraderie is strong; our students hang out in Discord, meet up to go to tech events, and are incredibly supportive of one another. The real problem that physical space will solve is poor infrastructure for learning. 

So, we’re accelerating our plans to open co-learning spaces. We opened one in Abeokuta in January.  We’re opening one in Lagos next month, and hope to have spaces for students to study in all of our hub cities in the next year. 

Individual solutions to systemic problems

While we work to solve this challenge for Kibo, I worry that we are thinking too small. 

There is a lot of focus on where we will get jobs for all the young Africans. A lot of people I respect believe that remote work will be a big,  if not the biggest part, of the solution. I still think that could be true. But only if we can get the infrastructure right. 

Private sector players are tackling the need to create physical environments that enable digital participation. For example, E Aboyeji is building Itana (disclosure: E is the General Partner of Future Africa who are investors in Kibo). Starlink recently launched in Nigeria and Rwanda, and new undersea cables backed by Google and Meta have landed on the continent in the past few months. There are plenty of private co-working spaces but, at $50-$200/month, they are completely out of reach financially for students (at the high end, these cost more than tuition for school).

For our part, Kibo will keep working on solutions for our students. But what we really need – what the ecosystem needs – is a government-supported and systemic approach to enabling remote learning and remote work in Africa. 

Dream with me for a moment.

Imagine that a forward-thinking governor in Nigeria decided that they wanted to enable 5,000 remote jobs in their state. What might a real commitment to this look like? Perhaps building an estate with guaranteed 24/7 power, security, and fiber optic internet open only to those who have demonstrated proof that they are learning or earning online. You could partner with organizations like Kibo, AltSchool Africa, and Decagon to provide training and Andela and Caret to provide a work space for remote employees. I’m convinced that such an investment would more than pay for itself in new tax receipts, and could be the basis of creating a meaningful tech hub outside of Lagos. Osun recently waived the right of way fee for telecom providers, so perhaps some leaders are starting to think along these lines. We need much more. 

There is a needed role for those of us building for the future of learning and work.  Like many busy founders, I am completely guilty of being heads down and focused on solving Kibo’s problems alone. In the low-trust environments in which we work, it’s just easier to do your own thing. But to succeed as a sector, we need to speak with much more unity about what it will take to realize the dream of millions of young Africans learning and earning online. We must engage government, DFIs and other stakeholders to create systemic solutions. Africa’s infrastructure deficit limits opportunity, and will constrain the growth of our companies and, more importantly, our beloved continent. 

Celebrating the opening of our co-learning space in Abeokuta and picking up Starlink!