A Nigerian education technology company, EDATECH, has launched its artificial intelligence-powered learning platform, ẸDÁ, across sub-Saharan Africa. The platform aims to help schools deliver personalised learning to students, even in classrooms with 60 or more pupils. ẸDÁ was developed around the idea of putting individual learners at the centre of the education process. Its name is derived from the Yoruba word ẹ̀dá, meaning a person or living being.
The platform was tested in January in a competition involving more than 60 secondary schools in Benin City, Edo State. The competition was organised in collaboration with the Edo State Ministry of Education and the Association of Private School Owners of Nigeria. According to EDATECH, the platform addresses one of the major challenges confronting teachers in overcrowded classrooms: the inability to give individual attention to every learner.
EDATECH's Education Operations Lead, Davidson Ohiafi, said the platform enables teachers to identify individual learning needs despite the size of their classes. He stated that with ẸDÁ, every student can now get support shaped around them, even in large classrooms. Unlike conventional school management applications, ẸDÁ brings learning, assessment, tutoring, games, projects, and school management information into a single system.
The platform was created to eliminate the fragmentation associated with multiple education applications, according to its founder, Sylvester Juwe. Juwe, a Cambridge-educated mathematician and qualified teacher, said schools do not need another app, as most already carry several, each knowing a fragment of a child and none of them talking to the others. ẸDÁ tracks students' interactions with its AI tutor, Eddey, learning games, competitions, and projects.
The system builds an evolving profile of each learner and recommends what the child should practise next. The information is presented differently to students, teachers, parents, and school leaders. While students can monitor their learning paths, league standings, and areas requiring improvement, teachers receive class-level information, including learning-outcome heat maps, lesson plans, and reports.
The platform currently contains content covering 22 subjects and more than 120,000 questions based on the Nigerian curriculum. EDATECH said curricula from other countries can also be incorporated within days, allowing the platform to expand across Africa without imposing Nigeria's curriculum on other education systems. The January trial in Benin City provided an early test of the technology under difficult conditions.
EDATECH's technology co-founder, Nnaemeka Akabogu, said ensuring the platform's dependability despite unreliable electricity and connectivity had been a major part of the development process. For Edo State, which supported the January event, the expansion of the platform is expected to widen access to digital learning support beyond a limited pilot.
Key points
- The platform uses AI to provide personalised learning for students in overcrowded classrooms.
- ẸDÁ brings learning, assessment, tutoring, games, projects, and school management information into a single system.
- The platform can incorporate curricula from other countries, allowing it to expand across Africa.
