Understanding AUDA-NEPAD’s African EdTech 2030: Vision & Plan

Executive Summary

AUDA NEPAD‘s African EdTech 2030: Vision & Plan (V&P) is Africa’s first continent-wide blueprint for making high-quality digital learning reliably available to every learner.

The V&P targets three of the Four Barriers—Policy, Technology, and Data—by anchoring Africa’s strategy on two instruments: a continental Policy Framework and Africa’s Digital Public Infrastructure for Education (DPI-Ed). These instruments translate broad digital-education aspirations into concrete, interoperable architecture.

The V&P aligns with existing AU strategies (Agenda 2063, DTS 2020–2030, Digital Education Strategy) while extending them into implementable EdTech systems. It does not mandate uniform platforms or curricula; instead, it enables sovereign systems to interoperate and scale.

By focusing on shared infrastructure rather than isolated projects, the V&P establishes the conditions for sustainable, evidence-driven, continent-scale digital learning.

This essay explains the V&P’s role in the AU policy stack and clarifies what it does—and does not—do.

Introduction

Africa is attempting something unprecedented: the creation of a unified, continent-scale digital learning architecture designed to lower the structural barriers that prevent world-class EdTech from reaching every learner. AUDA-NEPAD’s African EdTech 2030: Vision & Plan (V&P) is the blueprint for achieving that goal.

The V&P describes how to lower three of African EdTech’s Four Barriers: Policy, Technology, and Data. By lowering these three barriers, the V&P establishes preconditions for lowering the fourth barrier: Economics. One such economic model is detailed later in this essay series. All four barriers are described in the companion essay, Africa’s Four EdTech Barriers: Why Best-in-Class Courseware Isn’t Reaching Africa’s Learners. Lowering all Four Barriers would enable Africa’s best digital courseware to become available to all learners, not just in exceptional pilots, but in everyday use—a worthy challenge.

AUDA-NEPAD addresses this challenge by establishing two foundational instruments that anchor its entire strategy:

1. A Continental Policy Framework for advancing standards-based, vendor-neutral EdTech—enabling coherence, cross-border alignment, and a harmonized continental market for interoperable digital learning.
2. Africa’s Digital Public Infrastructure for Education (DPI-Ed)—the shared DPI described across V&P Sections 4.2 and 4.3, embedding mobile-first and offline-first delivery, interoperability, and secure data movement into the continental architecture.

These two instruments form the foundation upon which the V&P’s other pillars—courseware, teacher development, monitoring, and research—depend.

1. The V&P in the AU Policy Stack

To understand how the V&P operates, it must be located within the AU’s broader policy architecture.

The V&P—launched as a draft in July 2025—sits within a long lineage of AU frameworks, including:

• Agenda 2063
• CESA 16–25 and CESA 2026–2035
• STISA-2024 and STISA-2034
• Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa (2020–2030)
• 2022’s Digital Education Strategy and Implementation Plan (2023–2028)

AUDA-NEPAD positions the V&P as the implementation extension of 2022’s Digital Education Strategy—transforming broad digital-education aspirations into concrete EdTech architecture built on its Policy Framework and DPI-Ed.

2. The Vision for 2030

With this foundation established, the V&P articulates a clear Vision for 2030:

By 2030, every African learner will have affordable access to high-quality, localized digital learning resources on reliable devices, within an inclusive, interoperable pan-African EdTech ecosystem.

Two pillars make this achievable.

2.1 The Continental Policy Framework

V&P Sections 4.1.1–4.1.3 call for:

• Operationalizing AUDA-NEPAD’s Standards-Based, Vendor-Neutral EdTech Policy Framework.
• Promoting open standards for interoperability and secure data portability.
• Establishing regional policy harmonization Task Forces at Africa’s Regional Economic Communities (RECs) to support Member States in contextualized adoption.

This Framework lowers the Policy barrier by providing coherence, predictability, and cross-border compatibility.

2.2 Africa’s Digital Public Infrastructure for Education (DPI-Ed)

The V&P describes DPI-Ed through the infrastructure components in Sections 4.2–4.3, including:

• Mobile-first and offline-first architecture (4.2.1)
• Connectivity expansion through telecom and satellite partnerships (4.2.2)
• Local caching, mesh networks, and data compression (4.2.3)
• Continental open courseware infrastructure (4.3.1–4.3.3)

For analytic clarity, this essay interprets DPI-Ed as the infrastructure layer that enables interoperable educational content, assessment, and analytics to flow across systems and borders.

Africa’s proposed DPI-Ed is intended to encode the Policy Framework’s standards, incorporate technology that makes EdTech work well in African circumstances, implement a data system aligned with the Malabo Convention—and thereby establish the preconditions for a new Economic model for African EdTech. Thus Africa’s DPI-Ed lowers all of the Four Barriers, making it easy for African EdTech stakeholders to embrace Africa’s EdTech Breakthrough.

3. The Five Pillars

The V&P organises its work into five mutually reinforcing pillars. Each pillar depends on the Continental Policy Framework and Africa’s proposed DPI-Ed as the common, interoperable base.

1. Policy Alignment & Regulation Operationalises the Policy Framework, promotes open standards, establishes REC-based harmonization hubs, and showcases best-practice countries.
2. Technology & Infrastructure Defines the core of Africa’s DPI-Ed: mobile-first and offline-first delivery, local caching, mesh networks, off-grid power, and expanded connectivity via telecom/satellite partnerships.
3. Digital Courseware Calls for the development of a continent-wide courseware library, sets quality-assurance processes, offers innovation grants and procurement incentives, and embeds assessments and learning analytics.
4. Teacher Professional Development Integrates EdTech into pre-service training, delivers modular mobile TPD, and fosters teacher communities of practice.
5. Data, Monitoring & Research Creates SDG-aligned, privacy-first data systems, enables longitudinal learning research, and supports evidence-based policy iteration.

Because every pillar rests on the same Policy Framework and DPI-Ed, innovations in one country or pillar automatically become usable across the continent—turning local success into continental availability.

4. The Three Phases (2024–2030)

Even though the V&P is published in 2025, Phase I includes foundational work already underway:

1. Phase I—Foundation Building (2024–2026): Research (the Kimotho Project, which informed the V&P), rollout of the Policy Framework, national capacity-building, and early alignment efforts (8.1).
2. Phase II—System Integration (2026–2028): Deployment of interoperable platforms, regionalized open courseware, operationalized data tools, and teacher training (8.2).
3. Phase III—Consolidation & Export (2029–2030): Africa becomes an EdTech exporter; continental benchmarking; policy-feedback cycles; and the Pan-African EdTech Innovation & Research Hub (8.3).

5. Conclusion

Africa stands at a demographic and technological inflection point, yet access to high-quality digital learning remains uneven and fragile. As long as the Policy, Technology, and Data barriers remain high, excellence will continue to appear only in isolated contexts rather than at scale.

Through a continental Policy Framework and a shared Digital Public Infrastructure for Education, AUDA-NEPAD’s African EdTech 2030: Vision & Plan directly addresses the Policy, Technology, and Data barriers that fragment Africa’s EdTech landscape.

Although the African Union cannot prescribe a new Economic model for EdTech, the V&P establishes the preconditions for the emergence of such new models. Without policy harmonization and interoperable, continent-scale infrastructure, no economic model can scale beyond pilots.

The V&P does not guarantee outcomes. It envisions systematic changes that would shift African EdTech from isolated success to continent-scale feasibility.

By Jim Plamondon