Inaccessibility to education is an enduring issue that affects millions of people globally. The gap in education accessibility is particularly evident in developing countries, where poverty, inadequate infrastructure, and other socio-economic factors often limit the availability and quality of education.
Lack of education poses a threat to opportunities for socioeconomic advancement by limiting innovation and productivity, creating a cycle of poverty, and contributing to a widening gap in income inequality. The Covid-19 pandemic further widened existing inequalities in education, with students from low-income families and marginalized communities being disproportionately affected.
Onyekachi Ginger-Eke and Femi Shonubi, Co-Founders of EduTech Global identified the need to develop innovative and inclusive approaches to ensure easy access to quality education for all. EduTech Global is democratizing global education by prioritizing access to quality and inclusive education while investing in students in underserved communities through its multiple subsidiaries.
Pushing The Boundaries of Education Through Technology
We are on a mission to push the boundaries and create impact in the global education sector by leveraging technology to create innovative solutions. In 2022, we started the expansion journey and have partnered with over fifty academic and funding partners to ensure we reach students in Africa and across the globe.
We started with the EduTech Business platform to enable students to get access to the most suitable academic opportunities to pursue their education, not just within their environs, but on a global level. We have been able to achieve this through strategic academic partnerships, student recruitment and student advisory services. Through EduTech Business, every individual seeking to get an education can easily get access to institutions that suit their current academic background and financial capability, with this, no one is left behind. Since inception, we have signed years-long contracts with several Ivy league Universities, offered thousands of students in Africa and Internationally opportunities to access quality higher education and provided our academic partners with wealth of educational resources.
Despite the progress and impact made with the EduTech Business services, we have however continued to notice other gaps in the education sector that need to be filled, thus, we have deployed our other subsidiaries, Vigilearn Technologies and Bursery, in developing technologies that cater to e-learning and management software, and education financing opportunities.
As we continue to develop new and innovative education technology tools, we can look forward to a future where learning is more personalized, interactive, and accessible than ever before. – Onyekachi Ginger-Eke (O.G)
The Need For E-Learning Software and Education Management Platforms
In today’s ever evolving digital world, e-learning has emerged as one of the most effective ways to provide education and training to learners. The need for e-learning platforms has never been greater and this is due to several factors which includes easy accessibility by educators and students anywhere in the world, cost-effectiveness compared to traditional classroom learning, creating a more interactive and engaging experience and adaptive learning. Education Management platforms have also proven to help in storing data and tracking student performances in real-time.
With these impacts in mind, we have built several products under our subsidiary, Vigilearn Technologies, to make learning and education management processes easier and more efficient. Some of our solutions-driven education technology innovations include the ‘Apply Portal’ suited for academic institutions, government, and corporate organizations. This software allows you to simplify application processes, collate data and adapt application processes to each user’s experience throughout their application journey, thereby saving time and resources. Some of its features include payment integration, user screening and big data analytics.
We have also invented the ‘Ediify LMS (Learning Management System),’ a software-as-a-service (SaaS) that offers a variety of features to support the creation, management, and delivery of online courses and training programs. Some of its features include live class for synchronous learning, streamlined training delivery, effective course management, learner certification with QR code for verification, social networking for students and educators, student tracking & progress monitoring.
Additionally, we launched ‘Studio,’ a cloud-based video conferencing platform that supports video communication, audio conferencing, webinars, virtual meetings, and live chat. Studio is ideal for businesses, government, academic institutions, and individuals who want to experience a dynamic virtual communication that allows for collaboration and engagement.
E-learning software and education management platforms are vital to ensuring that education remains accessible and effective in the digital age. Thus, it is important for institutions to utilize these tools to meet the needs of learners and keep up with the changing landscape of education. – Femi Shonubi (F.S)
Fostering Education Access to Underserved Communities: The Bursery Mission
In many parts of the world, underserved communities face educational challenges that prevent them from achieving their full academic potential. Barriers such as lack of infrastructure, poverty, and lack of educational resources have long challenged these often-encompassing communities. This is why we have developed a system where students in underserved communities can have access to quality education through the Bursery platform.
This unique education financing innovation was developed to offer access to collateral-free education loans through a wide range of financial providers on a single platform, providing a robust marketplace that allows individuals, parents, and educational institutions access to loans, scholarships, and impact funds. The system is designed to be flexible enough to allow anyone looking to access an educational loan to easily get it, our focus being on underserved communities in Africa.
We have also deployed a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) arm of Bursery where we award scholarships and grants based on academic achievement or other criteria that may include financial need. We are launching the first phase of this scholarship program with a $200,000 scholarship investment in students in different academic institutions in underserved communities across Africa. Our focus in this phase will be on funding outstanding students in institutions and women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), teacher trainings in Northern Nigeria, support for low-income school infrastructure and educational resources, digital literacy programs and donation of menstrual hygiene materials to students.
Our mission is to reach even more students across several African countries and expand to other underserved communities globally. Achieving this will inevitably require the cooperation of the government, NGOs, private organizations, individuals, and many other players looking to invest in the future of education. – Onyekachi Ginger-Eke (O.G)
Surmounting The Challenges of Education Technology
The shift to technology driven solutions for education has many advantages, but we cannot ignore some significant challenges we face in driving these solutions.
Some of the challenges facing operations in education technology today include lack of access to technology, limited internet access, lack of training and support for teachers on technology use, quality of online content, lack of inclusion, data privacy and security. It is important to state that we are creating a solution that will not further cause a digital divide and create a disparity between those with access and those without it.
Thus, to overcome the challenges that come with implementing technology in the education sector, we ensure to put measures in place to curtail them by first ensuring that our technologies are intuitive enough to be adopted for easy use by students and institutions anywhere around the world. It is also modular to meet the realities of internet accessibility issues and promote inclusion.
We also invest resources in training institutions and teachers on how to use these modern technologies, while ensuring that curriculums are properly curated.
Lastly, all our technologies are encrypted end-to-end with well-integrated data privacy and security features so that no data is lost or exposed. – Femi Shonubi (F.S)
Building a Sustainable Future for Global Education Through Technology
According to UNESCO, at least 168 million users were affected by school closures with more than 1.5 billion learners affected during the pandemic hit. This staggering reality brings to the fore the need to continuously invest in sustainable means to drive the future of the education sector to avoid a repeat of this significant strike.
Since one of the primary challenges to global education is providing equal access to education for all individuals worldwide and technology has proven to be effective in solving this challenge, we must therefore continue to focus on building a sustainable future for global education using technology, especially to reach more marginalized communities.
Technology will undoubtedly transform global education and help to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 – Quality Education. – Onyekachi Ginger-Eke (O.G)
