News
Afrilearn Expands Drive to Make Quality Education Attainable for African Children
Africans are better educated today than they have been at any other time, with many African nations making strides towards ensuring access to quality education and lifelong learning for their citizens.
Afrilearn
UNESCO’s report on Transforming Learning and Skills Development notes that delivering education well is not only a fundamental human right, it is also a critical ingredient of building solid foundations for the future, empowering people not just to develop the skills they will need for the workplace, but also ensuring that they can unlock their potential as members of society.
UNICEF estimates that there are 450 million school-age children in Africa in 2025, and this population is predicted to swell to over 600 million by 2050. However, although 75 million more African children are enrolled in school today compared to 2015, the number of out-of-school children has increased by 13.2 million to over 100 million during the same period. For Africa to actively participate in the global digital economy, it’s a continent-wide imperative to unlock not just access to education, but access to the resources that will help children thrive in education.
Harnessing technology to provide educational resources
Millions of children across the continent are eager but struggling to learn or are dropping out due to the high cost of quality education, outdated materials, and overburdened teachers. Schools also struggle with reliable web access – the Global Education Monitoring Report found that Africa has the lowest school connectivity globally, with most schools lacking even basic electricity, making reliable internet rare. Mobile penetration in Africa is far higher, yet many learning platforms are built for the web.
In 2020, frustrated by their own experiences, and tired of witnessing how young Africans were held back by a lack of access to quality education, a group of entrepreneurs started Afrilearn International Limited. Their goal was simple, but ambitious: to democratise access to quality education across Africa using a mobile-first solution.
The company started with ClassNotes.ng, which quickly became the #1 education platform in Nigeria, empowering students with curriculum-based class notes. By July 2022, Afrilearn had reached 1 million learners across Nigeria and Africa, a major step in delivering quality education to undeserved communities.
Now, this AI-powered K-12 learning platform is on a mission to make world-class education freely available to all African children by making learning fun, using gamified experiences to engage school learners with their studies.
The Afrilearn App for Students provides a comprehensive library of study materials and homework help. Learners can master a subject using the class notes, video lessons, quiz materials and games on the app, earning coins, and winning rewards along the way, while parents can track their children’s progress through learning reports. Afrilearn also provides adaptive practice for local and international exams through Exambly.com, which provides free exam practice for entrance, admission and matriculation exams across Africa.
Supporting educators is part of the process
To support educators, Afrilearn has built and refined its new AI-powered School Management Software, which is a smart platform for learning, administration, and managing school fees, reports and results.
The company collaborates with Schoolinka, a leading African teacher-training organisation, to co-create and distribute professional development resources, onboard teachers onto Afrilearn, and support schools with continuous training. This has significantly improved teacher adoption and classroom impact across the schools Afrilearn serves.
A constant evolution
The School Management Software offering was developed as part of the first cohort of the Microsoft and NVIDIA African GenAI Accelerator Programme. The collaboration allowed Afrilearn to leverage Azure AI and cloud infrastructure to enhance automation, learning personalisation and school analytics on the platform.
The company created a rebuilt, AI-powered SMS programme during the Accelerator Programme, and plans to introduce upgrades including adaptive learning profiles, predictive analytics and automated fee management for schools, and offline-first learning flows. Teachers will soon benefit from enhanced AI tools for lesson preparation and assessments.
With Microsoft’s support, Afrilearn uses GitHub for its engineering workflow, enabling the company to release updates faster and with fewer errors. Visual Studio Code is the team’s preferred integrated development environment, as its integration with Axure extensions, debugging tools and GitHub repository reduce friction across engineering tasks. Collectively, these tools, alongside Azure, have improved delivery speed, strengthened reliability and enabled the team to build a more stable, scalable AI education platform. And for a distributed team working in multiple countries, Microsoft’s collaboration tools, Teams and Sharepoint, have proven invaluable for daily contact and communication.
Broadening access to education across Africa
To date, Afrilearn has reached more than 4 million learners and more than 800 schools across more than 10 countries. More than 80% of users report achieving improved learning outcomes within a week of consistent usage, while the AI-powered personalisation improves learners’ grades by up to 52 percent within eight weeks of consistent study. Schools implementing the Afrilearn management software have saved more than 10 administrative hours per week and have boosted their fee collection by 35 to 40 percent.
The Afrilearn team has big ambitions to scale into additional countries across Africa, deepening partnerships with UNICEF and the African Union to scale their impact. In addition to Nigeria, Afrilearn serves learners in Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Gambia and the wider diaspora.
“At Afrilearn, we’re the ecosystem closing the gap between Africa’s potential and its future, where no child is left behind because of where they live or how much their parents earn. We’re especially excited about our upcoming product upgrades that make personalised learning even more accessible to children at home and in school,” says Isaac Oladipupo, CEO at Afrilearn. “Our goal is to reach 10 million learners across 12 African countries in the next 36 months. We believe that every child deserves a quality education that positions them for future success.”
INTERPOL’s African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026 revealed that Artificial intelligence accounts for 55 per cent of reported cybercrimes across Africa and making attacks faster, more sophisticated and increasingly difficult to detect.
The report warns that the continent’s rapid digital transformation, marked by more than 1.1 billion mobile subscribers in 2025, is being matched by an equally rapid evolution in cybercrime, while fragmented legislation and limited AI readiness among law enforcement agencies continue to weaken responses.
The 40-page assessment, based on survey data from 36 African member countries, said cybercrime has shifted from isolated criminal activity to an industrialised, borderless ecosystem powered by AI.
According to the report, East Africa has become a hotspot for mobile money fraud and ransomware attacks targeting critical infrastructure, while business email compromise (BEC) and romance scams are widespread across Central and West Africa.
Southern Africa, it noted, has become an attractive target for international cybercriminals due to its high level of internet connectivity.
The report also highlighted the growing financial impact of cybercrime across the continent, revealing that losses have more than doubled since 2024, rising from 192 million dollars to 484 million dollars.
It attributed the increase largely to AI-enabled scams, credential harvesting and automated social engineering attacks.
INTERPOL said online scams remained the most commonly reported form of cybercrime in 2025, with criminals exploiting mobile money platforms, social media and AI-generated content to deceive victims.
It added that 72 per cent of surveyed countries reported the existence of scam centres, with the highest concentration recorded in Southern and West Africa.
The report further identified digital sextortion and online harassment as persistent threats, driven increasingly by AI-generated deepfakes and synthetic media.
According to data from TrendAI, one of INTERPOL’s partners, about 600,000 sextortion incidents were detected during the reporting period.
Business email compromise schemes have also become more sophisticated, with AI being used to generate highly convincing email communications.
The report said Africa-based threat actors are increasingly targeting victims in Europe and North America using cyber infrastructure spread across multiple jurisdictions.
INTERPOL warned that the absence of real-time information sharing between banks, telecommunications companies and law enforcement agencies has created significant vulnerabilities in tackling financial cybercrime.
It said cybercriminals are no longer relying solely on stolen credentials but are now creating AI-generated synthetic identities by combining genuine personal information with fabricated details.
These synthetic identities, the report noted, have been used to bypass biometric verification systems, open bank accounts, obtain mobile loans and register SIM cards under false identities.
Neal Jetton, Director of INTERPOL’s Cybercrime Directorate, described cybercrime as one of the most significant criminal threats facing Africa.
“Cybercrime has emerged as one of the most significant criminal threats to the region. AI is automating every stage of a cyberattack from reconnaissance and phishing to extortion and evasion.
“However, we see that when countries work together, cybercriminal infrastructure can be identified, disrupted and dismantled,” he said.
Despite the growing threat, the report highlighted progress in strengthening cybersecurity across the continent.
It disclosed that 17 African countries enacted or amended cybercrime legislation in 2025, while Senegal launched an online reporting platform to improve responses to online offences affecting children.
The report also noted that regional capacity-building initiatives are helping to improve long-term cyber resilience.
INTERPOL said four major cybercrime operations conducted in 2025, Operation Serengeti 2.0, Operation Contender 3.0, Operation Sentinel and Operation Red Card 2.0, resulted in more than 1,500 arrests, the seizure of hundreds of electronic devices and the recovery of over 100 million dollars.
To address the growing threat, the report recommended the adoption of standardised digital forensic capabilities, stronger cross-border collaboration, greater investment in AI literacy for law enforcement personnel and formal public-private partnerships to improve cybercrime prevention, detection and response.
The African Cyberthreat Assessment 2026 forms part of INTERPOL’s African Joint Operation against Cybercrime initiative, funded by the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, with data contributions from Fortinet, Mastercard, the Shadowserver Foundation, S2W and TrendAI.
Nigerian students will soon design, assemble, test and fly drones as part of their university education, following a partnership between Miva Open University and Abuja-based defence technology company Terra Industries.
The collaboration comes as Nigeria intensifies efforts to develop indigenous capabilities in advanced manufacturing and defence technology, with both organisations seeking to strengthen Africa’s pipeline of deep-tech talent.
The partnership will see students gain hands-on experience in drone engineering and related technologies through dedicated labs and industry collaboration.
The partners will establish robotics, drone and virtual reality laboratories across Miva’s study centres, beginning with a pilot facility in Abuja.
Students will also gain access to industry-led workshops, research opportunities, internships and mentorship in artificial intelligence, robotics, cybersecurity and autonomous systems.
According to the partners, Terra’s engineering teams will work alongside Miva faculty to integrate hands-on hardware training into academic programmes, exposing students to real-world engineering challenges and building industry experience before graduation.
Nathan Nwachuku, co-founder and CEO of Terra Industries, said Africa’s technological future depends on developing engineers capable of building solutions for local challenges.
“The engineers who will build Africa’s future must learn by building. This partnership creates opportunities for students to work with the technologies shaping modern security, infrastructure and autonomous systems,” said Nwachuku.
Miva Open University said the initiative forms part of its commitment to experiential learning, adding that students will have the opportunity to “design, test and fly drones as part of their academic experience”.
The partnership builds on Terra’s expanding role in Nigeria’s defence technology sector. Earlier this year, the company signed a joint venture with the Defence Industries Corporation of Nigeria to localise the production of drones, robotics systems and cybersecurity infrastructure, supporting efforts to strengthen domestic manufacturing and reduce reliance on imports.
Atte Ayodeji, a Nigerian computer scientist,has developed an artificial intelligence algorithm capable of detecting, counting, grouping and generating healthy hair follicles during hair transplant procedures, an innovation that earned him the Best Innovative Technology award.
Atte Ayodeji
Ayodeji also graduated with a Distinction in his Master of Science (MSc) in Computer Science from Birmingham City University on Friday, adding another milestone to an impressive academic year.
Beyond his award-winning hair transplant innovation, the Nigerian researcher developed a system and framework on Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) as a professional responsibility in the diagnosis of lung cancer.
His dissertation received a silver award at the PGXPO2026 Winter, further highlighting the impact of his research in applying artificial intelligence to healthcare.
Sunday Dare, special adviser on Media and Public Communication to President Tinubu, celebrated Ayodeji’s achievements in a post on X, recalling how he first met him in 2019 during his National Youth Service.
“In 2019 when I became a Minister of the Republic, I met a young man of medium height, genteel with penetrating eyes: Atte Ayodeji. His words rarely come out and he could easily be passed by unnoticed. But I noticed him especially when my SA Kemi Areola brought him to me asking my approval for him to do his Youth Service in my office. I approved. From then on he was unstoppable. His brilliance shown and he developed skills beyond his frame.”
Highlighting Ayodeji’s recent accomplishments, Dare congratulated him saying, “Congratulations Atte. I am proud of you!”
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