The Middle East is primed for an ed-tech revolution. Now it needs to build on that momentum
A global crisis galvanized teachers and students to embrace digital. Making the transformation permanent is the next challenge.

At the peak of the coronavirus pandemic in April 2020, 84.8% of the world’s students – the equivalent of some 1.48 billion children and young people – were dealing with school closures. One year on, nearly half the world’s students remain affected by schools that are partially or fully closed, UNESCO reports, leaving a question mark dangling over the prospects of more than a billion children who’ve lost vital learning to COVID-19.

Technology has played a pivotal role in keeping education afloat over the past year as well as helping students, teachers and parents adjust to these new, pandemic-induced realities.

Digital transformation by necessity

Governments, telecommunication companies and NGOs across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) rallied to support the needs of learners with a set of broad-ranging measures.

Educational YouTube channels were created for teachers and students in Iraq and Algeria; Tunisia and the UAE launched government-endorsed online-learning platforms; while TV channels in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Egypt broadcast lessons to children learning from home.

Mobile operators also stepped up, offering free access to health and education websites, increasing data limits and offering support for new online-learning and digital health portals.

It remains to be seen what the legacy of the pandemic will be, but Mona Younes, an advisor on education in emergencies and ed-tech in the region, believes the crisis could represent a paradigm shift that drives both supply and demand for online and technology-enabled learning.

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Answering a call to action

The COVID crisis has shone a spotlight onto the stark educational challenges facing children all over the world, and in doing so has stimulated action from a broad range of stakeholders. But in order to sustain this momentum, these efforts need to continue, including tackling the systemic issues facing access to digital skills and technologies. Ways of teaching will need to change too, given that what works in the classroom doesn’t necessarily translate to the online world.

At the very least, the way forward is looking a little brighter. “In an environment of more acceptance and less resistance, there is a huge opportunity for ed-tech companies to flourish, especially if done in a linguistic and cultural sensitive manner,” says Younes.

As one parent in rural north-east Syria told her in a forthcoming report for the British Council: “We started to realise that learning is not equal to going to school, and that it can happen beyond the walls of the educational institution”.

What has happened so far are just baby steps, Younes cautions. But if MENA can continue the ed-tech revolution sparked by COVID-19, the sector may soon be standing more comfortably on its own two feet.

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Written by: Damian Radcliffe
Image: Getty Images
Publication date: May 18, 2021

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