Re Education : Issue #29 - The $4bn Ed Tech Paradox
African Ed Tech is Missing Out
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Quote of the Month
“Technology will not replace great teachers but technology in the hands of great teachers can be transformational.”
George Couros
Introduction
This month’s guest post from Abdul Karim Mohamed, an African Start-up investor, Ed Tech enthusiast, and MD of Insight54, reads like a script for “Raiders of the Lost Ark” : there’s gold treasure out there if only educators can understand the hieroglyphics that unlock the secrets of the Ed Tech investor.
But, the hieroglyphics turn out to be a new language, not an ancient one, and time is limited for educators to start learning that language – leading them to the untold riches that will replace all the money draining out of global education….
Luckily, Karim’s piece is not given to this kind of hyperbole and is instead a powerful and cogent argument that should have all educators who work with ed tech, and all ed tech purveyors, asking themselves some challenging questions.
Do I understand how to pitch to ed tech investors in ways they can respond to – especially distinguishing between “need” and “demand” ?
Is my ed tech product really just a solution in search of a problem ?
Is it, in fact, a Forever Pilot, a Digital Toy or a Research paper ?
The journey begins….
Andy Brock, March 2026
The $4bn Ed Tech Paradox
If you put a Teacher, a Minister of Education, a Non-Profit Director, and an Investor in a room to define “EdTech evidence”, you’ll get four different answers.
● For the Teacher, it’s the moment a disengaged learner leans in.
● For the Minister, it’s national literacy and exam scores.
● For the Non-Profit, it’s a rigorous Randomized Control Trial (RCT).
● For the Investor, its value creation—measured through user engagement, retention curves, and unit economics.
The reason for this disconnect is a fundamental Diligence Divide: those with the contextual expertise and the people with the capital are speaking two entirely different and often incompatible languages.
A recent article in The Economist highlights the global stakes of this disconnect: despite $30 billion in annual spending in the US, independent research found that most EdTech delivered only marginal learning gains or no effect. While companies tout large RCT results, students often describe the products as “repetitive, rigid and boring.” A review of 119 studies from 2010–2023 found that fewer than 10% even measured student engagement, a core signal of product value to investors. This disconnect shows the EdTech diligence divide is not uniquely African, but global.
As global education aid (ODA) collapses by $3.2 billion over the next twelve months, the need to bridge this diligence divide has moved from a theoretical exercise to an existential necessity. The Diligence Divide in African EdTech isn’t just a semantic disagreement. It is the primary reason why, despite over $4 billion in private capital currently sitting in Africa-focused funds with education mandates, EdTech accounts for less than 3% of private investment on the continent.
As capital for education becomes more scarce, simply peddling the narrative of innovation or the potential of the latest ‘flavour of the month’—generative AI today —will no longer suffice. During the UN’s Finance for Development Conference in Seville last year, the overwhelming message was a mandate to mobilize private capital, as outlined in the Seville Commitment.
We are entering an “innovation freeze”. Donors are leaving, and investors aren’t filling the void. The reason isn’t a lack of brilliance from founders or a lack of need from students. For African EdTech, there is already billions in private capital with an education mandate; unlocking it requires moving past ‘innovation theatre’ and adopting a shared evidence language that standardizes the metrics of Efficacy, Engagement, and Economics.
The Diligence Divide: ‘Need’ is clear, ‘Demand’ is opaque
In the development sector, “Need” is a moral and social calculation. It is measured by the size of the deficit: the 250 million of children out of school, the learning poverty statistics, or the shortage of physical classrooms or teachers. But in the world of investments, “Need” is a mirage. The only thing that moves private capital is Demand.
The distinction is critical. Need is a state of lacking; it describes what people should have to survive and thrive. Demand, however, is an active choice. It is the result of value creation so acute that a user—whether a parent, a student, or a teacher or education bureau — sees the value of your solution and is willing to invest in it, paying consistently over time.
In the current ecosystem, we have two groups of people talking past each other.
● Donors and Philanthropists Solving for Need: This group views evidence primarily through the lens of Pedagogical Efficacy. They ask: Does the tool improve test scores? Success is measured through long-term Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) and raw enrollment numbers, where evidence is synonymous with social impact.
● Investors Solving for Demand: The investor’s lens is focused on Economics and Engagement. They aren’t just asking if a tool can teach; they are asking if a user wants to learn with it so much that they return voluntarily. Investors look for “stickiness”, evidence that the product creates enough value to pull a user in without a constant “push” from a grant-funded or subsidised project.
This divide is where billions of dollars go to die. Consider the experience of a $50 million African investment fund with a specific education mandate. Last year, their investment team evaluated a pipeline of startups at an industry pitch event. They watched a dozen EdTechs present slide after slide detailing the “Need”—the tragedy of learning poverty and the massive youth bulge. But when the team looked for “Demand,” they found a void. There was no data on if or how much students used the products.
The founders were pitching the Problem to an audience looking for a Market. Until we reconcile these two languages, the “Innovation Freeze” will continue leaving the $4 billion in private capital exactly where it is now: on the sidelines.
The Market vs. The Addressable Market
One of the most persistent failures I see is the “Tech-First” trap. Founders often build sophisticated, proprietary platforms—essentially building their own private roads—when the users are already gathered on the highway (i.e. existing distribution channels like WhatsApp).
We talk about the “Total Addressable Market” of hundreds of millions of students, but we ignore the Realistic Addressable Market. If your solution requires a high-end device, a stable 4G connection, and a credit card for a subscription, your TAM isn’t “Africa”; it’s a tiny sliver of urban elites.
If we want to scale, we have to meet teachers and parents where they are. In the African context, that means building on existing rails—ubiquitous, low-data platforms like WhatsApp—rather than proprietary Learning Management Systems (LMS) apps or websites. WhatsApp is often described as Africa’s operating system, much like WeChat in China.
WeChat Mini Programs are lightweight applications built inside the messaging platform that allow users to do everything from shopping to accessing public services. Used by 95% of Chinese companies, they generate over ¥3 trillion ($415 billion) in annual transactions. Using familiar distribution channels is not lazy engineering; it is a prerequisite for economic viability. Leapfrogging a poor business model is impossible, no matter how good the code is. We need to stop building solutions in search of problems and start designing for the realities on the ground.
Borrowing the “Rails”: Lessons from Other Sectors
The dynamics behind the Diligence Divide in African EdTech are not unique. Faced with similar disconnects between private capital and education stakeholders, other parts of the global education ecosystem have already built the market rails needed to bridge this gap. For example, the Regional Education Finance Fund for Africa (REFFA) bridged the gap between schools and local banks. By creating standardized education loan products and risk-assessment tools, they translated seasonal school cycles into a language banks could trust. This unlocked over $208 million in financing, empowering 6,000 schools to shift from survival to infrastructure growth[1] (the EduFinance program has done similar work). Investable EdTech sits at the intersection of efficacy, engagement, and economic viability. Unlocking the $4 billion sitting on the sidelines will require connecting these rails, not more “innovation theatre.”
The Path Forward: From Need to Demand
Despite structural challenges, this is an exciting moment for African EdTech. From local angels to global private equity, investors see the opportunity and are actively seeking ways to diligence and deploy capital. The conviction exists. The capital exists. What’s missing are the market rails required to deploy it. These rails include entrepreneurs leveraging existing distribution channels like WhatsApp[1] , but also shared evidence language that standardizes the metrics of Efficacy, Engagement, and Economics.
We’ve seen this before. Nearly 20 years ago, One Laptop Per Child generated excitement similar to today’s AI wave. But devices procured on moral need rather than sustainable demand now sit gathering dust, unused in storage boxes across classrooms in Africa.
If African education is to successfully leverage technology and attract private capital, it must shrink the Diligence Divide. We already have brilliant founders and billions in interested capital. What we need now is a shared language of proof to bridge the gap between them.
A more detailed analysis of the African EdTech Diligence Divide can be downloaded from InSight54’s website.
News
The US airstrike which killed at least 170 people most of them primary school girls in Iran is continuing to generate headlines and condemnation, as it should. Almost certainly a failure of intelligence – like the whole debacle itself.
Noise, but not enough of it, in the UK about the ban on students from Sudan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Afghanistan due to “abuses” of the student visa system. Even if there are abuses, the numbers are miniscule in the grand scheme of things. The four countries represent a total of 3,875 visas per year – about 0.5% of the 750,000 the UK grants annually, so it seems the “tough” headlines are more important than the actions.
Does the government think punishing the whole class for the sins of a few is a fair policy – even shooting itself in the foot by stopping students on its own FCDO funded Chevening Scholarships ? These four countries all demand our sympathy not our censure. There are some real, and very sad personal impacts of this performative policy e.g. see this post re Sudan and this legal letter from the Oxford Sudanese Society.
The What Works Hub for Global Education has announced it’s call for submissions for a conference in Oxford in September – see here.
In the UK the government has published a new White Paper on SEND and inclusion. Sam Freedman, one of the most astute local commentators and author of a highly successful Substack called Comment is Freed, has produced a clear and understandable assessment of the technical and political challenges the White Paper addresses. The issues are not exclusive to the UK and, in fact, any educators trying to make education systems more inclusive would benefit from reading this thoughtful analysis.
Finland always seem to be ahead of everyone else. They’ve just released their Vision for Finnish comprehensive schools 2045. The Minister of Education, Anders Adlercreutz, said :
The vision takes a strong stand on the fact that, in the midst of the changed operating environment, there is an increasing demand to reinforce not only basic skills but also our ability to work together. These changes are guided by building, hope, agency and our common good.
In other words, human skills.
This year’s CIES conference is in San Francisco - the theme is
Re-examining Education and Peace in a Divided World. Given the decimation of USAID it’s impressive that CIES still continues, even publishing the venues for the next two years.
Development
Harry Patrinos points out that Singapore’s obsession with education extends to its banknotes. It’s the only country with a picture of a classroom on a banknote. A single-minded focus on education as a driver of growth and social mobility is one of the reasons, perhaps the principal reason, behind Singapore’s success. Even though Singapore is a small city state, there’s much to learn from that focus.
The Independent Commission on Aid Effectiveness (ICAI) set up to monitor first DFID now FCDO aid effectiveness has recently been in the spotlight as Baroness Chapman appeared to call its continued existence into question as parts of FCDO belt tightening. This piece by Euan Richie of CGD lays out the case for how ICAI is seen within FCDO. But, as we know, evidence based decision making is something that is preached rather than implemented by many governments.
Devex reports that the close out of USAID has slipped its timetable and is “getting messy”. A small team is trying to wind up thousands of contracts and push through millions of dollars owed. The administrations political intentions seem otherwise.
Parthjeet Das, whose newsletters are always interesting and entertaining, muses on the Yuval Hariri’s book Nexus, focusing on some key principles that underpin life and education.
AI Spy
I liked this quote from Anurag Shukla on the growing concern about screens, print and cognitive stagnation / decline.
If advanced economies that invested billions in digital substitution are now reporting stagnation or decline in reading outcomes, we cannot assume technological scaling is pedagogically neutral. The medium shapes cognitive habits. Print scaffolds linearity, depth, and persistence; screens tend to privilege speed, skimming, and interruption.
Fab AI has produced a very timely paper “Talking Teachers’ Language” about how well AI deals with languages other than English, focusing especially on African languages. The graphic below gives a flavour.
An OECD report “Digital Education Outlook 2026” finds an “illusion of false mastery” in using AI. Improvements that are built on sand. Good summary from Rahim Hirji.
This piece by Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop in The Washington Post has gained some traction. They argue schools should teach agency over AI not just how to use it / prompt it. It’s a good point but some of the comments suggest the distinction is more blurred, and teaching how to use AI can also be teaching agency. See too this Brookings report co-authored by Winthrop “A new direction for students in an AI world: Prosper, prepare, protect.”
Voices from the front
Issue 232 of The Continent has an interview with Rahilla Iliya, one of the girls who survived the 2014 Nigerian Chibok kidnapping by Boko Haram, an event that led to worldwide condemnation and the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. 12 years on, and largely forgotten, some girls like Iliya who were not rescued are now doubly forgotten, having escaped to a third country, but receiving no help to return.
Power Teachers Africa are celebrating the impact of their PTL model in Uganda with 2025 results now out. This graphic says it all.
Voices from the rear
(Gray and Published Research)
GPE has published the results of a Remedial education program in Senegal that includes work by Mamadou Ly of Associates for Research in Education and Development (ARED), and winner of the 2025 Yidan prize, Gates Foundation and the American Institutes for Research (AIR). There are six lessons – much that is familiar to education development in any context – but the costs, understandably, look high. Cheap doesn’t get these results.
The Ed Tech Hub has produced an assessment of ed tech financing across Southeast Asia. Chimes very closely with some of the themes in Karim’s piece above – money is not necessarily the key issue.
And finally
Perspectives
My wife and I were in Cambodia earlier this month and visited both the Killing Fields and Angkor Wat. The first a merciless reminder of the worst humans can be, the second a reminder of their finest achievements.
We also visited the Cambodia Landmine Museum in Siem Reap, established by an ex-Khmer Rouge soldier, Aki Ra, who laid hundreds of mines. He defected to the Vietnamese and, after Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were routed, dedicated his life to clearing mines. He has personally cleared over 50,000 mines, saving countless lives and atoning for some of those taken by the mines he laid.
The Khmer Rouge’s attitudes to education can be summed up in this quote : “The spade is your pen, the rice field your paper”.
Courtesy the attack on Iran, we then had to make our way back via China. But, it gave us the opportunity to see again the marvellous San Xing Dui Museum displaying artefacts found from a culture 3,000 years ago. No writing has been found to explain these incredibly sophisticated bronze and gold pieces - one of those rare cases of something that is a complete mystery.
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