Africa focused content streaming platform Ckrowd has signed an MoU with Nigeria’s Educational Advancement Centre’s School on Air initiative to publish an education catalogue that will support young students in Africa and leverage technology to deliver affordable educational programmes.

The partners plan to deliver digital STEM classes in Nigerian home-grown languages (Ibo, Yoruba, Hausa & French), which they believe will help to address the language barrier for students who were raised predominantly in their mother-tongue.

According to research, many young Yoruba students have shown a greater interest and grew their knowledge retention of STEM subjects by 65 %, when studying in their mother-tongue. Similarly, knowledge retention, assimilation and interest for STEM by young Hausa students grew by 250% after learning STEM languages in their native language.

The stakeholders say the initiative will reach more than 40 million young Africans, particularly across West Africa and provide students from different walks of life to access education, learning opportunities and improve their livelihoods.

Both organisations will actively work together to build a large educational catalogue, which will contribute to deliver affordable education to many young students across the Continent through the usage of innovative technological tools.

Kayode Adebayo, CEO of Ckrowd said: “The MoU we signed today will serve as a good starting point for generating synergies in areas of education, technology and the dissemination and advocacy of knowledge. Ckrowd and School on Air will organise joint STEM classes, seminars and training courses in different West African languages to promote inclusive educational growth for all, even when not using English as lingua franca. This is just the beginning, as Ckrowd is committed to improve lives for the next generations of young Africans, by partnering with tech manufacturing, educational content producers, data and streaming service companies to deliver true value to young Diasporans and Africans on the continent, creating unique and ad-hoc local solutions and innovation to advance African nations and harness the new dynamic of the digital age, content creation, technology and education.”

Muyiwa Bamgbose, CEO of School on Air, added, “The collaboration between Ckrowd and School on Air will ensure the dissemination of knowledge and will enable many young students across the Continent to harness Ckrowd’s technology to access a greater pool of education resources in different non-Western idioms. School on Air is excited to promote and facilitate this initiative, which will mutually increase our learning and broaden our collective impact across Africa.”

The organisations said this agreement aims to bridge the gaps in education across Africa and provide opportunities that will help students to get themselves equipped with the technical skill sets, professional knowledge and attitude to excel and function at a global level with a comprehensive curriculum to benefit the next generation.