Google for Education's transformative benefits remain largely untapped in many parts of Africa.

Education ministries in Africa are now looking to follow global trends to centralise and standardise education management using Google Chrome and Google Workspace for Education.

So says Oli Trussell, Solutions Engineer, Google for Education EMEA, who says while Google for Education is a proven success worldwide, its transformative benefits remain largely untapped in many parts of Africa. There are, however, signs that interest is picking up. Google is now working to raise awareness and drive uptake in Africa.

Digicloud Africa, Google’s reseller enablement partner in Africa, says numerous education ministries around the world now benefit from centralised deployments of Workspace for Education on Chrome, with Chromebooks having risen to the world’s number one selling device for education.

Gregory MacLennan, CEO Digicloud Africa says: “Chrome offers the ideal ecosystem for education: it is trusted by IT and loved by users. It’s easy to use and manage, and it’s efficient and secure, with zero ransomware attacks on the ChromeOS and no need for antivirus software. Chromebooks have built in security features, including automatic updates, verified boot, and 256-bit data encryption, with zero successful reported ransomware attacks.

We are seeing growing interest in Chromebooks and Chrome Workspace in South Africa, with resellers such as Incredible Connection coming aboard recently.”

Forrester research found that teachers, students and IT admins save hours and hours of time by using Chromebooks. The devices start fast and stay fast, with automatic updates that don’t interrupt teaching or learning time. This adds up to 18 hours of learning time for students and saves 42 hours per teacher per year. The Google Admin console helps IT admins save up to 75% more time by managing thousands of laptops in one place. The report found that Chromebooks also reduce the costs of hardware, peripherals and security tools, offering a 229% return on investment. In a separate Total Economic Impact (TEI) report, Forrester also found that Google Workspace can deliver a 336% ROI.

Trussell says: “Centralising management offers easy visibility and management at scale. A key benefit of Workspace for Education on Chrome is security - it becomes easy to set baseline protections and policies for the entire user base. In countries like Wales, over hundreds of thousands of students use Chromebooks, and it is all managed from a central console by a handful of IT admins. 

"Centralising and standardising using Workspace for Education on Chrome also makes it easier for the authorities to identify trends from the huge volumes of aggregated data. In countries like Malaysia and Japan, this government-level analysis is hugely useful.”

Chrome flexibility

Trussell notes that Chromebooks also work with Microsoft 365 applications and other third-party applications.

To harness the benefits of Workspace for Education on Chrome, schools can easily transform their existing devices into Chromebooks, he adds.

“With ChromeOS Flex, schools can breathe new life into old fleets of devices. ChromeOS Flex is free to schools to deploy. They can install it on most laptops up to 13 years old, and refresh these devices. With ChromeOS installed, older PCs and Macs become faster and more secure, and their battery life extends.”