How to fix Africa's learning crisis | Rapelang Rabana

0:03You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. By 2030, nearly half of all the young people on Earth will be African. And yet across sub-Saharan Africa, millions of kids show up to school eager to learn and leave without ever learning to read. The usual fix is the one you would expect. Build more schools, train more teachers. But audacious project grantee and education technologist Rapalang Rabana says that in today's world, that plan alone isn't enough. Fixing it starts with confronting a bias most of us don't even know we have.

0:44The idea, the assumption that solutions that work in countries that are Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic should somehow work everywhere else in the world. Let's pause right there, because that assumption is at the heart of the problem. In her talk, Rapalong, who leads an organization called Imagine Worldwide, makes a case for scrapping the Western education playbook in places where it just doesn't fit. In its place, she's calling for innovations that fit the world kids actually live in. In Africa, this might look like smarter, adaptable tech, solar-charged tablets that teach kids to read and count, adapting in real time to each child's level and pace in their own language.

1:26No internet, no electricity required. Rapa Long lays out her powerful vision in today's talk, and stick around after because she sat down with me to go deeper, including why this fight is so personal for her. I may be smart, but I'm not that exceptional. I have won the lottery. My parents have won the lottery in education here. And it shouldn't have to be such a hit and miss. That's all coming up right after a short break.

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3:36And now, our TED Talk and conversation of the day. By the year 2030, nearly half of all the young people walking this earth will be African. And being able to read is the scale upon which so many other skills depend. Yet more than 80 percent of 10-year-old children in sub-Saharan Africa cannot read a simple text with understanding. Not because they're not smart, not because they didn't pitch up for school, but because the system is failing them. The go-to solution for this learning crisis has always been the same. Build more schools, build more classrooms, hire more teachers, train more teachers.

4:17Sounds reasonable. But here's the uncomfortable truth no one really wants to say out loud. It's actually never going to work. To meet ideal student-to-teacher ratios, sub-Saharan Africa needs 15 million more teachers at a staggering cost of almost$40 billion a year. It's just nuts. So why are we still holding on to a playbook that cannot possibly deliver at the cost and urgency and scale required? Well, it's because we have a weird bias. Not that kind of weird, but a weird bias. The idea, the assumption, that solutions that work in countries that are Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic should somehow work everywhere else in the world.

5:13Hey y 'all, popping in to say that when Rapalong says weird, an image shows up on the screen behind her spelling out an acronym. Next time you hear the word weird, she's referring to this. The assumption that weird countries are the standard, the way the world works. And somehow, with more inputs, African schools should eventually look like weird ones. Let's pause right there, because that assumption is at the heart of the problem, and God knows so many others. We shouldn't have to frame our world like that, and I certainly have outgrown the belief that African schools should fit a borrowed model.

5:53Our goal should be to build something brilliant that actually reflects the reality that African children are living in today. At the organization I lead, it's called Imagine Worldwide, we are doing something different. Children like Chisomo, who you will hear about shortly, are now able to experience something else. Chisomo is a typical seven-year-old girl living in rural Malawi with her younger sister and parents who are farmers. It's a pretty happy existence, even without iPhones and ketchup. Every morning, she walks through the green maize fields under the glory of the African sun. But at school, she shares a class with 100 other kids, sometimes 200 if a teacher is absent.

6:45She can barely see the book that the teacher is holding up in an overcrowded, dimly lit room. She rarely gets a chance to ask a question, share an answer, get feedback, and feedback is everything. I remember when I tutored high school maths, some kids didn't even get their marked tests back. Just a score. So they never knew why they went wrong or right, for that matter. There was no feedback loop, just this vacuum of uncertainty that makes it impossible to get better at anything. And imagine we are giving children like Chisomo up to an hour a day of high-impact learning on a tablet. I know, I know, I can feel the parents in the room cringing.

7:32We are so allergic to the idea of screens that are bad for mental health, hurting attention spans, really not good for your mental and emotional development. I get that, and that's all true. in a few contexts. And this is why context is so important. Chisomo is not living the weird childhood that so many of us are trying to protect our children from. Her reality is not too much tech. It's more closer to none at all, at school or at home. The solution that we are delivering is really designed to tackle some of the hardest things and that EdTech has not been able to deliver in Africa. And I know that many of you are very skeptical about tech in poor countries.

8:20Our solution is tackling those issues head-on. All those prior failures that were too hardware-focused relied on power and connectivity, the ones that were cultural misfits, lacking in sound pedagogy, working outside government systems, or just plain too expensive to run. All of those. We have figured out a model that works. Ready to hear it?

8:51Specially designed tablets that are solar-charged are used throughout the school day, and they're designed with a battery that can carry over, and they can be rotated throughout classes. The content is contextually relevant and delivered in local languages like Swahili and Chichewa, including verbal instruction, via the headphones. And it works entirely offline. No internet, no power, no problem. It's not a replacement for teachers, but an extra helping hand. The kids only spend about an hour of their day on it anyway. But in that hour, the tablet does something incredible. It adapts to each child's level and pace.

9:32Guiding even first-time users, children who are not yet able to read and have never seen a device from that very first tap all the way to literacy and numeracy without adult intervention. Imagine what that means. In a classroom where individual attention is almost impossible, each child suddenly gets something incredibly rare, instruction that responds to them. The child who is struggling can slow down and get more practice. The child who is ready to keep going can rush ahead. Imagine in a classroom where 20 kids are each on their own tablets or 200. There is no loss in learning quality. This is all achieved without having to retrain or restructure the entire education system.

10:24What we're seeing here is greater access to learning and better learning by the minute. This is unheard of in education. 97 % of teachers in Malawi have confirmed that the tablet program makes teaching more enjoyable.

10:47And the results speak for themselves. Nine randomized control trials across four countries in three languages over the past decade have proven that time-bound, fit for context digital learning embedded in public school systems is the most scalable way to accelerate literacy and numeracy outcomes for millions of African children. We are seeing learning gains that rank among the top education interventions anywhere in the world. Three years ago... APPLAUSE

11:27Three years ago, we were already doubling the number of children that become literate and numerate by their fourth year in school. Now we're on track to triple that. I think so, too. Beyond test scores, we're seeing more children pitch up and stay in school, girls catch up and keep pace with boys. And the most important thing, more children are falling in love with learning. Imagine takes a system-strengthening approach, working in partnership with government from day one to embed the program within public education systems, ensuring a pathway for scale and sustainability. And through that process, we're able to create roadmaps for others to replicate in more countries in the future.

12:20The best news is this testimony from this innocent girl where she says, I like the tablet because when I make a mistake, it doesn't move on to the next student. It asks me to try again, and then I can get it right. Finally, a school experience where children experience success and the dignity of real learning. This year, Imagine will reach one million children.

12:59And by 2030, thanks to the generosity of this community, we aim to serve over four million children a year across Malawi, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania. And in the process, create a pathway for many, many others to follow. This right here is how you turn a tide with a model that can deliver at the scale, quality, cost, and urgency required. Imagine a future where foundational learning that is of high quality is democratized and the majority of every country's children can learn to read so that they too can read to learn and secure a future in skilled work. We don't need to wait, we simply need to act and now that future is already knocking, sounding the name of every African child.

13:57Asante sana, zikomo, kele buhile. Thank you.

14:04Up next, my conversation with Rapalang Rabana. We get into what turned her frustration with the education system into action, why she thinks today's AI boom is leaving the poorest children behind. And the surprising thing, she'd change first if she could rebuild schooling from scratch.

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15:33Rabalong, congratulations on your TED Talk. How are you feeling? It was probably one of the most intense experiences of my life. And I've spoken a lot. I've spoken a lot, but it was, I guess, just appreciating the entire journey to get here. And oh my God, in these eight minutes, I need to somehow capture the depth and the brilliance and the difficulty and everything that's happened to get here. Well, it was an excellent talk and very well received in the room. Thank you. One thing you said about education was that feedback is everything. So I wanted to start there. Sure. Was there a moment in your own education where you either got the feedback you needed or didn't and that had an impact on you?

16:18You know, that thinking around feedback came up for me in my own education. I had really good schooling, so it's not that my schooling wasn't great, but I also had a really active mom. And she always knew the kind of stuff that we didn't understand or we didn't get wrong. She was always asking you the questions, the times table, whatever you were learning in geography. And she zeroed in on the things that she knew we didn't know. So I almost had a personalized coach in a way in my own childhood. And appreciating that so many other children didn't. Was your mother a teacher? No, she wasn't a teacher.

16:55She just was one of those who dragged us to the library from the moment we could read. And everyone had to read, write, and do maths as well as cook and clean. So having had that, I didn't realize until much older just what a gift that was. And obviously, I think throughout my career, I've always appreciated feedback in the form of coaching and mentorship and honest conversations. Those have been the fastest way to grow. Without that, you could be reliving the same year over and over if you don't have feedback that takes you to the next level. Or just making the same mistake over and over again without knowing that it could be corrected.

17:29Yeah. So for me, it's key. And having gone through the process and coaching to allow yourself to be wrong and be okay with your ego being triggered by having not done something right, because otherwise you will do it wrong forever. So a moment of learning is a moment of growth. Well, let's talk a little bit more about how Imagine technology actually works. How does it determine where a child level is, especially if it's maybe a preliterate kid who doesn't know how to read yet? Sure. Imagine Worldwide's work is pretty special in that we're able to take a child who has never seen a tablet and is really preliterate, listening to a digital teacher via the headphones in their own language, Chichewa or Swahili or English, if that's a language of instruction, guiding them on where to tap, what it means to interact with the tablet and how to actually get going.

18:21And that scaffolding is really, really important because most solutions expect that there's actually an adult who's going to tell the child what to do the first time, especially if they're preliterate. And in our environments where you've got 100, 200 kids in a classroom, that's not an option. So you really needed the application to be autonomous. And it starts the journey with a short diagnostic assessment, assessing the child on some aspect of literacy or numeracy. And based on the child's performance, places them in the appropriate level of difficulty in that subject, as well as according to that standard.

18:54And then from there, they're able to start where they can actually meaningfully engage and meaningfully learn and over time get better. In the future, we hope that we'll be able to personalize the learning even further, where we're able to identify the child and therefore use their entire learning history to determine the personalized journey they will go on. That has a lot of complexities given that we're dealing with preliterate children who can't do a username and password. Everything has to work offline. So it's a complicated journey of exploring other ways to identify students. Okay. At what point did your frustration about the current system and the way things are, as you talked about in your talk, really shift into action for you?

19:35What was that tipping point? I would say that education has been something that's pretty core to my life throughout. I would always say that I'm first generation out of poverty. My parents were the first to break through and get an education. And just being able to look at the constellation of my family and the vast variation in life outcomes and feeling like, wow, how did my parents get so lucky? How did this aunt get so lucky? And how did these others not get so lucky? And is it really luck? Was it really a system that was designed to get all of them through? And I guess starting to appreciate that, you know what, I may be smart, but I'm not that exceptional.

20:16I have won the lottery. My parents have won the lottery in education here. And it shouldn't have to be such a hit and miss. Many people should have been able to get through and many have not. And I look at the dysfunction amongst many of my own family members and it's glaring. It's not something I have to romanticize or think about. It's very much there. And I guess for me, I've always leaned into the idea that unless people have the opportunity to become their best selves, they will have to default to the worst side of themselves, to their own shadow. And it's a horrible thing not to give a human mind an opportunity to step into that light.

20:53Yeah. Talk us through the WEIRD acronym one more time and what that stands for. I think there's been a lot more conversation about this framework. Yes. You know, I read a book, I think it's Joseph Heinrich who came up with that concept. I think the book is The Weirdest People on Earth. And it is around this idea that countries that are Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic is where the vast majority of research is done and then extrapolated across the rest of the world when the conditions are so vastly different. And because that's where a lot of the funding is, that's where a lot of the media is, that's where a lot of the publicity comes from.

21:32It's then kind of creates this impression that it is the standard way the world works. Right. But it's far from the reality. And as an entrepreneur in the technology space, I would say that my entire journey has always been about questioning the so-called way the world works. Because I've always come to appreciate that it's actually not the way my world works. Even though I've been educated in Western systems all the time, I had to come to that reckoning that everything I've been taught here is actually in dissonance to the reality that I know. And so what do you hope the weird listener audience who might be hearing this will learn and take from your talk in this conversation?

22:10I really hope that I liked the term weird because it was just such a contrast to the word standard, to the dominant way of thinking. And just saying that it's different didn't quite land, whereas weird just really put it's, you know, 80 degrees opposite to what people expect us to believe about Western societies. And it's just more to say, look, let's work a little bit of fun. But let's also really appreciate that the world has so many different perspectives and contexts. There is no such thing as a singular reality. And often if you're part of a dominant culture, you are implicitly, almost automatically going to believe that this is the way it should be everywhere else.

22:51And of course, we want kids to have had a lovely school with a class with 25 kids in them and a highly qualified teacher. But if that's never going to happen, why are we holding the rest of the world ransom to an illusion that can't actually materialize? And it's not just in education. I think it's in healthcare, in a health system designed around the idea that there's enough doctors when there isn't, and then it never works out. So all of these things just really need to be questioned so that we actually serve the needs of the community well enough. Even with the start of the Imagine Worldwide work, a lot of the advice that we'll get from the West or weird countries is that use online solutions.

23:34Take everything online. The whole world will be online tomorrow. And in my mind, I remember hearing that 20 years ago. And Africa is a really, really big place. Right. It's going to take a lot to get everyone permanent connectivity. Right. Speaking of questioning, how do you approach communicating and working with people who are skeptical of your ideas? I'm not a particularly pushy person. So I always like to start with a better understanding of where they're coming from. You know, are they teachers? Where have they spent their lives? What kind of work have they done? Because that helps me understand where their worldview is formed.

24:10Right. And what is their starting point? And once you understand somebody else's starting point, I think I can then maybe start to fill the gaps between where they are and kind of where I'm standing from. And then the data is really key in any work in innovation. And I've been in the space for my whole life. Talking doesn't always win until you give people data points that they can see are independent, separate from you. And if you do have someone that you're engaging with that is meaningfully willing to learn, then they need to observe the data too and question whether the data matches the real reality that they may not have fully understood before.

24:52You are one of TED's Audacious Project grantees. And I recently heard a story about a visit where staff were just stunned at how engaged the students were when they were on their tablets in the classroom. To the point where even the kids were a bit annoyed that the visitors were there. Exactly. Why were the students so engaged? And how do we rethink the way that we teach to make kids engaged in that way? It's very, very true. We definitely see that the children are deeply connected. And if you go to a classroom that doesn't have the Talbid program and it's 100 kids, it's incredibly noisy. It's incredibly, I think, very difficult to learn.

25:36And as an introvert, I've asked myself, would I have succeeded in a context like this? Whereas now you can provide both modalities and they've got this hour on the tablet where it's your own personal journey of learning. The introverts perhaps have a bigger space to kind of explore their own thinking and mind. and you're getting that direct response to your own engagement with the software. It's not happening outside of you. It's happening because you are engaging and pressing a button. And I think that's a very different experience for a child who hasn't had individual attention in their education journey.

26:10And then, you know, it's fun. It's games. It's colors. It's lots of gamification and sound. And I think it's really thrilling for them. And it's a great addition to the learning journey. As you are adding tablets to the classroom and beginning ed tech in the classrooms in Africa, there is ongoing or more fervent debate here in the U.S. about ed tech, period, right? Because of all these contracts that school districts have now signed with so many vendors to bring more online teaching and more tablets and, you know, Chromebook learning to schools in weird countries. And so there's now more activism and pushback against this ed tech in the classrooms.

26:54How do you respond to some of these arguments that we shouldn't be putting kids on tablets? Yeah, it always comes down to context, Tay. And I can definitely see the negative impact that it's had for children in weird countries or the West. But again, it's a case of, is this the reality that other children in Malawi, Sierra Leone, Tanzania are actually experiencing? There is no mechanisms where districts are buying Chromebooks or any kind of technology. Less than 15 % of schools in sub-Saharan Africa even have computers. Less than 4 % maybe have internet access. No child has personal devices. And I would also hazard a guess that the majority of the issues arise when it's a personal device.

27:39These are shared devices that you touch for an hour that are used throughout the rest of the school day by other kids. Nobody takes it home. And it's a highly controlled environment. There's no social media. There's no Internet. There's nothing but the learning content that has been specifically designed and approved by the government. It's very, very controlled, focused on the learning and a limited time. It's not hours of that school day that disappear into this. I mean, when you realize that there's no individual attention in a class of 100 kids and they will never, like I mentioned in my talk, get to a point where you've got those 25 kids in a class because we're never going to be able to pay for 15 million more teachers.

28:21You've got to then ask yourself, what else can we do? Surely we shouldn't impose our own biases and preferences to children who will never get what you're giving your child. Is there a risk that your argument gives governments an excuse to under-invest going forward in teachers and in infrastructure? Because you have said these tablets, this kind of learning, they're there to support teachers and certainly not replace them. But how would you respond to the fear that maybe this is a way to replace teachers? So, so far from the reality. Schooling has always been much more than content, right? And you still need it, your advocate, your teachers, the ones that are going to guide your own emotional development.

29:08And let's face it, a teacher working in a class with 100 kids cannot help the struggling kid catch up and they can't stimulate the child who is ready to move ahead, which means that you now lose that child in the learning process. Whereas now a teacher who is catering for those 100 kids has a mechanism that can provide remediation for the children that are struggling. So when they come into the mainstream class where everyone is going at the same pace, they have a better chance of actually catching up and participating. And for the children that need more stimulation, they have another platform to get that and can still enjoy learning.

29:45So I would say that we are looking at it as an investment in teachers, giving them digital literacy skills, empowering them to manage education technology within their classrooms. So are you supporting and investing in the teachers as well? Yes. So they facilitate the sessions. So before the tablet program even launches, we run extensive teacher training, you know, about two or three days. So it's not multiple years. teaching them about the content, but also how you facilitate the class, how you deal with basic technical issues. And we're hoping that in the course of the years that we're in these countries, we will be able to also provide them with an ed tech module in the pre-service training rather for teachers so that they can get accreditation for being able to deliver ed tech interventions, which will also be a boost for them.

30:29So those investments, yeah, it's an additional certification, additional credential or soft skill for teachers that are already qualified and for those that are in pre-service. And they need this too. They want to be able to use technology and want to be part of the change. And when they see, again, that it makes their life easier, the children actually had a chance to catch up, and now they are more engaged in my own class, it makes a huge difference in their lives. Don't go away. We'll be right back with more of my conversation with Rapalong right after a short break.

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31:42As you're planning to scale this technology, I was just curious a little bit about the costs. Yes. The sustainability has been at the heart of it. We're not just trying to do it once and feel good about it. We see philanthropy and development aid playing a key role in terms of funding the upfront infrastructure, the solar systems, the tablets, the initial training and mobilization of all these people that are needed to make it work. And the long-term model only requires a recurring cost of under$5 per child per year for the governments to maintain the program in the long term. And the majority of that is tablet replacement every three to four years when the tablet needs to be repaired or phased out.

32:21And the solar systems that last a little bit longer and some implementation, refresher training and ongoing implementation support. And those kind of numbers are far more palatable than a$40 billion increase in education budgets, which is more like an 80 % increase versus a 5 % to 3 % increase in education budgets. And it's right in the ballpark of what could be viable for low-resource countries to be able to afford. And that's key because nobody wants to keep funding things indefinitely. We've seen with the fallout in development aid globally that we need sustainable models. And despite it being highly capital intensive initially, the maintenance recurring costs are actually viable within country budgets.

33:07What kind of responses are you getting as you go country to country and have these conversations? We actually focus on a small number of countries right now. Our strategy as I imagine worldwide is really around picking three or four countries where we can go deep and wide. and get to countrywide coverage and impact the generation of children in that country. And we selected Malawi, Sierra Leone and Tanzania because that's where the governments were most committed. We were policy aligned and the commitment to take on the recurring costs is a material commitment from the ministries of finance. So these are long term partnerships that we work with them on to embed the program within their systems and essentially equip them to be able to drive it and lead it going forward.

33:50And we're able to do that in a small country in Malawi with a program in Checewa, a massive country, Tanzania, East Africa program in Swahili, Sierra Leone, West Africa program in English. And we'll add a Francophone country hopefully in the near future. And that will complete our portfolio so that we can unequivocally say that ITEC interventions are scalable and sustainable in low-income countries in different contexts on the environment. That's what I was curious about. Who's next? Which countries are next? Can you say? It's unconfirmed yet for the francophone country, but we do want to have a francophone country to our mix.

34:23And then in that process, we will develop all the systems, the software, the tools that we think other organizations can take forward. And they don't need to wait for Imagine to get there. Okay, because you shared some terrifying numbers about literacy rates and teacher numbers and the educational system in sub-Saharan Africa. But also some incredible numbers about what's possible. So where do you feel like the biggest bottlenecks are? the biggest bottlenecks I would say in our minds is actually finding fit for purpose technologies and systems in this world of AI and everything everyone thinks has gotten a lot easier but almost all the AI models almost all the tech solutions out there are built for a connected and literate world once you start asking can solutions work with intermittent connectivity or offline Can they work for children that are pre-literate?

35:16Can they work in different languages like Chichewa or Swahili? There's almost virtually nothing happening. And this is the kind of contradiction that we live with. Everyone thinks there's a lot of progress, but it's actually for the affluent connected online people that it's going to benefit right now. And unless as a society we invest far more in more languages, offline models, we're not going to derive the benefits of AI and all these new technologies for the people that need them the most. I think you already answered my next question, which was going to be if you could restructure the educational system for the global south, where would you start?

35:56What's the dream? Yeah, we would start similarly to health care where, you know, we've needed vaccines for malaria and all of these things for years, but there wasn't a paying market. All of the big, I guess, minds and technology organizations are focused on where there is a paying market. And where there isn't a paying market, young children, preliterates who are not English speaking, do not have permanent connectivity. There is very, very limited investment. So if I could restructure it, I would make it such that we are building models that actually make it very easy for more African languages to get their own LLMs, that all the AI models are designed to be optimized and offline.

36:33And I guess, yeah, involving local data scientists and communities that can take these things forward. It's not going to be solved entirely in the West. And building that network and community of data scientists and machine learning experts is critical. Rapalong Rabana, thank you so much for sitting down with us. Absolute pleasure. Thank you.

36:58That was Rapalong Rabana at TED 2026 and in conversation with me, Elise Hugh. Our conversation was recorded in April 2026. This ambitious idea is part of the Audacious Project, TED's initiative to inspire and fund global change. Learn more at audaciousproject.org. And that's it for today. If you're curious about TED's curation guidelines, visit TED.com slash curation guidelines. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was produced by Lucy Little, edited by Alejandra Salazar, and fact-checked by the TED Research Team. Additional support from Maggie Bishop. This episode was mixed by Lucy Little, and the interview was recorded in Vancouver by Dave Pulmer and Rich Amos of Field Trip.

37:41Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Valentina Bohanini, Banban Chang, Martha Estefanos, Brian Green, Maria Alexa Kavanaugh, Maren Larson, Emma Taubner, Tonsika Sungmarnivong, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I will be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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