In Africa, access to school does not always come up against the limited financial means of families. The social environment, in some cases, can also be seen as a hindrance. As digital transformation spreads, well-directed use of ICT brings success.

According to the World Bank, the use of information and communication technologies in children’s learning is beneficial in more ways than one. The international institution cites the data from the experiment carried out with its consent between 2018 and 2020 in the states of Kano and Jigawa, in the northwestern region of Nigeria, as proof of this. The operation focused on 9,393 rural households, including children aged 6 to 9 and their parents were subjected to two digital education approaches. It revealed a 42% decline in non-enrollment at the end of its term.

The baseline sample selected by the World Bank included 2,335 households living in 32 communities who received only aspirational videos aimed at parents to change their mindset and wish for the best for their children; 2,345 households living in 32 communities received aspirational videos and 40% of them additionally received a smartphone containing educational content. 4,713 households living in 64 communities served as a control group.

The study “Improving Enrollment and Learning through Videos and Mobiles Experimental Evidence from Northern Nigeria” demonstrated that aspirational videos alone reduced girls’ aspirations to marry at age 15-18. These videos especially had an impact on the parents of the girls. In the households that received the aspirational videos and the smartphone, children’s reading and numeracy skills improved by 0.46 points and 0.63 points, respectively, compared to the control group.

According to the World Bank, no evidence of heterogeneous effects by sex of child was found in general, ”  highlighting the potential of information and communication technologies to effectively reach girls in conservative settings, where the seclusion of girls or a strong bias in favor of boys’ education can prevent girls from accessing formal education  ”.

“  Our heterogeneous analysis by gender shows that the interventions worked equally well for girls and boys and that the magnitude of treatment effects by gender was generally similar for the main outcomes (school enrollment and reading skills , writing and calculation)  ”, specified the financial institution.

Social pressure, an obstacle to education

Because videos and smartphones could be used by multiple household members in these low-resource settings, the study also found that these resources improved the reading and numeracy skills of older siblings. non-targeted, to reduce early parenthood among adolescents living in treated households and to reduce early integration into the labor market.

A boon according to the World Bank which indicates that according to the Reading and Access Research Activity report of 2019, northern Nigeria had a considerable learning gap compared to the national average. Less than 3% of second-grade students in public elementary schools could read Hausa text with an understanding of 80% or better. In the northwest of the country, only 29% of women aged 15-49 and 59% of men were literate. Only 40% of 30-34 year olds have been educated in the northeastern and northwestern areas, compared to 90% in the southeastern and southwestern regions of the country.

This situation, the study justified it by the strong adhesion of the populations to the traditional norms. The formal legal institution of Sharia which applies in most northern states and covers social, civil and criminal issues has reinforced social norms that encourage early teenage marriages and therefore teenage pregnancies. All this representing additional obstacles to education. The emergence of the militant terrorist group Boko Haram, which translates to: “Western education is prohibited”, has created an additional obstacle to school enrollment and attendance in the north of the country.

According to the World Values ​​Survey 2017-2021 quoted by the World Bank, 42% of respondents in Nigeria believe that university is more important for a boy than for a girl and 41% believe that preschoolers suffer if the mother works. These norms contrast with those observed in other countries such as Kenya, where the proportions of the population holding these opinions are 18% and 23% respectively , reports the specialized site We Are Tech .

Source: Agence Ecofin