From Dubai to Tel Aviv, the digital revolution is transforming education
Digital education, a booming sector
Like the rest of the world, the Middle East is no exception to the major upheaval represented by the digital revolution applied to education. By inventing new learning devices to compensate for the disparities in terms of tools and resources allocated by governments to traditional education systems, thanks to AI and virtual and augmented reality, the digital revolution is therefore responding to real needs.
UNESCO estimates that there are 100 million students in the region, where access to quality education is highly unequal, leading to a particularly high level of home-based learning. According to the World Bank, almost 60% of 15-year-olds use private tutoring (in Egypt alone, more than 40% of private educational expenditure is devoted to this).
In Jordan, the Ministries of Education, Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship collaborated with private companies (Edraak, Mawdoo3, Abwaab and JoAcademy) to develop e-learning platforms, following the temporary closure of schools. In Israel, the start-up nation par excellence, however, visionary entrepreneurs did not wait for the turning point of the Covid 19 pandemic and its decisive impact on teachers and students before embarking on the adventure. The sector, though niche, is dynamic and attracts foreign investors, like Microsoft, which has invested in the EdTech Israel hub, founded in 2017 and since attached to Start Up Nation Central, the NGO that promotes the Israeli tech ecosystem.
With some forty start-ups and a booming market estimated at nearly 7.6 billion by 2027, ed tech reveals a wealth of regional potential.
Innovating, encouraging, and bringing people together
Anand Kadian, CEO of KITMEK, the Middle East's first interactive digital school based in Dubai, understands the challenges and developments at work. For $1 a month, his platform offers students multilingual teaching covering the entire curriculum from kindergarten to college, in a metaverse with AI-created teachers. Accessible without an Internet connection, on a basic telephone, it also gives underprivileged children free access, thanks to a sponsorship system.
Winner of Cartier's Women Initiatives in 2021, Lebanese entrepreneur Manal Hakim is behind the Geek Express platform, dedicated to learning science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM skills) through personalized coding programs, home DIY kits and access to an online community that spans from Egypt to the Gulf. The entrepreneur proudly notes that 60% of learners are girls, for a field of study that accounts for only 25% in the rest of the world. Many of them use this tool as a springboard to university. In a region where girls' access to secondary and higher education remains a major challenge, ed tech plays an emancipating role, corrects inequalities and even inspires vocations.
At the level of civil society, digital teaching and learning tools have also facilitated the promotion of dialogue and encounters between communities. The Israeli LingoLearn platform, for example, aims to be the first online Arabic school for a Jewish audience, hiring Palestinian university students to teach their mother tongue.
From Dubai to Tel Aviv, via Beirut and Amman, digital education is a veritable breeding ground for innovative, high-impact initiatives that transcend national, social and cultural boundaries.
Sources :
Accelerating the EdTech ecosystem in the Middle East and North Africa (worldbank.org)
Manal Hakim - Geek Express - 2021 Fellow for The Middle East & North Africa (youtube.com)
Comment l'IA et l’apprentissage à distance transforment l'éducation au Moyen-Orient | Arab News FR
