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Education in Africa in a state of emergency – Entrepreneur

Mr Seni Sulyman, Vice President, Global Operations, Andela, says education in Africa is in a statement of emergency. Sulyman made the assertion at Techpoint Inspired 2019 held in Lagos on Saturday.

Seni Sulyman

Mr Seni Sulyman, Vice President, Global Operations, Andela, says education in Africa is in a statement of emergency. Sulyman made the assertion at Techpoint Inspired 2019 held in Lagos on Saturday.

Techpoint Inspired has been a choice destination for participants interested in the result-driven and amalgamation of discovery, innovation, technology, internet, startups for Africa’s development. Sulyman spoke on the theme: “A Model for Educating Africa’s Future’’.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Techpoint Inspired is the largest tech conference in West Africa, where issues on Future of Work, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics & Blockchain and many more are discussed

It hosted over 3,000 leading experts, enthusiasts, innovators, entrepreneurs, career professionals and policymakers in Lagos.

According to Sulyman, education is critical to our future and now in a state of emergency but the hope is that there is something that can be done to change it.

He said that there is need to embrace the truth to be able to solve the problems facing the educational sector and bring it out from the state of emergency.

He noted that to change this narrative, innovation should be utmost in our mind as innovation drives human progress and advancement.“Can you imagine if the clock, computer are not invented; all these were driven by people’s innovation.

“It is unfortunate that in Africa we are very far behind as regards innovation and this is because the problem is tied to education.

“The major problem we face has to do with poor education which is as a result of limited innovation which leads to low quality of life, talent attrition and then a failed system.

“This failed system is a cycle that begins all over again and there is need to look into this so that the narrative of education being in a state of emergency will be changed,’’ Sulyman said.

He said that a state of emergency presents massive opportunities for the country and so we need to act fast and ensure that we tap and utilise these opportunities.

He said that out of the 1.3 billion Africans, 40 per cent are under 14 and 60 per cent are out of school.He noted that there was need to find solutions that would inculcate these children into the educational sector.

Sulyman said that the opportunity was tied to foundation education which was got from parents, teachers and policy makers and the continuous learning got from companies’ human resources professionals and others.

According to him, the model to be adopted is to build highly-scalable educational model that can be taken to different cities.

“The model is going to be distributed and we need to provide the infrastructure to ensure that is done. It has to be interactive, we should not wait for the perfect solution, build it now.

“Do the model with a lot of passion because we have to let people believe in it and use the existing infrastructure that is available as we need to build the future now,’’ he said.

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