At least 14, 000 schoolchildren in Northern Kenya will have access to computing lessons for the first time, thus equipping them with vital digital skills for the future.
The Digital Learning programme will be delivered by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, in partnership with the Frontier Counties Development Council (FCDC) and the M-Lugha Foundation.
Thousands of schoolchildren aged 8–14 in eight counties within FCDC are to benefit from computing lessons, a major boost to upskilling young people in the country’s arid areas.
The project will use the Computing Curriculum, a complete set of resources, which is being adapted and contextualised for Northern Kenya by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, to help teach computing to students.
The teacher training programme will build knowledge, skills, and confidence for 80 educators and will be delivered in partnership with FCDC and M-Lugha.
Teachers will be provided with resources written by specialists, including lesson plans, slides, activity sheets, homework, and assessments.
The programme will be aligned to the national Competency Based Curriculum (CBC), where key terms will be translated into Somali, Borana, Turkana, and other local languages to support understanding.
This will be done by the M-Lugha Foundation, which is also leading the project delivery across the 8 counties.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has trained eight government county coordinators in Garissa, Wajir, Mandera, Isiolo, Marsabit, Tana River, Lamu, and Turkana as part of the programme.
Using the Train, the Trainer (ToT) model, the coordinators will then share their expertise with 80 local school teachers, building up their skills and knowledge. The teachers will then be able to confidently deliver the curriculum during school lessons to 14,000 students aged 8 to 14 years old.
These structures mean children in rural communities in Northern Kenya will have access to the same quality of lessons and resources as young people in cities such as Mombasa, where a phase of the programme was recently launched.
“The Frontier Counties Development Council has assembled members from the education, business, technology, and policy communities to improve learning in frontier communities through educational technology,” said Dr. Idle Omar Farah, FCDC’s Chief Executive Officer.
“Climate challenges, including droughts and floods, have disrupted education in the region, worsening problems like a lack of teachers and deteriorating infrastructure. Developing resilient educational solutions is vital, and digital literacy programmes for primary learners are being promoted with the Raspberry Pi Foundation,” he added.
Speaking during an EDTECH Summit at Garissa University, Dr. Mohammed Abdinoor, who is a researcher and an educationist, said lack of good leadership is affecting many schools in the north-eastern province, thus making the schools not to progress.
“Everything starts and stops at leadership. We cannot have any progress in schools, while there are no good leaders running the schools,” Abdinoor said.
By Maureen Kayumya and Erick Kyalo
