Day of the African Child: UNICEF Seeks Govt Support to Boost Digital Learning for Children

Funmi Ogundare 

As Nigeria joins the rest of Africa to commemorate the Day of the African Child, on June 16, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has called  on government and other stakeholders to exploit the opportunities offered by digitalisation for learning and development of Nigerian children. 

With the theme for this year, The Rights of the Child in the Digital Environment’, UNICEF in collaboration with the Lagos State Ministry of Education, recently visited Ladoje Nursery and Primary School, Orile Agege, Lagos, one of the many public schools where the Nigeria Learning Passport (NLP) was deployed  to boost digital teaching and learning among pupils .

Speaking with journalists, the Education Specialist, UNICEF, Babagana Aminu, emphasised on the importance of the NLP and its uniqueness.  He described it as a virtual learning platform that provides free access to education contents developed by Microsoft with support from the Fund.

The uniqueness of the NLP is that it could be deployed online on mobile  devices such as laptop computers and phones; and offline  in hard to reach communities where internet is not accessible.

Aminu noted that the idea is to provide opportunity to parents, families and communities  that don’t have the opportunity to buy data for their wards to benefit from the platform.

He disclosed that UNICEF is planning to deploy offline hub, a super computer in a box containing contents on the NLP  in 150 schools across the country.

According to him, “the offline does not require internet because it comes with all contents that will be deployed. In the next few weeks, we are going to be deploying NLP in 150 schools across Nigeria to demonstrate how offline can be achieved.

“There are about 15,000 different lesson comprised of English, Mathematics, Basic Science, Business Studies, Basic Technology, Computer Science, Professional Soft Skill, Vocational Training, Chemistry, Biology and others.h

” These contents are in English and the three basic Nigeria languages spoken in Nigeria, and the idea is to able to provide access to children with different language background with the contents that they can consume.”

The Director, Policy, Planning, Research and Statistics Department, Lagos State Ministry of Education, Dr. Afolabi Sunday Adejare stated that the government  remains committed to equip schools at all levels with ICT gadgets.

He noted that the idea is to ensure that students are familiar with modern learning technology and  be in tune with what is happening globally.

Adejare stated that UNICEF has been partnering with the ministry, by ensuring that tablets were provided in schools, and  that trainings were being carried out both at the local and state government levels.

“The Lagos state government is doing a lot in this regard, virtually all our secondary schools have ICT labs and aspiring candidates into the state Model Colleges must also sit for CBT examination. We will continue to do more to cover all ground by exposing them to e-learning like the NLP, EKOEXCEL and other packages to make sure that our students are learning and using ICT gadgets,” the director stressed.

A teacher at the school, Ms Omowunmi Alawiye said NLP has been of tremendous help for teachers as they can review the lessons and topics to be taught . 

“The program was introduced to us in December last year and ever since then, it has been so helpful to the teachers, parents and pupils . The children are blending so well with the digital device.”