Re-imagining education: Sam proposes an app to keep all children learning during COVID-19

COVID-19 has slowed down many activities across the world, but 23-year-old Sam Masikini feels like it has also given him more time to spend with his family and work on his projects. He studied Information Technology at the Polytechnic, University of Malawi.

Sam has a couple of innovations and awards under the bag already. The first was for a voice and gesture-controlled home security system and the second is a machine that checks if banknotes are genuine to prevent proliferation of counterfeit notes. 

Sam is a member of the Polytechnic COVID-19 task force team that has been designing and developing products to fight COVID-19. These include a ventilator, disinfection chambers, reusable masks, face shields and hand sanitization units.

His latest idea in the UNICEF Malawi COVID-19 Youth Challenge is to make e-learning work in a country with low digital literacy, poor infrastructure and widespread poverty.

“Even before the pandemic, education in Malawi was in crisis. Only about 35% get to complete their primary education and move on to secondary school and 8% finish secondary education. The reasons are varied. So, imagine how devastating the impact of COVID-19 will be, particularly for children and young people in disadvantaged and remote communities,” explains Sam.

The way Sam sees it, the solution is not e- learning which fully relies on the internet when only a tiny fraction of the population is able to access it. He proposes an offline mobile app called Inspire. Running on low cost devices such as KaiOS technology and coupled with radio communication, he believes Inspire could reach more children and young people in remote villages.

“The idea is to reimagine education in Malawi and offer equal opportunities for continued learning to a boy or girl in a remote village and a privileged urban child with high-end devices,” says Sam.