Using Foresight for EdTech Innovation in Nigeria
By Jeremy Kirshbaum, IFTF Research Affiliate and Founder of Handshake.fyi
Over the last decade, violent insurgency and unrest in the Northeast of Nigeria, especially Borno State, has had a negative impact on children’s access to education and learning, with nearly 75 percent, or just over 1.4 million children out of school. While working with local school administrations in underserved communities in Borno State to implement education-focused technology, my team at Handshake recognized we’d need to use foresight to build new education strategies that support teachers’ ability to adapt to this volatile environment. In collaboration with the International Rescue Committee (IRC), we sought the best education technology (EdTech) to help communities in crisis. Guided by foresight research, we were able to build a program which responded to local needs in an enduring way.
Before boldly trying new methods, it was crucial for us to understand what innovations were already available across the field, what trade-offs they may entail, and how they apply to the local context. This is where foresight research provides indelible insight.
The first step in the collaboration of Handshake and IRC was to define the problem we sought to address in the area. Based on this problem statement, Handshake conducted a comprehensive landscape analysis, surveying over 300 different innovations across the world, in 7 different languages and a variety of contexts. This data fulfilled a dual purpose: It stimulated thinking about what is possible, and it also provided insight as to how the field of education is evolving.
To paint a clearer picture of the future, we compiled the diverse selection of EdTech innovations into 7 general trends. Each trend was representative of a pattern we saw in the research across many individual examples, concisely summarizing the landscape.
From these global trends, IRC derived concrete design parameters that they hoped to see in their final solution for Borno State. The existing innovations were typically provided by a for-profit company, so IRC’s major focus was fostering “dual-use” cases — when a product with established commercial application is adopted to a humanitarian setting. The design parameters derived from the foresight research were baked into the pitch deck inviting private companies to apply for the program. The applicants were ranked with a Prioritization Mapping Tool, where the maturity and fit with the design parameters of each applicant’s solution were plotted on a coordinate plane. Through this process, the most promising companies to promote education specifically within the context of Borno schools’ needs were identified.
Ultimately, this resulted in the funding of two local companies to launch pilots in partnership with local schools to study the desirability, feasibility, and viability of their solutions to support students and learning facilitators. Over the past year, one of the startups in particular, Mavis Talking Books, has met with demonstrable success and begun to scale up their programs in the region in partnership with IRC. This is no easy feat — finding successful projects in programs like this is harder than picking unicorn investments in a venture fund. The fact that a unique, local, impactful partner was successfully sourced during the program is likely due to the hard work that was done up front to define clearly what was needed now and in the future. This could not have happened without applying foresight methodologies.
Handshake subsequently developed the Humanitarian EdTech Innovation Toolkit to provide humanitarian innovators with guidance on how to practically harness foresight and design-thinking into a decision-making plan for choosing innovations. By understanding where an industry is going, one can build a lasting solution which is future-proofed from looming disruptions.
IFTF Foresight Essentials
Institute for the Future (IFTF) is the world’s leading futures organization. Its training program, IFTF Foresight Essentials, is a comprehensive portfolio of strategic foresight training tools based upon over 50 years of IFTF methodologies. IFTF Foresight Essentials cultivates a foresight mindset and skillset that enable individuals and organizations to foresee future forces, identify emerging imperatives, and develop world-ready strategies. To learn more about how IFTF Foresight Essentials is uniquely customizable for businesses, government agencies, and social impact organizations, visit iftf.org/foresightessentials or subscribe to the IFTF Foresight Essentials newsletter.
