EC News DeskAs many as 250 million children across Africa are currently unable to access primary and secondary schools as a result of Covid-19-related closures. Analysts have shared concerns that this may create a lost generation of learners, causing many children to leave school prematurely. Avaya is helping to stem this loss across the continent by enabling students to stay on track with their studies using Avaya Spaces.
Avaya Spaces, the all-in-one video collaboration app for the digital workplace, changes the way works gets done. It helps bring together distributed groups of people instantly with immersive work spaces where they can message, meet, share content and manage tasks from a browser or mobile device, and provides an easy, secure and effective way to collaborate in the cloud.
Earlier this year, Avaya Spaces was offered for free to educational institutions worldwide, giving them all the meeting and team collaboration features they needed to keep students learning and curriculums on track.
With Avaya Spaces, African schools such as Icon International School in Ghana, Charter College in South Africa, and Waldorf Woodlands in Kenya, have kept students safely engaged in their education by using the app to create virtual classrooms that can be accessed securely from anywhere on any device.
Icon International School, a Ghanaian institution that caters to learners from multiple grade levels, is one such school that has turned to technology to ensure the continued delivery of education for its students. Initially getting by with various freemium consumer apps, the school eventually put in place a comprehensive remote learning programme for students using Avaya Spaces. The cloud-based video and collaboration app enables Icon to seamlessly deliver a Montessori-style education across geographies.
Analysts and researchers have noted the importance of easy-to-use collaboration tools for education institutions to maintain their connections with students, to support bright futures in the face of today’s challenges. “Investing in training and education is the best way to secure the future prosperity of the African region,” said Adrian Ho, Practise Leader, Enterprise Advanced Digital Services, Omdia. “The Covid-19 pandemic has made its struggles more challenging. Harnessing technologies like Avaya Spaces will help bridge the training and educational gaps of the future workforce in Africa, allowing the region to be globally competitive.”
“The crisis has forced educators across Africa and around the world to adapt in order to avoid losing educational progress made throughout the first half of the academic year,” said Nidal Abou-Ltaif, President, Avaya International. “With our Avaya Spaces offer, we have helped teachers and students continue to focus on education, and we’re proud to have played a small part in seeing off worries of a lost generation of learners.”
