Youth in Rwanda innovation on e-learning

26-year-old Abdurrahman Niyonizeye was initially a part time private tutor. After noticing how costly home tutoring is in Rwanda, He invented an eLearning platform known as Smart class Rwanda that currently serves a wide range of secondary students across the country.

The platform platform was at the peak of it’s success during the Covid 19 lockdown and gave students equal access to “excellent teachers” and connect students across the country to exchange knowledge.

“I realized that so many students are not studying to their fullest potential. Because they haven’t been admitted to an excellent school or they haven’t been given all the learning materials at their disposal to help them excel, so this is why we came up with the idea of smart class where we are bringing all the learning materials, all the points, all the key aspects that can help someone perform excellently in their academics and national examinations online, just to reduce the cost of quality education, and to bring this quality education anywhere and anytime.“

Students and teachers make use of this e-learning platform to share notes and interact with other students and teachers and this has improved the overall e-learning experience and increased the quality of education in Rwanda.

Teachers say that the only challenge currently being faced is the lack of accessibility of enough electronic gadgets to students. However students who do not have computers can always use their smartphones to access the platform.

"Not all students have computers at home, but the managers of the platform have managed to collaborate with MTN Rwanda and they can use smartphones.", says Patrick Muneza, vice principle of Glory Academy.

According to Michel Nkunrunziza , student in Glory Academy, "Your teachers may not have enough information on a specific topic in what you study or engage in class, but you can find other schools that can help you with that, depending on the course that you are taking. Getting a book, student books, mostly in soft copy, its very hard for a student in high school, so with smart class, it came with the accessibility of getting those student books that can help us in reading and preparing, for example me, I am preparing for the national exam."

Over 12,000 secondary school students here in Rwanda have already enrolled themselves in the Smart class Rwanda platform.