"Tanzania has approximately more than 14 Million pupils in pre and primary school level and more than 7 Million students in secondary school enrolled in school (UNESCO 2016), who are out of school due to the pandemic. Even before the pandemic crisis, we were already experiencing an education crisis, as many learners were not learning fundamental skills needed in life, increased school dropouts rates, lack of enough learning materials in schools and the very high ratio of teacher to learners. This is a difficult situation for parents who are unable to support their children’s learning materials/content at home, with the unequal livelihood in Tanzania these negative impacts will be felt disproportionately by poor children.

Apps and Girls and Nlab with their partners Tigo Tanzania, we have created the eschools web-based platform to provide interactive and continuous learning opportunities to children in both rural and urban areas across Tanzania during COVID-19 and after, by connecting learners, parents and teachers while improving the educational opportunities for learners at home. The learners are able to attend virtual classes conducted by teachers, ask questions and attempt quizzes during the lessons. Also they can revisit their teachers' lessons since it can be auto-recorded by the platform."

https://tigoeschools.co.tz/

• United Republic of Tanzania

• Youth
• Students

Across the African continent, an estimated 297 million students have been affected by school closures as a result of the pandemic (UN Africa Renewal 2020). Since the Eschools platform works online and offline through a web-based and SMS platform respectively, it has the potential to be used in other countries in the African continent to give access to learning to students.

We are committed to make these services readily available to every student and every household during the Covid-19 crisis regardless of their financial status and that is why the services are free at the moment and they will also have zero-rating meaning no megabytes needed to access the platform -- this will be done by our partner Tigo Tanzania. In the future, we are anticipating to use a tutoring approach where students can pay to have private lessons and be tutored by teachers of their choices and at their own preferred times.

Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, Access to information and knowledge, ICT applications: benefits in all aspects of life — E-learning