Digital transformation of education in Sub-Saharan Africa: General trends and Kenya and Uganda experience

Digitalization is considered to be the new hope in perspective development of education in sub-Saharan Africa still lacking for free access to effective schooling. Despite the several notable projects, further plans for the digital transformation of education in the region may encounter certain difficulties. Developing global economic and political crises may affect the innovative development of most countries in the region where an overwhelming number of social initiatives depend on funding from external donors. On the other hand, the current situation can become a good opportunity for a transition from an imposed educational policy towards the formation of modern independent national cultural and educational systems. At the same time, the central question is how effectively digitalization can solve the critical problems of the educational systems of the SSA countries, where innovations are introduced in the terms of relatively underdeveloped national educational systems. The results of completed projects show that even significant advances in the field of technical and software equipment do not remove the need to develop full-fledged curricula considering the psychological and pedagogical characteristics of students and the socio-cultural uniqueness of the region. The article presents an analysis of the current problems of education in the SSA countries and the experience of using digital technologies in coping with it, provides an overview of various approaches to the application of digital educational innovations on the example of some countries in the region, and outlines the main priorities in the field of further digitalization of education in Africa.