This Second-Stage Report follows an initial scoping study (the ‘Inception Report’) and is intended to provide the Department for International Development (DFID) with support for the 2018 launch of its Education Technology Hub for Research and Innovation.

This report seeks to provide actionable understanding of the EdTech ‘landscape’ in seven focal countries: Bangladesh, India, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Malawi, and Rwanda. Country profiles in this landscape report address five categories of information: innovative initiatives; government buy-in and political will; innovation hubs and networks; research (activities and personnel); and funding.

Methods centred on web-based research, complemented by interviews with knowledgeable respondents and email communications with those respondents and with others. Focal countries were selected to ensure a mix of higher-achieving countries – with initiatives and institutions supporting a range of higher-impact and innovative initiatives – and countries with greater need for capacity and solutions in relation to education technology.

Key points
Broadly contextualised observations about the state of EdTech include:

• EdTech tools are appropriate and ‘ready’ for deployment in development education, largely as a result of private-sector growth in mobile devices, mobile broadband, and other consumer technologies.
• The need for usable research is critical as a response to the proliferation of innovative solutions and the concomitant responsibility to understand which of these is most effective and offers the highest Value for Money (VfM) in a given situation.
• EdTech is increasingly linked to the development of 21st-century skills as governments identify creative problem-solving and similar abilities in the workforce as critical to improving economic and social well-being.
• National education systems in many countries, and as aggregated in regions and internationally, represent a powerful source of potential demand for new solutions, whereas current practice primarily entails re-purposing of hardware, software, networking, and services developed for consumer markets.

Addenda
Addendum 1 : Innovation in Malawi and Addendum 2: Collabrify authoring tool 

Suggested citation:
Gaible, E., Mayanja, M. and Michelazzi, A. (2018). Transforming education through technology: Second-stage report. London, UK: High-Quality Technical Assistance for Results (HEART).