Making digital educational resources more widely available in the Global South

Afrikalan aims to make digital educational resources accessible to children in areas where they currently lack such access. Afrikalan is a lightweight computer system that enables the distribution of digital resources in African libraries and schools without relying on an internet connection.

To this end, efforts have been made to gather, create, or adapt content that is relevant and suitable for children in West Africa, and to make it usable offline. Afrikalan was created as a non-profit initiative within the framework of community-based activities.

The content distributed includes:

• Educational software that allows children to improve their skills in reading, math, French, and more in a fun way. Certain applications have been adapted so that children in West Africa can relate to them. In Mali, some applications have also been translated into national languages (Bambara and Pulaar).
• A digital library: Afrikalan integrates a range of freely licensed documentary content (Wikipedia / Vikidia / OpenStreetMap) and features a simplified interface that allows users to enrich its content with e-books, videos, and more.

Afrikalan is an open-source software system, which has allowed various organizations in the Toulouse region to use it for their initiatives in the Global South:

• In Mali, thanks to the support of the Toulouse-based association Bilou Toguna, Afrikalan has been deployed through donations of educational computers in over 130 libraries or organizations serving children.
• In Guinea, 15 libraries received equipment thanks to the NGO EDA
• There are also a few Afrikalan units in Togo, Senegal, the Central African Republic, and Madagascar.

Afrikalan uses Raspberry Pi computers, which are very lightweight devices that produce little electronic waste (which African countries often lack the capacity to process) and consume little energy. This allows us to carry out our initiatives while leaving a much smaller ecological footprint than we would by sending old desktop computers to Africa.