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'Developing Science, Mathematics and ICT in Secondary Education' is based on country studies from ten Sub-Saharan African countries: Botswana, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, and a literature review. It reveals a number of huge challenges in science, mathematics and ICT (SMICT) education in sub-Saharan Africa: poorly-resourced schools; large classes; a curriculum hardly relevant to the daily lives of students; a lack of qualified teachers; and inadequate teacher education programs. Through examining country case studies, this paper discusses the lessons for improvement of SMICT in secondary education in Africa.

The debate is no longer whether to use information and communication technologies (ICT) in education in Africa but how to do so, and how to ensure equitable access for teachers and learners, whether in urban or rural settings. This is a book about how Africans adopt and adapt ICT. It is also about how ICT shape African schools and classrooms. Why do we use ICT, or not? Do girls and boys use them in the same ways? How are teachers and students in primary and secondary schools in Africa using ICT in teaching and learning? How does the process transform relations among learners, educators and knowledge construction? This collection by 19 researchers from Africa, Europe, and North America, explores these questions from a pedagogical perspective and specific socio-cultural contexts. Many of the contributors draw on learning theory and survey data from 36 schools, 66000 students and 3000 teachers. The book is rich in empirical detail on the perceived importance and appropriation of ICT in the development of education in Africa. It critically examines the potential for creative use of ICT to question habits, change mindsets, and deepen practice. The contributions are in both English and French.

E-learning has been heralded as a revolutionary force for medical education, especially for low-resource countries still suffering from a dire lack of health care workers. However, despite over two decades of e-learning endeavors and interventions across sub-Saharan Africa and other low- and middle-income countries, e-learning for medical education has not gained momentum and continues to fall short of the anticipated revolution. Many e-learning interventions have been cul-de-sac pilots that have not been scaled up but rather terminated after the pilot phase. This is usually a result of not adopting a system-wide approach, which leads to insufficient scope of training, insufficient technological maintenance and user support, unattainably high expectations, and unrealistic financial planning. Thus, a multitude of e-learning evaluations have failed to provide scientifically sound evidence of the effectiveness of e-learning for medical education in low-resource countries. Instead, it appears that technological development has overwhelmed rather than revolutionized medical education. The question of how to push e-learning into a higher gear in low-resource countries persists. Provision of e-learning as a technology is insufficient. E-learning needs to be vigorously and sustainably integrated into the local educational setting and aligned with national strategies and other national endeavors and interventions. Adhering to a standardized framework for the implementation and evaluation of e-learning endeavors is key, especially to bridge the gap in robust evidence that should also guide e-learning implementations. The primary objective of e-learning for medical education is to strengthen the health system in order to serve the population's health care needs and expectations. Currently, medical e-learning does not measure up to its potential or do justice to medical students in low-resource countries. Technology may help unfold the potential of e-learning, but an all-encompassing change is needed. This can only be achieved through a joint effort that follows a systematic and standardized framework, especially for implementation and evaluation.

Digital technology has become a central aspect of higher education, inherently affecting all aspects of the student experience. It has also been linked to an increase in behavioural, affective and cognitive student engagement, the facilitation of which is a central concern of educators. In order to delineate the complex nexus of technology and student engagement, this article systematically maps research from 243 studies published between 2007 and 2016. Research within the corpus was predominantly undertaken within the United States and the United Kingdom, with only limited research undertaken in the Global South, and largely focused on the fields of Arts & Humanities, Education, and Natural Sciences, Mathematics & Statistics. Studies most often used quantitative methods, followed by mixed methods, with little qualitative research methods employed. Few studies provided a definition of student engagement, and less than half were guided by a theoretical framework. The courses investigated used blended learning and text-based tools (e.g. discussion forums) most often, with undergraduate students as the primary target group. Stemming from the use of educational technology, behavioural engagement was by far the most often identified dimension, followed by affective and cognitive engagement. This mapping article provides the grounds for further exploration into discipline-specific use of technology to foster student engagement.

Educational attainment is an important social determinant of maternal, newborn, and child health 1 – 3 . As a tool for promoting gender equity, it has gained increasing traction in popular media, international aid strategies, and global agenda-setting 4 – 6 . The global health agenda is increasingly focused on evidence of precision public health, which illustrates the subnational distribution of disease and illness 7 , 8 ; however, an agenda focused on future equity must integrate comparable evidence on the distribution of social determinants of health 9 – 11 . Here we expand on the available precision SDG evidence by estimating the subnational distribution of educational attainment, including the proportions of individuals who have completed key levels of schooling, across all low- and middle-income countries from 2000 to 2017. Previous analyses have focused on geographical disparities in average attainment across Africa or for specific countries, but—to our knowledge—no analysis has examined the subnational proportions of individuals who completed specific levels of education across all low- and middle-income countries 12 – 14 . By geolocating subnational data for more than 184 million person-years across 528 data sources, we precisely identify inequalities across geography as well as within populations. Analyses of the proportions of individuals who have completed key levels of schooling across all low- and middle-income countries from 2000 to 2017 reveal inequalities across countries as well as within populations.

Research that employs theory provides a framework and structure in which complex phenomenon, can be understood. While many theories have been developed to study people’s technology usage, the plurality of perspectives offered are complex to navigate due to the diverse range of problems and topics addressed and the varied theoretical foundations used. Moreover, when focusing on the integration of technology within educational contexts, studies conducted by researchers with a technology focus mainly explore how and why using technology benefits education. On the contrary, studies driven by educational researchers do not necessarily advocate for technology integration but rather aim to explore the educational issues surrounding the use of technology. While triangulating theories can expand knowledge, selecting the most appropriate and suitable theory is often confusing and overwhelming. This paper is aimed at assisting and guiding researchers with this problem. A hermeneutic approach was followed to review the different theories and models commonly used to study technology acceptance/adoption/use within education, whilst catering for methodological diversity and cross-disciplinary dialogue. The dimensions of aims and purpose, strategy, paradigm, and perspective and value of technology were used to categorise the different theories, with four categories emerging. The review indicates that for researchers with a positivist paradigm, technocentric view, and who aim to predict or prescribe technology use in a normative manner, the categories of technology acceptance/adoption/use theories and education and technology models are most suitable. However, for researchers with an interpretivist paradigm who view technology as an enabler and aim to explain social dynamics of technology adoption in a descriptive manner, the categories of social theories and structuration theories are most appropriate. In addition, the categorisation of theories and the detailed account of the hermeneutic review method can be used to guide future researchers wanting to pursue similar studies.

This systematic review investigates the integration of interactive technologies in online teacher education across Africa from 2014 to 2024. The study aims to identify the types of interactive technologies employed, the leading countries in regard to their adoption, and the outcomes of their usage on teacher training programs. Despite significant advancements, particularly in countries like Kenya and South Africa, the effectiveness of these technologies varies widely due to infrastructural, socio-economic, and policy-related challenges. The findings highlight the critical role of reliable information communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, culturally relevant content, and comprehensive training for educators in optimizing the use of interactive technologies. Additionally, the study emphasizes the need for greater policy coordination and collaboration among African nations to fully leverage these technologies. The review concludes that, while interactive technologies hold substantial potential in terms of transforming teacher education in Africa, sustained efforts are required to overcome the existing barriers and ensure equitable access to quality education across the continent.

Population projections for sub-Saharan Africa have, over the past decade, been corrected upwards because in a number of countries, the earlier declining trends in fertility stalled around 2000. While most studies so far have focused on economic, political, or other factors around 2000, here we suggest that in addition to those period effects, the phenomenon also matched up with disruptions in the cohort trends of educational attainment of women after the postindependence economic and political turmoil. Disruptions likely resulted in a higher proportion of poorly educated women of childbearing age in the late 1990s and early 2000s than there would have been otherwise. In addition to the direct effects of education on lowering fertility, these less-educated female cohorts were also more vulnerable to adverse period effects around 2000. To explore this hypothesis, we combine individual-level data from Demographic and Health Surveys for 18 African countries with and without fertility stalls, thus creating a pooled dataset of more than two million births to some 670,000 women born from 1950 to 1995 by level of education. Statistical analyses indicate clear discontinuities in the improvement of educational attainment of subsequent cohorts of women and stronger sensitivity of less-educated women to period effects. We assess the magnitude of the effect of educational discontinuity through a comparison of the actual trends with counterfactual trends based on the assumption of no education stalls, resulting in up to half a child per woman less in 2010 and 13 million fewer live births over the 1995–2010 period.

Although several studies have been conducted to summarize the progress of open educational resources (OER) in specific regions, only a limited number of studies summarize OER in Africa. Therefore, this paper presents a systematic literature review to explore trends, themes, and patterns in this emerging area of study, using content and bibliometric analysis. Findings indicated three major strands of OER research in Africa: (1) OER adoption is only limited to specific African countries, calling for more research and collaboration between African countries in this field to ensure educational equity; (2) most of the OER initiatives in Africa have focused on the creation process and neglected other important perspectives, such as dissemination and open educational practices (OEP) using OER; and (3) on top of the typical challenges for OER adoption (e.g., infrastructure), other personal challenges were identified within the African context, including culture, language, and personality. The findings of this study suggest that more initiatives and cross-collaborations with African and non-African countries in the field of OER are needed to facilitate OER adoption in the region. Additionally, it is suggested that researchers and practitioners should consider individual differences, such as language, personality and culture, when promoting and designing OER for different African countries. Finally, the findings can promote social justice by providing insights and future research paths that different stakeholders (e.g., policy makers, educators, practitioners, etc.) should focus on to promote OER in Africa.

The underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) remains a persistent challenge, influenced by socio-cultural norms, educational barriers, workplace inequalities, and limited participation at various levels. The review examines the challenges contributing to gender disparities in STEM and explores interventions to foster inclusion in South Africa, including key factors affecting gender representation. Studies were selected using structured screening and data extraction processes. The review followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines and included literature published between 2010 and 2025. A comprehensive search was conducted across multiple databases, including Elsevier, Google Scholar, Sabinet, Sage, Science Direct, Taylor & Francis, and institutional repositories. The findings highlight the importance of multifaceted interventions to bridge the gender gap, emphasising the promotion of role models, mentorship programmes, STEM education improvements at the high school level, professional development for educators, hands-on experiential learning, and parental involvement. This review provides insights into effective strategies that policymakers, educators, and industry stakeholders can implement to create a more inclusive and equitable STEM landscape.