Page 13 - Learn Africa 2021 Annual Report

Learn Africa Plc
Chairman’s Statement (cont’d)

education, Learn Africa will lead a bold response to an existential crisis in African education, by
constituting the Digital Learning for Africa (DLA) initiative.

This initiative will focus on increasing equitable educational access and improving the quality of
affordable education in Nigeria, by deploying an interactive eBook project as a strategic anchor of a
timely transition for physical textbooks to be augmented by digitally enabled and offline-accessible
multimedia-enhanced textbooks.

Building on research-based evidence evaluating the positive impact of eBooks on learning in Nigeria,
this transition will require critical innovations, collaborations, and new markets created around
technology and distribution infrastructure, for sustaining a flourishing and impactful Education
Technology (EdTech) ecosystem in Nigeria to start over the next three years, and then beyond, across
other priority African markets at scale.

This bold initiative is only possible via a collaborative ecosystem of partners led by Learn Africa,
committed to driving and sustaining learning impact for these students and teachers. It can be achieved
by enabling access to learning materials that are responsive to users’ infrastructural realities, living
conditions, and cultural perspectives. Since access and usage of the materials need to be affordable
and engaging for both in-school and remote users, we focus on interactive digital learning materials
delivery, monitoring and evaluation to impact them efficiently.

Specifically, Learn Africa will leverage on internal strengths in textbook publishing, relationships with
authors, governments, schools, teachers, parents and students, plus strong distribution and on-the-
ground presence built over the past 60 years, to galvanise action and play a central strategic role in the
devolution and adoption of a mass-market digital educational transition. This has already commenced
via our innovative enhanced eBook product, starting later in 2021, with up to approximately 500,000
students across Nigeria; as we target converting at least 10% of our textbooks sold annually, from
physical to digital textbooks, to start with.

Conclusion
Finally, I would like to express our sincere appreciation to you, our esteemed shareholders for
being supportive and cooperative over the years. I am also grateful to the Board, Management
and Staff of the Company for their untiring efforts in taking our company to greater heights.

Thank you all for your attention.

Emeke Iwerebon
Chairman

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