Leaf

Moving education for nomadic Fulani children in Niger Participation at Challenge Based Innovation - CBI - in collaboration with CERN. We were multidisciplinary teams, students from the ESADE, UPC, and IED.

A teacher light and portable digital learning solution for an environment with limited infrastructure.

Niger is a country in the heart of Africa and ranks lowest at the bottom of the Human Development Index. Only 15% of adults are literate. The government, the United Nations, and several NGOs, like the STROMME Foundation, are working on improving the educational situation. They mainly focus on the sedentary population but do not pay attention to nomadic children.

Our target group is between 7 and 12 years old and belongs to the Fulani nomadic pastoral community. They are always on the move with their cattle, looking for green pastures, so they drop out of school during the rainy season.

To understand better when children would use the device, it is important to see their daily activities.

The main problem is the absence of traditional communication technologies, for example, radio, in most of the remote areas these families migrate to. That's why we introduced the short-range system ZigBee, which makes the interaction between students possible. Another technology is LoRa, which solves the connection with the teacher. This way, the teacher has the students in class and also "online" ones he can check on.

LEAF tablet will create networks between Nomadic learning groups without the need for traditional infrastructure, with the support of the teacher when needed, tracking their progress.

The content is relevant to their lifestyle. Through songs, storytelling, symbolic animals, and trading scenarios. The teaching methodology is peer learning, so the learners can help one another.