This week UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta co-hosted the Global Education Summit in London. The Summit’s aim was to raise funds for the Global Partnership for Education (GPE)

Coronavirus has worsened the global education crisis, with 1.3 billion children – including 650 million girls – out of education at the peak of school closures. Experts warn that many children will never return, particularly as countries experience an economic contraction in the wake of the pandemic.

Projects Director and Board representative attend two-day forum on boosting Nigeria’s digital future. Senator Abubakar Sadiq Yaradua and Mr Umar Iro, UBEC Board representative and Projects Director respectively, visited the headquarters of sQuidcard Ltd for cutting-edge conversations focussed on how digital technology will be able to transform Nigerian Basic Education.

As constituency MP for Esher and Walton, Dominic Raab visited sQuid, a technology company that is revolutionising education halfway round the world. sQuid – the British company based in Thames Ditton that created smartcard and digital wallet technologies used in school payment systems across the United Kingdom, and provides safe cashless payments on buses for those without bankcards – showed off to Mr Raab its projects in Kenya, Somalia and now Nigeria.

All around the world, children's minds are going to waste. As covid-19 surged in early April, more than 90% of pupils were shut out of school. Since then the number has fallen by one-third, as many classrooms in Europe and East Asia have reopened. But elsewhere progress is slow.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic that swept the world, quickly resulting in school closures in Kenya, we adapted the iMlango learning platform to ensure the continuation of education whilst students are at home.

This International Women’s day we’re celebrating the achievements of women and girls in Kenya, where we work to improve equality and empower them to become the best that they can be.

In October, the Daily Nation newspaper in Kenya ran an article in which the senior education specialist from the World Bank was quoted as saying that children going through the Kenyan education system are losing an estimated three years of education.

sQuid, the digital transactions and payments service provider, launched its new Kenya Microfinance programme at the mEducation Alliance Symposium in Washington, D.C. Its purpose is to further drive community economic development and overcome education barriers…

The mEducation Alliance Symposium in Washington, D.C. always provides opportunity to learn from others and to examine how our own iMlango programme is working in the wider context of digital innovation in learning.

Birmingham-based school caterer, Cityserve, has introduced a cashless payment and pre-ordering system for its clients. Exclusively for Cityserve schools in Birmingham, the new service which includes the sQuid Dinner Money and sQuid SchoolPay systems means there will be no cash-handling for school meals moving forward.

We were delighted to be asked to contribute to the recent Wilton Park discussion led by the Foreign and Commonwealth office centring on issues of girls’ education, where we were able to share some of our insights, especially on literacy, from our experiences in Kenya.

The seventh annual Mobiles for Education (mEducation) Alliance Symposium, held October 5-6, 2017, brought together practitioners, thought leaders, policy makers, and funders to advance the use of and evidence for information and communications technology in global education (ICT4E).

The Leveraging Technology to Scale Early Grade Reading in Africa event aimed to enhance understanding of technology tools and resources to advance early grade reading efforts. Held in Pretoria, South Africa, the event was hosted by All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development, Global Book Alliance, mEducation Alliance, and sponsored by World Vision and USAID in collaboration with Pearson Institute of Higher Education.

We are pleased to announce that iMlango has launched a new Microloans initiative which provides access to funds for families in selected iMlango communities. The unique initiative provides recipients with funds to help them grow their business, and aims to focus the recipient family on the importance of saving for their children’s education.

In recent years, the use of cash transfer programming (CTP) in humanitarian assistance has grown significantly. In 2016, we estimate that $2.8bn in humanitarian assistance was disbursed through cash and vouchers, up 40% from 2015 and approximately 100% from 2014. As this report describes, the move to CTP has strong roots and is set to continue.

We are delighted to share with you that iMlango was announced as the winner of the "Best e-learning platform" award at the Digital Inclusion Awards in Nairobi last week.

We were honoured to participate at the World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings in Washington D.C. yesterday, where we had the opportunity to present our digital account technology at the Bridging the Inclusion and Technology Divide Fair.