TETFund Expands Higher Education Access in Nigeria with Blackboard
Nigeria’s growing demand for tertiary education is outpacing the number of classrooms available. To meet the need, the government's Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) chose Blackboard as the LMS to bring education to millions.
TETFund is an agency established by the Nigerian government to ensure the appropriate use of funding and resources for the maintenance and development of tertiary education in the country. Funds are directed to needs such as essential physical infrastructure for teaching and learning, instructional material and equipment, and academic staff training and development.
Recognizing the need to scale education for their rapidly growing population, TETFund earmarked NGN 100 million ($131 million USD) for investment in educational technology and to make online learning more widely available and accessible to students throughout Nigeria.
The Challenge
Finding the Right Cloud-Based LMS and EdTech Partner
To achieve its goal, TETFund needed to find a reliable and easy-to-use learning management system (LMS) that would allow for high-quality online learning on the large scale that was needed. Nigeria has a large population of young people under the age of 25, and there are simply not enough teachers or facilities to answer the level of demand for higher education.
“We aspire to having shared prosperity for our people,” said Arc. Sonny T. Echono, executive secretary of TETFund. “The way to go is first to prepare that population through learning, through knowledge, through skills. We will need to accelerate our transformation by leveraging digital technology because we are not going to be able to produce enough classrooms and teachers to service this growing population.”
One of the platforms TETFund evaluated was Anthology® Blackboard, and to do so they worked with Pole Global Marketing (PGM), an Anthology channel partner in Nigeria.
Nigeria is the biggest economy in Africa. But it’s still considered an emerging market. An investment in education is an investment in Nigeria, and educational technology can bring that opportunity to people at scale.
Michael Adedeji Ladipo, Country Director and Head of Business, PGM
The Solution
Scaling Up Teaching and Learning with Blackboard
After evaluating multiple LMS options, TETFund chose Blackboard. This decision was made based on not only the platform itself, but also its array of innovative, advanced features; solid infrastructure; and scalability, all powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). TETFund also appreciated Anthology’s strong presence in Africa and familiarity with the local education market.
We need to invest in technology. We need to invest in human capacity development. We need to pick the right partnerships [and] the right technology to do so. We must pick the best. You go to [the] top of the class—which is why we went to Blackboard.
Arc. Sonny T. Echono - Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund
“The amount of research and development that Anthology puts into their product is extensive,” said Ladipo. “I mean, they’re UNESCO’s education partner […] they’re AWS education partners as well […] and when it comes to cloud services, they’re number one. So we are getting the best all around.”
TETFund’s first project in this massive undertaking of making Blackboard available for students and faculty at over 280 institutions throughout the country was to digitize courses, and Echono cites the implementation of Blackboard as the most important progress they’ve made thus far, with more to come. “We will harness the full potential of technology in education,” he said.
Insights Delivered
Training and Onboarding Across a Nation
TETFund has hit the ground running with the deployment of Blackboard and is working towards getting even more instructors and learners trained and ready to use the platform.
“We intend to make use of Blackboard to really improve our teaching and learning environment,” said Joseph Odo, the director of information and communication technology at TETFund. “Currently we’ve exceeded onboarding more than 1.5 million users, both teachers and students, and we’re targeting to onboard more than 6 million to make use of this platform.”
With Blackboard, TETFund is expanding access to higher education to learners all over the country who might not have been able to partake in it otherwise, whether due to shortages of teachers or physical infrastructure or due to living in more remote, rural areas. And the TETFund team knows exactly how crucial education is for Nigeria. “The benefits to our economy in terms of rapid economic growth, in terms of the quality of our manpower and the productivity of our workforce, are unquantifiable,” said Echono.
We look forward to…rededicating ourselves to the service of the country and to also ensure that we see through the programs we’ve designed with Anthology and Blackboard.
Arc. Sonny T. Echono, Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund
Epilogue
In the words of Echono, Nigeria’s future is “very bright” given the educational opportunities that are being expanded across the country. Anthology is proud to be TETFund’s partner in this crucial work, and we are honored to have been nominated for Amazon’s AWS Education Technology Partner of the Year - Global for our role.
“Anthology’s work with TETFund demonstrates what is possible when EdTech is leveraged on a large scale, and when it is used to expand opportunities and access to education,” said Nicolas Albouze, regional vice president for Africa at Anthology. “This is precisely what we mean by the Power of Together: when all of us around the world work in partnership for the betterment of students, educators, and the global community, great things are possible.”
TETFund’s work continues, and Anthology will be with them every step of the way. “Nigeria has every opportunity with the right steps, the kind of leadership, the type of support we’re getting. I see us in a few years taking our rightful place as one of the top countries in the world,” said Echono.
