Can't Wait to Learn: Digital Game-Based Learning for Out-of-School Children in Sudan

Can't Wait to Learn (run locally as e-Learning Sudan) is a self-directed, tablet-based digital game teaching numeracy and literacy to children who have never attended school. Launched in 2014 by UNICEF Sudan, War Child Holland, Ahfad University for Women and Sudan's Ministry of Education, it lets a single facilitator support learners at very different levels without formal teacher training — a design suited to conflict-affected, resource-poor settings.

The programme aims to give out-of-school children in Sudan foundational numeracy, literacy and psychological wellbeing gains through self-paced digital learning games, in states with limited access to formal schooling.

An independent quasi-experimental, mixed-methods evaluation conducted between December 2017 and December 2018 compared 221 children aged 7-9 in White Nile, North Kordofan and Al Qadarif states who used Can't Wait to Learn against children in the government's Alternative Learning Programme. Children using the digital programme improved their maths scores by nearly twice as much and their reading scores by almost 2.7 times as much as the comparison group, alongside gains in psychological wellbeing, corroborated by 33 focus groups and key-informant interviews.

The model has since been adapted by War Child for other crisis-affected countries and UNICEF/War Child Holland set targets of reaching 35,000 out-of-school children in Kassala State and at least 6,000 hard-to-reach children more broadly, though Sudan's civil war since 2023 has disrupted the education system and strained the pace of planned scale-up, so reach figures should be read as cumulative and regional rather than a current national total.