Off to Learn — Offline Blended French Course Nearly Doubles Test Scores for At-Risk Girls in Nouakchott, Mauritania

In Mauritania's bilingual school system, weak French proficiency puts many students at risk of dropping out; in Nouakchott-Nord just 8% of women aged 15-49 have completed secondary school, versus 12% of men. The SAFIA Center in Nouakchott's Dar Naim neighbourhood targets girls whose weak French puts them at risk of leaving school, alongside domestic-work and early-marriage pressures.

Since 2018, UNICEF Mauritania and the Akelius Foundation have delivered a blended, offline, tablet-based French course to raise literacy for at-risk adolescent girls.

Between 2020 and 2022, 160 girls aged 9-16 enrolled in classes of 15, each with her own tablet, for four afternoon hours a week over a three-month cycle, combining 10-minute Akelius app modules with teacher-led instruction; the offline 'MeshNet' feature updates all tablets from one host device over a local wireless network, serving roughly 2,500 users across three Nouakchott centres with no reliable internet. Teachers received a three-day UNICEF induction plus three further training rounds (about 80% hands-on) from the Lebanon-based Ana Aqra Association, with a shared feedback channel to developers.

A UNICEF Innocenti brief (Oct 2023) evaluated 59 girls with complete entry/exit data (Nov 2021-Feb 2022): scores out of 80 rose across every age group, with the largest gains among the youngest and weakest starters — 11-year-olds from 23.5 to 59.5 (+156%) and 12-year-olds from 27.1 to 56.8 (+138%). By competence (out of 20), oral comprehension rose from 6.9 to 17.3 and writing from 7.7 to 16.4; speaking remained the weakest skill (5.8 to 10.8).

The brief is candid about its limits: there was no comparison group, the analysed sample was small (59 of 160 enrolled girls), and 19 of 52 girls (36%) dropped out of a later cohort after seasonal flooding raised transport costs and UNICEF discontinued its school-bus subsidy to build local ownership.