Pikin Tab — Imagine Worldwide's Solar-Powered Tablet Learning Programme in Sierra Leone

Nearly 90% of Sierra Leonean children are unable to read and understand a simple sentence by age 10, a foundational-learning crisis rooted in overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages and rural areas with no electricity or internet connectivity.

Imagine Worldwide, in partnership with Sierra Leone's Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education (MBSSE) since 2023, aims to deliver adaptive literacy and numeracy learning directly in rural classrooms without requiring grid power or internet connectivity.

Solar-powered tablets loaded with offline, adaptive literacy and numeracy software are placed in classrooms, mainly in the rural districts of Kailahun, Kenema and Karene. Each child works at their own pace with an on-screen teacher avatar, with lessons built around locally relevant content. The programme is scaling toward 217,000 children across 751 schools by the end of 2026.

Programme data show that after one year of use, twice as many children reach the 20-words-per-minute threshold marking emergent reading fluency, compared with children not using the software. This mirrors a wider evidence base: nine independent randomised controlled trials of Imagine Worldwide's model, run across Malawi, Sierra Leone and Tanzania -- where the model collectively reaches more than 700,000 children a year -- have found consistent gains in reading, maths, attendance and enrolment.

The model depends on continued philanthropic funding to install hardware and cover running costs before responsibility rolls over to government systems school by school; a comparable tablet-based programme in rural Burkina Faso was shut down when its funding lapsed, a caution worth weighing against Sierra Leone's stronger government co-ownership plan.