Three million Kenyan students are now actively using digital learning platforms aligned to the Competency-Based Curriculum, the Ministry of Education confirmed in its mid-year sector report released last week, marking what education officials are calling a structural shift in how teaching and learning occurs across the country’s 33,000 primary and secondary schools.
The figure — up from approximately 800,000 in 2023 — reflects a confluence of falling data costs, expanded school connectivity under the government’s Last Mile Connectivity Programme, device availability through both government procurement and the private market, and an explosion in CBC-specific digital content produced by Kenyan ed-tech companies responding to the curriculum transition that began in 2017.
The Platforms Driving Adoption
Several domestic platforms have emerged as market leaders. Zeraki Learning, founded in Nairobi in 2019, now serves over 800,000 students across 4,200 schools with a platform that provides CBC-aligned lesson content, automated teacher performance analytics, and parent progress reports delivered via SMS and WhatsApp. The company raised USD 5 million in Series A funding in early 2026 and is already expanding into Uganda and Tanzania, following the East African Community’s decision in 2025 to recognise the Kenyan CBC framework as a regional curriculum model.
Longhorn Publishers’ digital arm, which has digitised its entire CBC textbook catalogue, reports 650,000 active student licences — driven partly by a government bulk procurement arrangement under which the Ministry of Education purchased digital access for students in 1,200 underserved schools at a negotiated Ksh 400 per student per year. Eneza Education’s mobile-first platform, which delivers curriculum content via basic phone SMS alongside a smartphone app, continues to serve rural learners in areas where smartphones and data remain unaffordable, with 420,000 registered users in counties including Turkana, Wajir, and Tana River.
The platforms are generating data that was previously unavailable to Kenya’s education system. Teachers using Zeraki can see, at lesson level, which learning outcomes their students are struggling with. The Ministry’s education analytics team, for the first time, has granular near-real-time data on learning outcomes by school, sub-county, and county — not just end-of-year examination results that historically arrived too late to inform teaching interventions.
Infrastructure: The Remaining Gap
Cabinet Secretary for Education Julius Ogamba acknowledged at the report launch that digital adoption remains highly uneven. In Nairobi, Kiambu, and Mombasa, some schools report near-universal student device access, with teachers routinely integrating platforms into daily lesson delivery. In contrast, schools in Marsabit, Isiolo, and much of North Eastern remain largely offline, limited by electricity reliability, connectivity costs, and the absence of affordable devices.
“We have three million students benefiting, and we have celebrating to do,” Ogamba said. “We also have 15 million students who are not yet benefiting, and we have urgent work to do.” The government’s digital devices procurement programme — which targeted delivery of 800,000 student tablets by mid-2026 — has delivered approximately 520,000 to date, with procurement disputes accounting for the shortfall.
Teacher Training as the Critical Variable
Education researchers are consistent in identifying teacher readiness as the binding constraint on ed-tech impact. A Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development study published in March 2026 found that student outcomes on digital platforms improved by 34 per cent when teachers received structured professional development on platform integration, versus platforms provided to students without corresponding teacher training.
The Kenya National Union of Teachers has called for paid professional development time built into the school timetable specifically for digital skills — a request the Ministry has partially accommodated through a new Friday afternoon slot at schools piloting the digital integration programme. As the CBC itself continues to mature through successive grade cohorts, the ed-tech ecosystem is maturing alongside it: a convergence that, if properly resourced and managed, could position Kenya’s students for the digital economy their government has promised them.
0 comments