Efekta has launched a new initiative aimed at improving English proficiency and communication among teachers and students at secondary schools across Somalialand, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Kenya.

Efekta has teamed up with the Pharo Foundation, which works to improve economic development in Africa, to work with students and teachers at Pharo Foundation schools.

The first phase of the program, which launched last month, sees all Pharo primary and secondary school teachers gain access to Efekta’s AI English language learning platform. In the second phase, launching early this year, students studying at Pharo secondary schools in Somalialand and Ethiopia will gain access to the platform.

It follows a similar initiative in Latin America, where some 750,000 students in Paraná, Brazil used Efekta’s AI language learning platform to score a 32% improvement on the state’s standardised English test after using the platform between 2022 and 2024.

Chris McCormick, the company’s chief academic officer, spoke to The PIE News about the importance of equipping teachers with the right knowledge to empower their students.

“We work in a lot of school contexts and higher education contexts where not only learners but also teachers, and very often school systems, want to know how their teachers are doing and what kind of professional development they need to top up their English… to help lift up their learners,” he said.

“We’re trying to upskill a population of the workforce, which will then have that multiplier effect of upskilling the school students as well.”

We’re trying to upskill a population of the workforce, which will then have that multiplier effect of upskilling the school students as well
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Efekta also works with over 3,000 leading businesses worldwide to train their employees and make sure their English language skills are up to scratch.

“We also work in partnership with many of the leading companies in the world and they use it for their own recruitment or for their own professional development discussions,” McCormick said. “It just gives you that evidence so that you can make the decisions on how to invest your time and what to prioritise.”

And he told The PIE that EF SET takers are increasingly using the test as a benchmarking tool to check their language skills before taking other language tests that are frequently used for education admission purposes. If a user scores low on the EF SET, they can then go away and improve on their skills before investing in another exam, McCormick suggested.

“You do need to spend a little bit more time before making that investment, especially for the high-stakes exams where a certain threshold has to be met,” he said.