At Blooming Flowers Academy in Kitengela, Francis Kihato has noticed a change since the introduction of a new learning tool at the school earlier this year.

“One of the things you’ll learn when you come to the school is that it is quiet. It’s a quiet school because every kid is concentrating,” says Francis, the school’s founder.

The reason the learners are concentrating is they are working using tablets loaded with LoHo Learning, a digital learning platform.

When he established the school, Francis wanted the learners to start interacting with technology as early as possible to make learning easier. For him, the goal is to have a smart Junior Secondary School by the beginning of 2025.

And so, he reached out to Safaricom and requested 200 tablets for the school. The school received 40 tablets, but as the year progresses, they will order more as the need arises.

The tablets come preloaded with educational content, including Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) approved books. The LoHo Learning app can be downloaded on a smartphone from Google Play. Once you sign up, you can easily access learning material from the My Library tab, which keeps a record of what the learner has been reading. Students can also discover more books on the app by searching from various categories like Revision, and other subjects like English, Kiswahili, Mathematics and so on.

With LoHo Learning, the learners carry their entire library and other reading material on their tablets, they raise their hands electronically in class, and parents help them with their homework in real-time via their smartphones.

The application has made learning fun for the kids and improved their social interactions even more because of the collaborative features for group projects.

“Digital Learning has made the learners more attentive and joyful in the learning process. We access a wide range of digital content with interactive features, such as ebooks, videos, quizzes, interactive lessons, scientific simulations, and even games,” says student leader Shekinah Baraka.

The edu-tech platform was developed by Longhorn Publishers, which has been providing educational and creative books in Kenya since its establishment in 1965.

In 2016, Longhorn began making plans to develop an e-learning platform and move its content and learning tools to a digital format. In 2024, it launched the edu-tech platform LoHo Learning.

LoHo Learning is among e-learning platforms that seek to combine the involvement of parents in learning and the reality of the digital age.

Other than empowering students, teachers and schools with digital learning solutions, the platform was made to resolve the issues of accessibility, affordability, and inclusivity and provide data for learning.

To bring the digital learning platform to life, Safaricom joined the project as the technology partner.

“Digital Learning is a concept whose time has come. At Safaricom, we have been engaged in transforming education in various forms and shapes,” says Lillian Momanyi, a product manager at Safaricom.

In the project, Safaricom is providing tablets and digital financing using the Lipa Mdogo Mdogo approach, where the user makes payments regularly.

“We are offering a specific education bundle that will be consumed every time learners use the content. We’re also providing device insurance because we know the devices are going to be handled by minors,” Lilian says.

For the project, Safaricom’s long-term strategy is to equip private schools with 150,000 tablets and public schools with 1.5 million tablets in the next 18 months.

While digital learning has a promising future in the education sector, the cost of tablets could make them inaccessible.

The device and the content cost about KSh13,000, and KSh200 gives you about 5GB worth of data.

“It is a very costly exercise. It requires a lot of cooperation from Safaricom and LoHo together with the parents because buying a gadget at KSh11,000 is way beyond what a school can afford and the cost weighs heavy on parents. So, if we could come up with a gadget that is affordable, as little as KSh5,000, that would really have a breakthrough within the whole idea of digital learning,” says Mr Kihato.