The platform is the result of important reforms announced by the government earlier this year. 

Last Friday, Niger launched its national portal for unified access to digital educational resources. The platform, dubbed Edu-Niger, was inaugurated by the Minister of National Education, Prof. Ibrahim Natatou (photo, center).  It aims to improve the quality of education and enhance planning and management. 

According to Prof. Ibrahim Natatou, this major platform is one of the digital projects already undertaken by the government. "The portal integrates an intranet messaging system and also allows users to request leaves or permissions without [wasting time] going from one office to another with the [written] request,” he said. 

"Edu-Niger" was set up to correct certain flaws in the education system such as the lack of information and reliable statistics on the sector, slow administrative procedures, and the lack of communication between actors, partners, and parents. It offers several services allowing parties to complete processes to create public and private schools, transfer students from one school to another, create school canteens or take part in two public examinations (BEPC and BAC). 

Its library open to the public allows access to educational resources  (annals, tests, vignettes, various exercises, capsules, guided tours, etc), and administrative resources (communiqués, decrees, decisions, etc.).

The platform is a result of the Niger-LIRE project (Learning improvement for results in education), an initiative of the Nigerien government financed by the World Bank to the tune of US$140 million. It is part of the overall strategy to digitalize the whole education system.  

Samira Njoya