Why technology and education are our key investment areas

What are your immediate thoughts on hearing the words education and technology together? Do you imagine smartboards, iPads, VR learning, and collaborative learning tools like Google Classroom? You’d be right in most instances.

What did I feel when I first thought education and technology? I knew that it was the most critical area for investment and development; this as the 4th Industrial Revolution intensifies and ways of learning become more personal and mobile as we transcend into the future.

In a recent report by thenextweb.com, their concluding comments really demonstrated the always-on demand for the successful alignment of technology and education.

“Technology is increasingly helping educators take that giant leap away from the traditional one size fits all approach to education. Maybe this is something we should learn to celebrate, rather than fear.”

This simply means that the educators/teachers/lecturers can move away from employing a standardised approach to learners and their learning capability. As an enabler, technology delivers a far richer and shared learning experience through the modern tools of online collaboration, realtime information, feedback and access to dynamic current affairs and knowledge. This process further encourages group knowledge sharing and vibrant debate.

Education is about the facilitation of existing knowledge and nurturing of creativity in those seeking to learn. There is an ongoing debate that developing technology platforms to support learning further promote passive consumers rather than active citizens. I think that this premise comes from a general experience of weak tech based learning platforms. While technology giants may acquire information that give them a database of their users, the platforms evolve everyday to personalise learning according to the learner’s behaviour and movements. All while providing high quality information and a platform for development.

At A1 Capital our African and global presence with education and technology as complimentary investment portfolios, positions us to be direct impactive players in a space that will only continue to evolve; always remembering that the central inter-linking component is a human being.
And this is why I invest in education and technology. Learning happens from the cradle to the grave.

And humans adapt or die. And so we adapt as the flow of technology and education streams all pour into the ocean of facilitated knowledge acquisition.