Geoffrey Alphonso, CEO of Alef Education, Explores the Evolving Edtech Scene in the Middle East
Edtech has grown fast in recent years, and new products and services keep appearing all over the world. In the Middle East, one of the names leading that growth is Alef Education. Founded in 2017, the company runs a digital learning platform that gives students a more personal, tailored education, and it now reaches more than 690,000 students and 4,000 schools. Its CEO, Geoffrey Alphonso, is excited about where education is heading.
Alphonso notes, “The education landscape in the Middle East gives me reason for optimism. Across the region, there are impressive plans to position the Middle East at the forefront of educational advancements, with edtech playing a critical role in this transformation.”
COVID-19 gave edtech a huge push and changed how people use and think about technology in schools. “Suddenly, everybody had to teach and learn online, and parents were brought back into the learning ecosystem,” Alphonso says. By then Alef had already spent three years using technology and data science to improve teaching and learning, so it was ready. Its platform takes admin work off teachers’ plates, gives them real-time data and insights, and supplies good teaching materials. That was exactly what schools needed during the pandemic, and it kept students moving forward.
Since then, Alef has added new products and won more users. Thousands of schools now use it, in the UAE, Indonesia, the US, Egypt and Morocco among other places, and the company keeps bringing out new ideas. Recent launches include Adaptive Pathways, Product Pathways and a Web3 Metaverse project, which was set to be piloted in UAE schools from January 2023.
Alef cares about how people actually use what it builds, so it supports students and teachers as well as making the technology. “Our student-centric user experiences are designed to be easy to adopt for educators. We invest a considerable amount of time and effort into training and supporting them on digital pedagogy and how to get the best from the platform,” Alphonso says.
Teachers are at the heart of Alef’s mission. The company sees them as the guardians of the classroom. “We aim to ‘super serve’ educators so they can deliver improved learning outcomes,” Alphonso says. With edtech on their side, students and schools across the Middle East are seeing good results, and that leaves him hopeful: “I’m energized by the developments and innovations that I see in the region and excited for the future that we can provide children.”
