How coronavirus crisis reinvented online learning as a necessity

How coronavirus crisis reinvented online learning as a necessity

Fri, 2020-08-21 21:06

CAIRO: In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, 110 million school-aged children stayed at home this term because of school closures, according to UNICEF. The pandemic has led to a regional surge of education technology (edtech) startups filling the gap in place of traditional and workplace settings.

Before the COVID-19 outbreak, edtech in the Middle East received only $1.26 million in funding after a record $20 million was invested in the sector in 2019, according to the startup and investor platform Magnitt.

"This is an exciting time for edtech,“ said Bassil Khattab, co-founder and chief operating officer of Egypt's Zedny, a newly launched Arabic learning and development platform.

"We believe that investors will always be interested in any business that solves a big problem online, and education is of