Imagine Worldwide Malawi

Imagine Worldwide (IW) provides software from onebillion to teach numeracy and literacy in Malawi, along with the training, tablets and solar panels required to run it. They plan to fund a six-year scale-up of their currently existing program to cover all 3.5 million children in grades 1-4 by 2028. The Malawi government will provide government employees to help with implementation progressively over the first six years, and will fully own and operate the program after 2028. Children from over 250 schools have already received instruction through the onebillion app in Malawi over the past 8 years, with 225,000 students reached. Five randomized controlled trials of the program have found learning gains of roughly 0.4 standard deviations. The onebillion software has also undergone over five additional RCTs in a broad range of contexts with comparable or better results.

What is the problem?

Half of the world’s children cannot read with comprehension after finishing primary school. The situation is particularly bad in low income countries. Overcrowding and lack of resources in the Malawi school system lead to only 10% of children achieving reading proficiency by age 10. The situation is similar with math, with 19% of students still scoring zero on Standard 1 math benchmarks by Standard 4. The average classroom size in Malawi is 111 students.

Why do we recommend them?

IW generates some of the largest and most rigorously evaluated learning gains of any organization we have identified. A Copenhagen Consensus report has found their program to be the most cost-effective education intervention in Malawi. We trust this organization to scale effectively because of its commitment to rigorous evaluation, performing eight randomized controlled trials since 2018.

IW has developed a strong partnership with the government of Malawi and local education experts. The Malawi government has announced its intention to partner with IW to take over implementation of the program at the UN General Assembly. After the six year scale-up, the government of Malawi will cover all costs, allowing donors to IW to leverage their funding by catalyzing longer-term impacts through government implementation.

We believe that this program has the potential to be extremely scalable. Most children in LMICs could benefit from IW’s model. The software can be provided at close to zero marginal cost. The low hardware costs are likely to decline as IW benefits from economies of scale, and moves into areas that have consistent access to electricity and don’t need to install solar panels. The onebillion software is also more likely than other education interventions to maintain efficacy as the program spreads. The software is more likely to deliver consistent instruction than human-led interventions, and it has already been demonstrated to work in diverse contexts.