Kedumetse Liphi is a social entrepreneur at heart. When he was young, he grew up with a burning curiosity to build and understand how things work. He wanted to study electronic engineering, but his grades were not high enough to be admitted to the University of Botswana. But he didn’t let this setback affect him. He didn’t want to settle for anything else and knew that he would do something that would change the world. In 2011, he joined the army to make money so that he could sponsor himself to do an electronics course part-time. Over time, he completed the engineering course and developed his skills enough to register his own enterprise with which he started to repair phones and laptops.
But he still wanted to use his skills for more.
One day, he came across a student walking on the street and carrying books in a plastic rice bag. He offered the student a ride home and found out that they were living in extreme poverty and without access to electricity. One of the biggest challenges for this student, like many others in the area, was that they did not have access to light, preventing them from studying at night. Although their parents valued education, they did not have enough money to burn kerosene so that the student could have enough light to study at home.
“When we returned to the office, we said we have identified another problem. How can we assist this student?” Kedumetse Liphi shares. After conducting R & D and looking at what solutions exist, Kedumetse’s team developed the Chedza Solar Backpack.
The Chedza Solar Backpack is a durable and waterproof backpack that harnesses and stores solar energy, enabling students to charge their devices through a USB port and access light to study at night. This innovation not only supports education but also reduces reliance on fossil fuels, and improves quality of life. So far, over 10,000 backpacks have been distributed to students in off-grid areas, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
Azima’s origin story is similar - demonstrating how innovators see challenges and rise to the occasion.
Jusoor runs education centres for displaced Syrian children in Lebanon. During COVID-19, they knew that they would have to close down the centres - so acted quickly to find an alternative solution. They re-wrote and condensed their yearly education plan and tailored it so that teachers could use Whatsapp to teach students remotely. In the first phase of this project, they realised that parental involvement was critical to supporting students. They needed to provide parents with strategies for dealing with their children while living in a tent - the reality of many refugee families.
In response, they developed video lessons for parents to teach them how to organise a time table for their kids to take turns using the phone and how to provide them with psychosocial support during challenging times. Parents are encouraged to help their children relax and maintain their calm instead of scolding and/or punishing them. This programme had a huge positive impact - children had much more positive attitudes towards their learning when their parents began acting differently with them.
Seeing the profound impact that bringing learning directly into the home can have for refugee children resulted in the birth of Azima.
Now, Azima is also being used to bring learning to students who cannot physically attend the education centres for a variety of reasons such as physical disabilities, living in remote areas, or girls who are restricted from leaving the house.
We can reach out to children who would have never have had a chance of getting an education at all in their lives.
For example, Mona and Ola are two young girls living in a refugee camp in Bekaa, Lebanon. They cannot attend school because they were both born with a paralysis that hinders the growth of their lower bodies. Azima has given them the opportunity to learn remotely by providing them with a smartphone and internet bundle so that they can access education from home.
Learn more about Mona and Ola's story
Another example of a child studying with Azima is a young boy who works as a shepherd. Due to his work, he cannot attend school during the day. But he has been learning mathematics with Azima in the evening. Through these mathematics lessons, he learned how to convert currency which helped him to realise that people who were buying things from him were scamming him. So education through Azima has been greatly beneficial for him as the skills he has learned translate directly into helping him run his business.
These stories demonstrate the magic of bringing education to people who do not have access to. Suha Tutunji explains the secret sauce of Azima as, “the fact that we can reach out to children who would have never have had a chance of getting an education at all in their lives. Even if it’s something simple… This is the secret of it. Always giving hope.”
But education does not stop there.
Mosaik Education advocates that the right to education does not end at 18 years old, and that refugees should be provided access to education beyond basic compulsory schooling for as long as they wish. The focus of their Guidance Programme is to support refugees to access tertiary education by providing information on different further education options and skills training needed to apply (e.g., CV writing, interview preparation, etc.).
Discover Walid's story, and how The Guidance Programme helped him to pursue his dream.
The Guidance Programme works with local organisations or individuals who are already active in refugee communities to adapt and contextualise their programme for their target audience. Their programme can be delivered in three ways: at a local learning centre with IT facilities; through online remote workshops; or via WhatsApp with an AI-driven learning system. The variety of delivery options allow students to choose the option that works best for them.
Within all of their graduate cohorts, they have found that 69% of students apply the skills they have learned and 36% are admitted to tertiary education within 6 months. The most remarkable impact of this programme is the butterfly effect that this programme has on the community. In a tracer study conducted on students from the past 5-6 years, they found that 70% of those that were part of the study reported having informally passed on the skills they learned to others in the community.
As a result, Mosaik Education is working on co-designing a pillar of the programme that builds on the organic peer to peer mentorship that is occurring amongst youth. Next year, they plan to focus on partnerships with universities to help them understand the challenges of students from a displacement background and support their admission.
Want to learn more about education innovations? Check out the Global Collection 2026 report or Explore the Collection.
