Africa must put teachers and children at the centre of the AI education revolution

Artificial intelligence is advancing into classrooms with a speed that few education systems are prepared to manage. It promises personalised learning, improved lesson preparation, faster assessment and relief from the administrative burdens that consume teachers’ time. Yet it also presents serious dangers, particularly when technology is introduced without competent teachers, ethical safeguards or regard for children’s development.

I therefore find myself in strong agreement with Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who has argued that teachers must lead the transformation of education in the age of artificial intelligence.

Her message is both simple and profound. Education must be directed by teachers, not by machines, technology companies or algorithms. As she memorably put it, society should choose the equivalent of a GPS system rather than a driverless car. AI should help educators navigate; it should not remove them from the driver’s seat.

This principle is especially important for Nigeria and Africa.

Too often, African countries import technology without first building the institutions, skills and governance systems required to use it responsibly. We purchase hardware, subscribe to foreign platforms and announce ambitious digital programmes, but frequently neglect teacher training, curriculum reform, data protection, infrastructure and sustained implementation.

The danger is that AI could become another technology that is available to privileged urban schools while millions of children in rural and low-income communities remain without qualified teachers, electricity, internet connectivity, textbooks or functional classrooms.

AI must not widen Africa’s existing education divide.

“Teachers must understand what generative AI is, what it can and cannot do, how it produces answers, why it sometimes fabricates information, how bias enters automated systems and how pupils’ personal information should be protected.”

Weingarten’s support for the National Academy for AI Instruction in New York offers a useful model. Established with the involvement of the American Federation of Teachers, the United Federation of Teachers, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic, the initiative was designed to provide teachers with practical AI training and curricula, beginning with educators in New York before expanding more broadly.

Nigeria requires its own version of this initiative. Such an initiative could be spearheaded by some states and federal government colleges, such as Government College, Umuahia, which has been taken over by the Old Boys Association of the school and run collaboratively with a trust established by the Old Boys and the Abia State Government. Kings College Lagos, Federal Government College Warri, and Barewa College, Kaduna, could also serve as pilot projects in their various geopolitical regions.

The Federal Ministry of Education, state governments, teachers’ unions, universities, technology companies and responsible private-sector organisations should establish a National Academy for AI and Digital Teaching. Its first responsibility should not be distributing AI applications to children. It should be preparing teachers.

Teachers must understand what generative AI is, what it can and cannot do, how it produces answers, why it sometimes fabricates information, how bias enters automated systems and how pupils’ personal information should be protected.

They must also be trained to use AI for lesson planning, differentiated instruction, translation into local languages, preparation of teaching materials, identification of learning difficulties and reduction of repetitive administrative work.

But the teacher must remain an accountable professional.

AI may suggest a lesson plan, but the teacher must determine whether it is accurate, culturally appropriate and suitable for the pupils. AI may generate an assessment, but a teacher must evaluate whether it measures genuine understanding. AI may offer personalised assistance, but it cannot replace the encouragement, discipline, empathy and moral guidance that children receive from responsible adults.

Weingarten has consistently maintained that AI should supplement rather than supplant educators. She has also warned against repeating the mistakes made with social media when society embraced a powerful technology before adequately confronting its effects on children.

That warning should resonate throughout Africa. We must distinguish between digital education and uncontrolled digital exposure. Giving a child unrestricted access to a smartphone, social media or an AI chatbot is not the same as educating that child for a digital future.

The United Kingdom has recently taken significant steps in this direction. The precise British policy is not a general prohibition preventing everyone under 16 from owning or using a mobile phone. Rather, the UK government has announced that social-media companies will be prohibited from providing specified social-media services to children under 16. The measures are expected to cover major platforms that allow users to post and interact publicly, while ordinary messaging services such as WhatsApp are not expected to be included in the same way.

The British government has also made its mobile-phone guidance for schools statutory. From September 2026, schools in England are expected to prohibit pupils’ use of mobile phones throughout the school day, including during lessons, between lessons, at breaktime and during lunch, subject to necessary exceptions.

This is the correct policy distinction for Nigeria to study.

Nigeria should not merely announce an unrealistic nationwide ban that cannot be enforced. It should adopt a practical, age-sensitive framework. Mobile phones should generally remain switched off and securely stored throughout the school day. Social media access for children below 16 should be substantially restricted, with enforceable age-assurance obligations placed on platforms. Parents should be encouraged to delay giving children unrestricted smartphones, while schools should provide controlled access to digital tools for genuine educational purposes.

Young children need direct human interaction, reading, critical thinking, physical activity, experimentation, conversation and play. They should not spend their formative years scrolling through addictive feeds or treating AI companions as substitutes for friendship, family and teachers.

Weingarten’s “devices down, eyes up, hands-on” philosophy is therefore highly relevant to Africa. Her proposals emphasise human connection, critical thinking, collaboration and practical learning. She has also argued against unsupervised, student-facing AI in elementary schools and supported a ban on so-called social-companion chatbots for children below 16.

Nigeria should develop a graduated national framework for AI in education. In primary schools, AI should principally be a teacher-facing tool. At secondary school level, pupils may gradually use approved AI applications under educator supervision while learning fact-checking, source evaluation, responsible prompting, privacy, intellectual honesty and the limitations of automated systems. At the tertiary level, students should be prepared to use AI professionally without surrendering independent thought.

We must also protect the dignity and economic security of teachers. The promise of AI must not become an excuse to reduce investment in educators. Nigeria already has an inadequate teacher-to-pupil ratio and serious shortages of qualified teachers in many subjects and communities. Technology cannot compensate for decades of underinvestment in education.

The essential purpose of education remains the cultivation of knowledge, judgement and character. As Weingarten observed, the AI revolution does not change the responsibility of schools to teach children how to think and to give them sufficient knowledge to think well.

Africa must embrace AI, but it must do so on its own developmental terms. We need African educational content, local-language models, culturally relevant curricula, affordable connectivity and strong child-protection standards. We need sovereign control over sensitive education data and transparent rules governing technology vendors. Most importantly, we need teachers who are respected, properly trained and placed at the centre of reform.

The choice before Africa is not between technology and teachers. It is between poorly governed technology that weakens education and responsibly deployed technology that strengthens teachers and expands opportunity.

AI can help transform African education. But only human beings can determine the values, purposes and direction of that transformation.

The teacher must remain in the driver’s seat, the child must remain at the centre, and technology must remain a tool.

Sonny Iroche is the CEO of one of the leading AI consulting & strategy firms in Nigeria, GenAI Learning Concepts Ltd. He is an Oxford-trained AI expert and a member of both the Technical Working Group of UNESCO AI Readiness Assessment Methodology and Nigeria’s National AI Strategy Committee.