Always on
This project successfully funded on 5th January 2026, you can still support them with a donation.
This project successfully funded on 5th January 2026, you can still support them with a donation.
Co-create next-generation open digital maths textbooks for new competency-based curriculums with students, teachers and caregivers.
UK-based charity SAMI (Supporting African Maths Initiatives) is providing support for a multi-year innovation collaboration that has developed—and is now preparing to introduce—affordable, accessible digital mathematics textbooks for secondary school students to meet the new STEM education standards of Kenya’s Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) and equip a rising generation with essential 21st-century STEM skills.
This initiative was conceived by partners at INNODEMS, a Kenyan technology social enterprise founded by mathematical scientists with backgrounds in mathematics education, and the Kenyan Maths Society in response to challenges observed in the implementation of the CBC. The cutting edge technologies emerged from the American Institute of Mathematics workshop held in Kisumu, Kenya in the summer of 2024. Associated financial and mission support from the US Embassy enabled the project to kick off towards the end of 2024. Work has been ongoing in 2025 despite challenges emerging from funding being pulled because of the initiative’s “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” language, specifically a mission to make quality maths education inclusive and accessible to all.
SAMI is fundraising to meet an immediate need for emergency funding to support the digital textbooks’ pilot launch.
With 70% of the population in sub-Saharan Africa under the age of 30, the UN has identified Africa as a global centre of innovation and economic growth. A mathematically-skilled workforce is essential to achieving economic inclusion and for developing innovative solutions to the most pressing social and environmental challenges, including climate change. An increasing number of African countries are introducing new competency-based curriculums to ensure students have the skills to access new and emerging professional opportunities.
Affordable, sustainable open education technology and resources are proving invaluable in overcoming regional constraints to improve STEM education across Africa. SAMI collaborates with global and regional innovation and implementation partners to develop and deliver cost-effective, accessible technologies and resources to make cutting-edge, evidence-based mathematics education available to everyone.
Developed over the past year with pilot funding from the US Embassy, the cutting-edge, evidence-based digital textbooks have been designed by INNODEMS, with support from UK-based technology social enterprise IDEMS, to meet the demands of the CBC. The textbooks are developed on the foundations of two open-source innovations: STACK online maths assessment (developed by the University of Edinburgh and now in use by more than 2000 universities) and PreTeXt textbooks creation and markup technology.
The digital textbooks—conceived by maths educators and built to support adaptation and customisation by local educators—aim to replace an existing landscape of outdated, inadequate and often prohibitively expensive print textbooks.
Now these pioneering digital textbooks—with ambitions to expand the innovation, deliver evidence of impact, and scale into more than a dozen additional African countries with newly-introduced competency-based curriculums—are in peril.
Immediate support of £10,000 can sustain the digital textbooks pilot by replacing lost funding. With more ambitious long-term funding, an existing global collaboration of maths educators, impact technology experts, and education researchers can scale pioneering tech-enabled programming designed to give everyone access to the highest quality mathematics education.
There is an urgent need for £10,000 to bridge the immediate, short-term funding gap created by the change in US policy. An additional £50,000 will enable INNODEMS to pilot and iteratively improve digital textbooks innovation in co-development with local students and teachers.
SAMI believes this unforeseen funding gap can be turned into an opportunity to use crowdfunding to break existing and historic dependencies on large global funders and external research teams. A global consortium, including local African stakeholders, has ambitions to advance (through co-creation) the underlying technologies, gather the research evidence of impact, and adaptively scale the new digital textbooks across variable African country contexts. Crowdfunding enables SAMI to center African stakeholders and interests even in this collaborative context that includes global NGOs, researchers, and other experts.
The funding goals are:
The textbook project originated from the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) workshop held in Kenya in 2024, and an initial grant from the US embassy in Kenya. To learn more about this story and the ambitious goals, listen to the podcast below.
Developing Pan-African Digital Maths Textbooks and its Challenges
SAMI (Supporting African Maths Initiatives) helps students across Africa to extend their understanding of maths.
SAMI is a UK-based charity dedicated to improving access to and quality of mathematics education in Africa. They support initiatives such as maths camps and clubs at school and university level, as well as technological developments in mathematics and statistics.
They work with passionate individuals and organisations locally to provide the expertise and funding necessary to implement sustainable, high-impact solutions where they are needed the most.
Learn more about SAMI and its team.
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SAMI will expand on funding projects and goals as there is progression through the crowdfunding goals.
If US funders with 501(c)(3) requirements are interested in supporting, SAMI works with a US mathematics nonprofit able to accept donations.
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made