Burundi's educational system is facing numerous challenges that prevent the development of quality education : insuficiency of infrstructures and qualified staff, insuficient and inadequate teaching aids and documentation sources for teachers and students, lack of digital tools in most of the schools, unfinished reforms and so on. While ICTs are part of the curriculum since elementary school, children are deprived of the adequate tools, and are therfore cut off from the World.

In this context, between february 2018 and february 2019,  AMADE, FVS - Friend of children and Bibliothèques Sans Frontières (Libraries Without Borders) set up a pilot project of access to digital education called "Capacity building for Matana schools to improve the quality of teaching and strengthen social cohesion". During the project, 3 Koombooks kits, each one composed of digital tablets with content adapted to the Burundese curriculum, were deployed in four schools : secondary school  ECOREF, Matana high school, Matana communal high school and ECOFO, and different Solidarity Groups around Matana. In one year, those 3 Koombooks registered over 5 000 uses.

On the teachers' side, a positive evolution was noticed regarding their pedagogic practices thanks to an access to diverse and adapted contents and the enhencement of their competences. As for the students, an increase in the class participation, wether in the preparation, animation or restition lessons was noticed at the end of the pilot phase. They seem more motivated and better understand and withhold the acquired knowledge.

The digital libraries also managed to build the Solidarity Groups' capacities, thanks to an improvement of the adequate knowledge to the professionalization of their activities. They were trained to the use of ICTs, something that was seen as inaccessible to this communities until then. Koombooks therefore allowed them to gain a reading culture and a need for learning they did not have before.

The second phase of this project will aim to consolidate the pilot phase by revaluating of what has been acquired and strengthening and perpetuating its activities, around three main axes : Users capacity building via technical and pedagogic trainings, deployment of additional tools and identification and addition of new contents that would be adapted to the expectations and needs of the schools and Solidarity Groups.