The potential of AI can’t help educate kids if they’re hungry

Education is always about aspiration. It brings to life the hopes and dreams of children, parents, and communities. It’s about equipping each generation with the skills and knowledge they need to thrive in an ever-changing world.

That is why the potential of AI in education has sparked such intense interest and speculation. It inspires us to dream bigger for our children and for children around the world, to harness the potential it could unlock and to invest time, energy and resources in exploring that potential.

Yet, for far too many around the world, the potential of education remains out of reach. This is because, in far too many cases, regardless of the quality of education or the opportunities it could provide, children aren’t learning because they are hungry, and hungry children can’t learn.

The hard reality is that 400 million children across the world aren’t getting the nutrients they need to grow and thrive, let alone concentrate in school and realize their potential.

Technology and its application have always been essential to improving education.

And at Food4Education, the organization I run, we have always been tech embedded, tech-enabled and tech-empowered, using new technology to help us to feed nearly half a million children in schools every day across Kenya.

Technology enables us to function efficiently, making our services accessible, adaptable and driving our delivery. Our electronic payment system Tap2Eat, an NFC technology powered by mobile money, has revolutionized our operations, replacing cash handling with a seamless tap system. Bringing this system in-house has also allowed us to integrate analytics data to support our operations and track the meals we served and the resources we use. Technology like this and the data it provides, helps us maximize our impact by providing highly nutritious meals to children at the lowest possible cost.

Technology such as this and its application have enabled us to develop a replicable blueprint for school feeding, which over the next five years we plan to export to two new African countries. Our ambition, enabled by technology, is to provide much needed nutrition to three million kids a day across three African countries by 2030.

We can only dream these big dreams because the integration of technology in our model allows us to efficiently and effectively manage our time, energy, and resources, maximizing our impact and delivery.

But the scale of challenge we face is huge. In Africa it is estimated that malnutrition costs around $25 billion annually due to child morbidity, mortality, and the long-term effects of impaired cognitive, physical, and economic development. By 2050 it is projected that 1 in 4 people on the planet will be African and many of them are school children today.

But children cannot learn, grow, or thrive if they are hungry.

If the power of AI can help us better manage our resources, increase our impact, and feed more children in schools then we must and will embrace it. However, if the excitement around AI diverts attention, resources and momentum away from addressing the basics, like feeding children in schools so they can learn, then we, and the children we serve will all be worse off.