Digital Learning Week 2025: Ambassador BAKAYOKO-LY’s Advocacy to Make Digital Education a Universal Right
query_builder 05-09-2025
Paris, UNESCO/CODEMAO – 5 September 2025. On the sidelines of the 2025 Digital Learning Week, H.E. Ms. BAKAYOKO-LY Ramata, Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of Côte d’Ivoire to UNESCO, took part in the parallel session dedicated to “Idea Labs – Learning Coding and Artificial Intelligence in Africa and Asia.”
In her speech, the Permanent Delegate first expressed her gratitude to UNESCO and to its Director-General, Ms. Audrey AZOULAY, for making emerging technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) a major focus of the Africa Priority.
She emphasized that this session takes place in a context of profound transformation of education systems under the influence of digital technology and pursues three main objectives: to reflect on how AI can improve education, to share successful experiences from Africa and Asia, and to identify solutions so that digital technology reduces inequalities rather than exacerbates them.
Comparing AI to a revolution on the scale of the printing press or the Internet, H.E. Ms. BAKAYOKO-LY Ramata highlighted the potential it offers to education, particularly in personalizing learning, reducing inequalities in access, supporting teachers in student monitoring, and preparing young people for the jobs of the future. However, she noted that in many regions of Africa and Asia, millions of students remain deprived of qualified teachers, textbooks, and reliable internet access, underlining the magnitude of the challenges to be overcome.
To illustrate solutions, the Ambassador highlighted the UNESCO-CODEMAO Youth Coding Initiative, an Asia-Africa cooperation in which Côte d’Ivoire is a beneficiary, aimed at making young people true actors of innovation, capable of designing applications useful in the fields of education, health, and agriculture.
In this regard, she praised initiatives already undertaken in Côte d’Ivoire by the Ministry of National Education and Literacy, including: the introduction of ICTs as early as 2012, the training of thousands of teachers through IFADEM-PAPDES, the deployment of the “Mon école à la maison” platform during COVID-19—which has become a lasting tool for over 6.3 million students—and the full digitization of school curricula and large-scale digital exams.
Furthermore, Ambassador BAKAYOKO-LY Ramata highlighted some results of the UNESCO-CODEMAO project in Côte d’Ivoire, including the training of teachers and students, the provision of tablets equipped with CODEMAO software, the organization of AI initiation camps, and the participation of Ivorian youth in exchanges in China. According to her, this Asia-Africa partnership represents a strategic opportunity to share best practices, strengthen young people’s digital skills, and make digital education a universal right, serving a fairer, more sustainable, and more inclusive future.
She concluded her remarks by emphasizing that Asia-Africa cooperation and the creation of a Chair in Artificial Intelligence, Open Sciences, and Humanities at the Virtual University of Côte d’Ivoire (UVCI) reflect the Ivorian government’s determination to make digital technology and AI levers of inclusion, innovation, and sustainable development, in support of a more equitable and inclusive education.
