AI is increasingly reshaping classrooms across East Africa. What does it cost when teachers are left out of the room where it's decided?
The Teacher’s Ed Tech Summit, Teaching & Thriving : Reclaiming Joy, Dignity and Power in the Age of AI.
Across East Africa, the ultimate success of curriculum reforms, AI initiatives, and ed-tech
investments, ultimately depends on one person, the teacher in the classroom. Yet they are too often excluded from developing the very policies and technologies that shape their work. The result: reforms and strategies that stall at the classroom door, and tools teachers simply don't need.
This exclusion matters because of what it costs. Research from OECD identifies teacher agency,the ability of teachers to make informed professional decisions, individually and collectively, as a critical driver of both teacher professionalism and improved student outcomes. When teachers have the agency, trust, and professional voice to adapt curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment to their learners, implementation holds. When they don't, even sound policy fails at the point of contact with real learners. An education system that produces whole, thriving learners in an ever-evolving world cannot be realised if the people delivering that education feel disempowered or unequipped to adapt resources and methods to the learners in front of them.
This problem has always existed. But a new dynamic is making it urgent. AI is increasingly reshaping classrooms across East Africa, and Kenya has not yet established a coherent national framework for it. Policy discussions are happening without teacher representation, and without local evidence on classroom impact, deepening exclusion, at exactly the moment its cost is highest. As a result, teachers become implementers rather than co-creators of innovation, further disconnecting policy ambition from classroom reality.
So we broke the silos
We put policymakers, teachers, government, and local innovators in one room. The Teachers'
EdTech Summit 2026 was built for exactly this: a space where teachers stop being the last to
know, and start being the first to shape. Here's what unfolded.
1.Reflecting on policies.
Teachers sat alongside government and policy representatives, TSC & KICD in the same room, for conversations that don't happen nearly often enough. Reclaiming teacher agency and power meant more than talking about policy; it meant holding a shared and trust-bound space to hear directly from the teachers the same policies are meant to serve.
2.Building agency through problem solving.
We dissected the real dynamics and challenges AI brings into the classroom through
Human-Centred Design; the Metis Way, to turn real classroom challenges into actionable,
context-aware solutions. What came out of that work wasn't cast in stone. These were prototypes teachers could carry into their own contexts, adapt to their own learners, and use to lead change from exactly where they stand.
3.Building the skills to lead.
We cannot change what we are not aware of. So the day included practical, hands-on sessions in foundational AI and digital literacy, designed for the reality of Kenyan classrooms, covering AI and tech literacy, its responsible use, and building the confidence to use and shape how it will be used in their classrooms.
"Teachers who don't use technology will be replaced by those who do. But technology will not replace teachers."
Dr. Maina wa Gĩokõ, Facilitator & Metis Fellow
4.Centering teacher wellbeing.
None of this can be realized without centering the wellbeing of the people at the heart of the
work, it's contingent on it. We hosted a breakout session on what it actually feels like to teach in this era: the workload, the expectations from parents and schools, the pressures teachers carry, and whether, and how, those pressures get projected onto learners alongside practical
strategies to manage them.The conversation drew perspectives spanning veteran educators to Gen Z teachers newest to the profession, a reminder that every voice at that table matters.
It doesn’t stop here; this is ecosystem work
This isn't a one-off. It's something we build together, and it won't be carried by any single
organisation. This is ecosystem work, and it takes an ecosystem to pull off. It will happen when policymakers, ed-solution builders, school leaders, and teachers keep connecting and
strengthening it. Metis exists to be that connective tissue, building the spaces that make it
possible.
The Teachers' EdTech Summit 2026 was held in partnership with EdTech East Africa, Raspberry Pi Foundation, and Makini Schools.
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