EdTech’s next growth phase will define the sector’s credibility. (Image: UVU Africa) Africa's EdTech growth story is often told through impressive numbers: millions of learners reached and thousands of devices placed in classrooms. But these numbers do not measure progress or impact. Injini, Africa’s EdTech accelerator and think tank, believes the sector has reached a critical point where scale must be interrogated for a more honest analysis of what is being achieved."A tablet being in the hands of a child does not mean that child is learning," notes Krista Davidson, Executive Director of Injini. "Just like a platform with half a million users does not mean half a million learners are improving. We need to be honest about that gap, and then we need to close it."The gap between delivery and genuine educational progress is real and it needs to be addressed. Connectivity has expanded; digital learning platforms have multiplied yet learning outcomes across many parts of the continent remain stubbornly low. If reach were enough, we would already be seeing different results.EdTech start-ups, like most early-stage ventures, are shaped by the incentives around them. When funders reward scale, founders optimise for scale. When pitch decks are evaluated on user acquisition, user acquisition becomes the primary story. The result is a sector that has become fluent in the language of reach and largely silent on the language of learning progress.Vanity metrics such as active users, downloads and sessions completed tell us that a product exists and that people are using it. What they do not tell you is whether learning is happening, whether teaching is improving or whether the investment is producing the educational change it was designed to create.In a continent where education systems are under-resourced, where teachers are often unsupported and where the consequences of an entire generation not reaching their potential are significant, we cannot afford to get this wrong.Buzz Kidz founder Hanneke Mackie is one of the EdTech leaders working seriously on this problem. Buzz Kidz operates across digital and in-person delivery. Its digital platform, Buzz-in-a-Box, equips teachers with curriculum-aligned tools that use drama, music and movement to support the teaching of core concepts. It is play-based, inclusive and designed to serve diverse learning needs, including those of neurodiverse learners.EdTech’s next growth phase will define the sector’s credibility. (Image: UVU Africa) For Mackie, impact is not an abstract aspiration but a clearly defined outcome.“We define impact as meaningful, measurable change in learner development and teaching practice,” she explains. “When teachers change how they teach, children change how they learn. That is the measurable impact we want to continue delivering.”Buzz Kidz tracks usage and genuine learning outcomes, including learner engagement and participation levels, and teacher-reported improvements in comprehension and confidence. Observable behaviour changes are tracked and recorded throughout.The Buzz Kidz Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning function is currently embedded within Buzz Kidz’s programme design, but has not yet been formalised into a dedicated function. Mackie is candid about this.“Resource constraints are real for a growing, impact-driven organisation like ours,” she acknowledges. “But strengthening our MEL capacity is a priority.”That honesty is an important part of this conversation. It helps explain why many EdTech start-ups are still building towards a formalised MEL function, and why the ecosystem needs to create the conditions that make that work possible, not just expected.Regulatory scrutiny of EdTech is increasing. Governments are demanding accountability and funders are no longer asking only how many learners a platform has reached. They want to know what happened to those learners as a result. Outcomes-based funding models are not a future trend. They are here. Start-ups that cannot answer evidence-backed questions about their impact will find the funding landscape increasingly difficult to navigate.EdTech’s next growth phase will define the sector’s credibility. (Image: UVU Africa) “The start-ups attracting long-term support are increasingly the ones able to demonstrate measurable improvements in learner outcomes and teaching practices,” says Davidson.As a think tank and ecosystem architect working alongside African EdTech start-ups to build monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) capacity, Injini’s role is to advocate for this shift and hold the sector to higher standards of evidence.The EdTech sector in Africa has demonstrated, beyond any reasonable doubt, that it can reach learners. Access was the starting line. EdTech’s next growth phase will define the sector’s credibility for the decade ahead, and every stakeholder in this ecosystem has a role to play.The call to action is clear:To founders: Build your MEL frameworks before you need them for a reporting cycle. The start-ups that know what change they are creating, and can prove it, are the ones that will earn the trust and gain the capital to grow.To funders: Ask harder questions earlier, and then co-design a path to the solution with your funding recipients. Reach is a starting condition, not an outcome. Shift your evaluation criteria accordingly and the sector will shift with you.To the broader ecosystem: Africa’s classrooms are distinct, and the way we measure impact in them should reflect that. The sector needs shared standards for what meaningful impact looks like here, and it must be built for this context, not borrowed from somewhere else.The next generation of EdTech start-ups must inherit an ecosystem that delivers measurable impact, not one that settled for counting users and calling it progress.What we build now, how we measure it and how honest we are willing to be about what is working and what is not will determine what the future looks like.