The XPRIZE Foundation and the Equity Group Foundation (EGF) have announced a major collaboration to launch the XPRIZE Accelerate Learning competition. The announcement was made at the first-ever G20 Social Summit hosted on African soil.
Valued at $10 million, the prize is designed to spur innovation globally. It seeks practical, scalable, and low-cost solutions that can enable young learners across Africa and the Global South to achieve literacy and numeracy within a single year.
The competition is structured to reward the best learning outcomes for the most students at the lowest cost, ensuring that successful innovations are viable for massive scale. The long-term ambition of the partnership is to deploy these winning solutions to serve 100 million children over the next decade.
XPRIZE and EGF have signed a Letter of Intent to jointly design and champion the prize, underscoring a commitment to positioning foundational learning at the very center of Africa’s economic future.
Dr. James Mwangi, Executive Chairman of Equity Group Foundation and Group MD and CEO of Equity Group Holdings, said the partnership signals a decisive shift in strategy.
“Africa’s demographic promise will only become a dividend if we prepare our children for a future driven by science, technology, entrepreneurship, and governance. Our partnership with XPRIZE gives us the platform to build this foundation at scale.”
The Accelerate Learning Prize is integrated into a broader strategy to equip African youth with 21st-century skills. It is designed to strengthen the talent pipeline by ensuring children gain the cognitive grounding necessary for advanced opportunities like coding, AI literacy, quantitative analysis, and problem-solving.
This effort complements EGF’s existing learning pathways, which link early literacy and numeracy to digital and STEM opportunities through partnerships with WorldQuant University, IamtheCODE, and UNDP’s timbuktoo program.
Alexander Nicholas, Executive Vice President of Learning + Society at XPRIZE, echoed this sentiment, stating: “Education fuels human potential. If we want Africa’s children to lead in the jobs of the future, we must begin with early learning. This prize calls on the world’s brightest minds to design solutions that can uplift millions, accelerating Africa’s future.”
Key pillars of the initiative
- Creating Cognitive Foundations: The prize aims to establish strong literacy and numeracy—the underpinnings of all modern work, from data science and AI training to digital finance and manufacturing quality control.
- Strengthening the Ecosystem: The initiative complements EGF’s existing suite of youth development programs, including those focused on data science (WorldQuant University), STEM competencies for girls (IamtheCODE), and innovation (UNDP’s timbuktoo).
- Positioning Africa as Global Talent Hub: By strengthening foundational skills, the prize supports Africa’s transition to knowledge-intensive sectors, allowing its youth to power regional industrialisation and the world’s next workforce.