eBASE Africa and QEDA launch MamaMaths pilot in Nigeria with kick-off training for Abuja educators. 

Yaounde, Cameroon · April 2026 

eBASE Africa (Cameroon) and Quality Education Development Associates, QEDA (Nigeria), convened School Support Officers, Head Teachers, and Grade 2 teachers from Federal Capital Territory (FCT), in Abuja this month for the kick-off training of the MamaMaths pilot, a 6-month foundational numeracy initiative under the Daara Innovation Fund. 

Held from 15 to 18 April, the four-day training prepared educators to deploy the MamaMaths AI application, designed and built by eBASE Africa, alongside the Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) methodology delivered by QEDA, in six government primary schools across rural, semi-urban, and urban settings. The training is the opening phase of the pilot, which runs through July 2026, ahead of baseline data collection, classroom implementation, and endline evaluation. The first three days brought together teachers, head teachers, and School Support Officers (SSOs) for a shared grounding in the pedagogy and the platform. The final day was reserved for SSOs and head teachers and focused on the targeted teacher support they will provide throughout the implementation period, and on the core of the project: data collection training. 

The project, known formally as the Numeracy Enhancement, Research and Development (N.E.R.D.) Project, was co-developed by eBASE Africa and QEDA under the Innovation Fund of the Daara Development Academy, an initiative of the Gates Foundation coordinated by Better Purpose that equips African implementers to lead foundational learning reform across sub-Saharan Africa. Within the partnership, QEDA leads implementation and government engagement with the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) and Universal Basic Education Board (UBEB) FCT, while eBASE Africa serves as app developer and evaluation lead, adapting the platform to the Nigerian Grade 2 curriculum and designing the end-to-end evaluation. 

Over the four days, participants worked through foundational numeracy modules, hands-on MamaMaths app installation, the Concrete–Pictorial–Abstract (CPA) approach, Ethical AI for Educators, Gender Equality and Social Inclusion principles, and a full lesson simulation of the Maths Lab remediation model. A dedicated session was held for school support officers, reframing their role from compliance monitoring toward data-driven mentorship of teachers and training them as enumerators for the project's monitoring and evaluation work. 

"Seeing how structured pedagogy, teacher support, and AI can come together to strengthen foundational numeracy is both inspiring and necessary," said one member of the eBASE Africa team on the ground in Abuja. "When you combine strong evidence, local knowledge, and the right tools, impact is possible." 

MamaMaths is an integrated intervention combining teacher professional development, structured pedagogy aligned to the Nigerian FLN curriculum, maths error analysis, differentiation and remediation, individualised pupil assessment, and AI-assisted lesson planning, with a distinctive home-support loop that sends each mother a short plain-language message about her child's weekly progress and a simple activity to do at home. Mothers who cannot read can listen through an audio feature. 

The kick-off training marks the start of a pilot focused on strengthening foundational numeracy outcomes in Nigerian classrooms, with findings set to inform recommendations for scale-up to national and sub-national education stakeholders.