Context
The Sub-Saharan Africa – Online Content Editing project (2021) supported the development of high-quality teaching and learning resources for Teaching English Africa, a regional adaptation of the British Council’s global platform. The initiative responded to the need for accessible, contextually relevant professional development materials for English language teachers across diverse and often low-resource environments in countries such as Ethiopia, Nigeria, Sudan, and South Africa. In addition to improving existing content, the project aimed to strengthen local capacity by engaging teachers not only as users, but as contributors and materials developers.
Implementation
The project involved editing a substantial bank of teaching resources to ensure clarity, consistency, and suitability for regional contexts. Alongside this, a series of online workshops were delivered to train teachers in materials development, equipping them with practical skills to create and adapt their own classroom resources. Complementing this work, a programme of webinars addressed key challenges faced by educators in low-resource settings, including strategies for adapting textbooks, maximising limited classroom materials, and integrating digital tools into both face-to-face and remote teaching environments. This blended approach combined content development with capacity building, ensuring both immediate and longer-term impact.
Impact
The project contributed to an enhanced and more locally relevant bank of teaching resources for the Teaching English Africa platform, improving access to quality professional development materials for teachers across the region. By building teachers’ skills as materials developers, it fostered greater autonomy and sustainability, enabling educators to tailor content to their specific classroom needs. The webinars further supported teachers in navigating the practical realities of low-resource teaching, particularly in adapting to digital and blended learning contexts. Overall, the initiative strengthened both the quality of available resources and the capacity of teachers to innovate within their own educational environments.
The series of webinars can be found here.