As a biomedical engineering graduate student at Cornell University, Daniel Dotse had a vision — he wanted to build an African pharmaceutical company run by African scientists that could rival giant multinationals like Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer.
But the young Ghanaian soon realized there was one big obstacle in the way of achieving his goal: The quality of education in Africa wasn’t high enough to adequately prepare the staff he envisioned.
More than half of children not enrolled in school live in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the United Nations. And on average, there is one reading textbook for about two students and one math textbook for about three students in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a 2015 survey carried out by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and its partners.