By Omolabake Fatayo
Africa’s technology ecosystem has grown rapidly over the past decade. Fintech, logistics, and digital commerce have captured the spotlight, attracting capital, talent, and headlines. Yet beneath this visible growth lies a quieter tension—one that cuts across education, workforce development, and organisational performance: how learning itself is designed.
For Mustapha Salaudeen, a learning experience specialist working at the intersection of EdTech, psychology, and applied AI, this tension represents both a challenge and an opportunity. While many innovation conversations focus on platforms and infrastructure, Salaudeen’s work asks a more fundamental question: what happens when learning systems are designed without regard for how people actually pay attention, change behaviour or are influenced culturally?
Learning systems built for completion, not change
Across classrooms, corporate training programmes, and digital learning platforms, success is often measured in completion rates, assessment scores, and compliance metrics. According to Salaudeen, this emphasis reflects a transactional view of learning—information delivered, tested, and archived—rather than an experiential one.
“In many systems, learners complete training without internalising it,” he explains. “The structure rewards finishing, not understanding.”
This pattern is not limited to under-resourced environments. In large multinational organisations, learning platforms can be technologically sophisticated yet still fail to translate into meaningful behavioural change. Salaudeen has seen this first-hand while supporting enterprise workforce capability initiatives across regulated environments.
The issue, he argues, is not motivation or intelligence. It is design.
Treating learning as a product, not content
A recurring theme in Salaudeen’s work is the idea that learning systems should be treated as products rather than static content repositories. That shift changes the design questions entirely—from what needs to be delivered to what the learner experiences moment by moment.
This perspective has informed his involvement in projects that move away from long-form, compliance-heavy training toward shorter, modular learning experiences designed around attention, cognitive load, and real-world application. Inspired by the familiarity of short-form digital media, these approaches aim to reduce friction while increasing relevance.
The emphasis is not entertainment, but usability. “If learning feels foreign or cognitively overwhelming, people disengage,” Salaudeen notes. “If it feels familiar and human, they stay long enough to reflect.”
Experimenting with AI beyond automation
While artificial intelligence is often positioned as a tool for efficiency, Salaudeen’s work explores a more nuanced use case: AI as a reflective layer rather than a scoring engine.
One example is an AI-assisted listening assessment game he developed to explore alternatives to traditional evaluation models. Instead of pass-or-fail outcomes, the system analyses how participants engage with listening-based scenarios and generates feedback designed to promote awareness and self-reflection rather than judgement.
The distinction matters. “When people feel evaluated, they perform,” he says. “When they feel supported, they reflect.”
At scale, this difference determines whether learning systems reinforce compliance or cultivate growth. It also raises broader questions about how AI is introduced into education. Poorly designed systems, Salaudeen warns, risk institutionalising flawed models faster rather than correcting them.
Africa’s opportunity to leapfrog learning design
Much of Africa’s learning infrastructure is described as lagging behind global standards. Salaudeen sees this framing as incomplete. In his view, the absence of deeply entrenched legacy systems creates space for alternative approaches.
Rather than importing models designed elsewhere and retrofitting them to local realities, he argues that learning experiences can be designed to reflect lived contexts—mobile-first, culturally grounded, and behaviour-focused.
This applies as much to workforce training as to formal education. Corporate learning environments shape professional norms, ethical behaviour, and organisational culture. When these systems prioritise legal compliance over reflection and empathy, the outcomes are predictable.
“Learning is one of the most powerful cultural levers organisations have,” Salaudeen says. “But only if it’s designed to change behaviour, not just document it.”
From practice to public discourse
Beyond industry work, Salaudeen has contributed to broader conversations on learning design through research-driven writing and practitioner communities. His work has engaged learning professionals across regions, exploring how attention, psychology, and technology intersect in modern learning systems.
What distinguishes his perspective is not a focus on tools, but on consequences. How does design shape behaviour? What happens when scale amplifies bad assumptions? And what responsibility do builders carry when learning systems influence real decisions, from customer care to ethical judgement?
As Africa’s innovation ecosystem continues to mature, these questions are likely to grow more urgent. Platforms may change. Funding cycles will fluctuate. But the ability to learn—individually and collectively—will remain foundational.
The next phase of innovation, Salaudeen suggests, may not be defined by faster platforms or smarter algorithms, but by learning systems that are humane, contextual, and responsive.
And in that quieter space, between technology and human behaviour, some of the continent’s most consequential innovation may yet emerge.
