DirectEd-Student Scholarship Portal

[IMPACT]

Vision

For all students in Africa to be able to further their education and realise their full potential, regardless of their draw in the lottery of life.

Elevator pitch

Many talented students in low-income countries lack the economic means to realise their potential, but philanthropists hesitate to donate. The impact of their funds is unclear, but attaching conditionality to ensure that funds are used for their intended purpose is costly. Administrative costs are also high due to high transfer costs and the need for having several middlemen. DirectEd solve these problems by combining the power of decentralised identities and blockchain technology to provide a transparent, secure, and low-cost means of making conditional peer-to-peer donations directly to students.

Problem and Solution

Problem 1: Education is widely agreed to be a crucial factor in a country's economic development, but despite its importance, it is generally underfunded and deprioritised. Part of the reason for this is the difficulty of assessing the causal impact of more education. Also, interest rates are extremely high typically in the two digits range [1] and it is not uncommon to see interest rates well over 100% (e.g. Malawi [2]), which leads to fewer students from poor backgrounds pursuing a tertiary degree.

Solution. By focusing on poorer regions where all students otherwise wouldn't be able to study at university we target our relevant group. To assess the impact of our program, we will use a scientifically rigorous impact analysis, which we will develop together with our advisors.

Problem 2: Crowdfunding and donations services give opportunities to those who have none. However, they are often inefficient due to many middlemen, high transfer costs, and high costs for ensuring eligibility of recipients. They also lack transparency, i.e. you do not know exactly what your donation is being used for.

Solution. By processing donations directly through the Cardano network, and distributing them to individuals verified with DIDs, obstacles such as mistrust, fraud and administrative costs can be greatly reduced.

Problem 3: As previously mentioned, many donation services lack efficiency and transparency, which has decreased trust amongst donors. Blockchain technology could solve these issues, but using this technology for donation services is uncharted territory , which means that trust is low and must be built up.

Solution. Through pilot projects, and collaboration with several universities in the region, DirectEd will help teach recipient and donors about the benefits of using blockchain technology, which will also generate trust towards Cardano.

[1] International Monetary Fund, International Financial Statistics and data files. "Sub-Saharan Africa (IFC classification)” Accessed 14 03 2022. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FR.INR.LEND?locations=C9

[2] MicroLoan Foundation. “Interest rates. Accessed 14 03 2022. https://www.microloanfoundation.org.uk/Files/0910 Interest Rates.pdf

Product

Link to roadmap in Github: https://github.com/users/bubblyc/projects/1/views/1

Process flow in Miro: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOKD9W-A=/

Research papers and technical specifications: Research Papers & Tech Spec

Step by Step Process

This is a description of the process flow in chronological order, from DirectEd identifying relevant high schools, to students receiving scholarships.

1. DirectEd identifies high schools in low-income areas. In Ethiopia, these schools have been onboarded to the Atala PRISM decentralised identifier system. In Kenya, we help schools become issuers of verifiable credentials and help students set up DIDs. We link those DIDs to Cardano wallets, preparing the students to receive scholarships.
2. DirectEd specifies a smart contract for each high school. The smart contracts do four things: (a) specify the threshold for scholarship eligibility, (b) randomly choose scholarship winners if the number of eligible students exceed funds available, (c) specify total size of each scholarship and (d) specify progress requirements needed for release of next portion of the scholarship.
3. Donors pledge donation amounts to one of many smart contracts, each representing a high school. Initially, only ADA donations will be supported, but over time other currencies will be accepted as well, starting with stable coins, other cryptocurrencies, and lastly fiat currencies. Donors receive an NFT minted by DirectEd, that can be used to prove that they have donated and unlock access to a progress tracking page for the specific cohort they donated to.
4. High schools issue credentials, containing grades, to decentralised identifiers (DIDs) belonging to students. A student can then apply by sharing this verifiable credential with the smart contract.
5. Once the scholarship application window is closed, a randomisation amongst eligible students decides the scholarship winners if the number of eligible students exceed the funds available.
6. Students register at university and the registrar issues a credential to the student’s DID. Students share their proof of registration to the smart contract, which triggers the first scholarship disbursement.
7. Further disbursements are similarly conditioned on evidence of successful progress as evidenced by verifiable credentials issued by the university or other education provider.
8. If scholarship students fail to satisfy some of the conditions within the pre-specified time frame written in the smart contract, whatever funds remain are returned to the donor addresses.

The platform's 3 main components

Our website will link to a portal, where users will be able to log in using SSI OAuth 2.0 (students and schools) or on NFT-enabled access (donors).

• Teachers (schools/university staff) – an admin page where they can change which students are part of their cohort and issue credentials containing grades or other information to the student DIDs.
• Students – an onboarding page where they get help with setting up their DID and wallet, a scholarship page where they submit applications or progress updates to smart contracts, and an active scholarship page where the conditions stated in a given smart contract is translated into understandable terms for the student.
• Donors – a donation page where they can choose which school they want to donate to, a profile page where they can see their donation history and NFT rewards, and a blockchain page where you can verify all transactions and smart contracts.

Unique Selling Points

There are a number of crypto and non-crypto donation platforms out there. We stand out in five main ways.

1. Conditionality. We work on smart-contract enabled conditionality. This gives us three key advantages. First, once fixed costs are accounted for, this reduces the large administrative costs that are associated with attaching conditionality. Second, it naturally creates a mechanism for progress tracking, feedback and impact evaluation for donors. Third, it improves educational outcomes as it provides incentives for students.
2. Digital identity integration. IOHK, the company behind the decentralised identity solution Atala PRISM, have already signed the deal with the Ethiopian ministry of education, onboarding 5 million students. As similar deals are struck around the continent, our ability to scale increases massively as we do not have to set up the basic infrastructure for the issuance of verifiable educational credentials. As Atala PRISM is built on top of Cardano, seamless and secure integration is possible.
3. Transparency. In contrast with legacy systems, all transactions are public meaning that a donor can check for themselves if a transaction did indeed go to a given address connected to a certain DID that has shown to have satisfied certain properties. This eliminates the risk that middlemen charge “fees” for ensuring the safe delivery of a given donation. Recipients have a means of checking exactly how large funds are and the exact immutable conditions for release of such funds (e.g. grade requirements etc). This reduces uncertainty.
4. Rigorous impact evaluation. With the support of our academic advisors, we hope to build the product with rigorous impact evaluation in mind from the very beginning. This will help us quantify the value of the donations. Impact evaluation could focus on (a) how reduced information asymmetry affects donor sentiments, (b) evaluating the extent funds were lost to corruption (c) student learning and life outcomes.
5. Donor experience and community. We radically improve on the donor experience compared to existing alternatives. Not only do we hope to build a community where sponsors can interact, engage, and mentor the cohort of scholars they support, unlocked through our portal, but we make it possible for donors to prove their donation through a NFT. We believe this will become an industry standard for tax deduction purposes in the future. The proof of donation NFT will not only be a cool gadget, but it will grant access to a community and possibly even a necessary component of all donations in the future.

Donor segments

Possible donor segments are individuals, companies, foundations and institutions. Initially, we are primarily targeting individuals from the crypto community, especially the Cardano community. The reason for this is because we see high potential in this segment, and since organisations take longer to persuade. Individuals from the crypto community will have a greater understanding of the mechanisms involved. Due to the general growth of cryptocurrencies, there are also considerable funds available in this segment.

We will also seek to partner up with charitable stake pools. Many of them donate a portion of their profits to a good cause. We believe we can find strong synergies with pools as we are a Cardano project and delegators will be able to verify that donations have gone where they were supposed to go.

Value-added for Cardano

This project also lead to several benefits for Cardano, on top of what has been mentioned so far. Cryptocurrency requires trust and a lot of understanding, and has a relatively high barrier to entry. By onboarding educational institutions and schools, we gain the trust of these institutions, which provides a clear stepping-stone for IOHK and the Cardano Foundation to leverage the trust to sign large-scale deals with governments to build their infrastructure. The scholarship also gives strong incentives for young African students to invest time and effort into learning about it. Moreover, field studies on the adoption of microcredit have been shown to be heavily contingent on trust in the credit institution. This means that the scholarship will create familiarity to Cardano and thus constitute a stepping-stone for crypto-based microfinance in the future.

The longer vision of DirectEd

We also hope to develop DirectEd by partnering up with education platforms/providers and industry partners. One model would be that firms looking for specific skills in workers that they cannot find specifies a scholarship (smart contract) that contain conditions for eligibility (e.g. sciences high school student, good grades), milestones, and scholarship amount. This could be a short 8 week digital course over summer. Students who complete all the milestones are then able to directly apply to get a 12 months internship-work job contract. This creates a more direct and relevant educational journey and reduces the resource waste stemming from learning that is not closely tied to the needs of the labour market [3]. Specifically, we could also set up scholarships for learning blockchain development. If Cardano is to become the backbone of the digital infrastructure in Africa then a lot of developers will be needed. Our platform would give learners clear paths to employment, provide incentive mechanisms, and give firms assurance that their funds are being put to good use.

Other use-cases that we may pivot towards

Though our technology will first only be applied to scholarships, the underlying technology has many use-cases that we aim to pivot towards once the scholarship platform has been set up.

1. Reputation building. Students receiving the scholarship will be able to build a reputation as they show that they are trustworthy by reaching targets that were set out. This may be the first step towards building credit rating and gain access to DeFi microlending.
2. Government conditional cash transfer schemes. With our technology, it will be possible for governments to pre-specify which verifiable credentials are required for eligibility and what conditions must be satisfied. For example, they may specify that a person must be of age X, live in region Y, and do a health check-up at a pre-approved health clinic from a list Z. Each one of these elements would require a verifiable credential and the list of approved health providers would have conditions.
3. Official development aid. Once blockchain traced supply chains have become more mature, this type of verifiable credentials mechanism can vastly reduce the amount of money lost to corruption as official development aid funds can explicitly be tied to the purchase of physical goods and receipt (in the form of verifiable credentials) of such goods.

IP and legal status

As our main contribution lies in the smart contract functionality, the core of our project will be open-sourced. We believe in the principle of open-sourcing all of our code and will seek to do so as soon as our business model matures.

We have not incorporated but intend to incorporate as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation in the UK. We may start NGOs in Kenya and Ethiopia or partner with existing ones, depending on our needs. For other use-cases mentioned above, we may start separate legal entities.

By creating a high functioning scholarship platform based on Cardano’s blockchain technology we will attract new users to Cardano on both the recipient side and the donor side. Students and teachers will join Cardano’s ecosystem to partake in the scholarship program, and this will lead to an increase in the number of issuers, holders, and verifiers of DIDs. The scholarship program will enable students in the community to develop and grow by furthering their studies, and this will likely lead to long term effects like an increased employment in qualified jobs, e.g. teachers, entrepreneurs, and experts, and this can lead to a positive snowball effect for society and Cardano.

1. Legal: Specifically, it is unclear to what extent we will be allowed to operate in Kenya and Ethiopia. Ethiopia has capital control and it is unclear to what extent it is legal to use crypto, but given the significant collaboration between Cardano and the Ethiopian government focused on the educational sector, the risk for legal hurdles during piloting is low. In Kenya, we need permission to operate in schools if we work directly with student records.

• Mitigation: Our team members Moses and Fasika are living in Kenya and Ethiopia, and they are monitoring changes in legislation. We have gotten approvals from schools in Ethiopia and Kenya to operate.

1. Security: This refers to personal data, crypto security, and implementation. How do we guarantee that personal data is not mishandled and lost to malicious parties? This also refers to the security of the smart contracts we deploy.

• Mitigation: We will consult experts on personal data laws in each country. We can also make use of professional smart contract audit services.

1. Collaboration: The high schools/universities/students' willingness to join the project may vary depending on many factors.

• Mitigation: We need to make sure to have mutual expectations of conditions and deliverables that satisfy all parties involved in order to deliver a smooth pilot project.

1. Financial sustainability: Lack of further funding may hinder our product to develop further.

• Mitigation: In the short term, by delivering on the KPIs provided to Catalyst, we should be able to secure further seed funding. We are also looking at other funds and incubators, e.g. OX1 Incubator. In the long term, we have to develop a revenue-generating process, be it as fundraisers or by starting a for-profit company with a slightly different focus.

[FEASIBILITY]

We have chosen to split this project into two proposals — this one, which is in the “Self-Sovereign Identity” fund, and another one https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/400019, which is in the “DApps and Integrations” fund. The reason for the split is that our product has two entities which are clearly separate and valuable in their own right.

This proposal (DirectEd-Student Scholarship Platform) concerns functionalities that are associated with verifiable credentials and the recipient (student and university) side of the platform, as well as all activities relating to partnerships in Africa.

The proposal “DirectEd - Donations DApp”, (which is in the “DApps and Integrations” fund) concerns functionalities that are associated with smart contracts and the donor side of the platform, as well as all activities related to market analysis and marketing.

If we get funding for one proposal and not the other we will need to apply for funding again in fund 9.

In the timeline below we have marked the activities in Phase 2 with “(DApps proposal)” or “(SSI proposal)” to show in which proposal the activity is budgeted for. We have only marked the activities in Phase 2 since we are only applying for funding to cover this phase.

Current work in progress

• Proof of concept v1 of the smart contract on testnet. First deployment expected end of march, see technical specification for details.
• High functionality website sketch (Figma)
• User experience research (interviews)
• UK incorporation: Charitable Incorporated Organisation, foundation or association type.

Phase 2 (this proposal)

Q3: July 2022 - September 2022

• (DApps proposal) Proof of Concept smart contract v2 on test-net: scholarships to be withdrawn in stages conditional the presence of verifiable credentials corresponding to predefined public key of credential issuer.
• (DApps proposal) Donor section UI completed, first version
• (SSI proposal) Beta version of high school/university Atala PRISM credential issuing and on-boarding portal integration completed
• (DApps proposal) Market analysis. Customer group interviews, customer acquisition and competitor research.
• (SSI proposal) Memorandum of Understanding for the pilot signed with our two partner high schools and universities in Kenya and Ethiopia
• (SSI proposal) Workshop for high school and university leadership and administrative staff on blockchain, decentralised identifier, and verifiable credential completed and delivered.
• (SSI proposal) Consultation with legal expert regarding crypto regulation and tax implications of donations in relevant jurisdictions.

Q4: October 2022 - December 2022

• (DApps proposal) Proof of Concept v3 smart contract on test-net including: randomisation mechanism for choosing which eligible applicants receive scholarships, issuance of NFT upon donation to the smart contract, and condition for returning funds.
• (SSI proposal) Front-end of university/high school credential issuing and on-boarding portal completed.
• (SSI proposal) Student interface allowing students to share VC to the smart contract
• (DApps proposal) First version of NFT-unlocked progress tracking page for donors.
• (DApps proposal) Start accepting simple donations to our organisation on website (using plugin, non-smart contract)

Phase 3 (not this proposal)

Q1 2023: January 2023 - March 2023

• Completion of browser based crypto-DID wallet integration. Possibly dependent on IOHK progress on Prism-Cardano main chain bridge.
• Pilot with partner high schools: student crypto, DID wallet onboarding, first smart-contracts on the main-net.
• Further meeting with international NGOs and official development aid agencies to find further use-cases of our technology.
• Research proposal and grant applications for evaluating impact

Q2 2023 and beyond

• Official public launch of beta version of the dApp.
• Crypto off-ramp solution (in collaboration with Gero wallet and Kotani pay). Integrated with our wallet provider.
• $20.000 worth of ADA donated through our smart contracts.
• First real stipend payments distributed to the first cohort in pilot high schools.
• Further partnerships with educational institutions and high schools in low-income areas in Kenya and Ethiopia.

This budget covers all expenses for our Self-Sovereign Identity proposal in Phase 2 (6 months, July 2022-December 2022).

Self-Sovereign Identity proposal budget

Development

3 smart contract/backend engineers (1 full-time and 2 part-time).

• 10 weeks * 18h/week * $35/h * 3 developers = $18900

Research, management, marketing, design and partnerships

We will have three team members working full time and part time during different periods for which the funding we are requesting, averaging 10h/week for the entire period.

• 10 weeks * 3 people * 10 h/week * $25/h = $7500

Ethiopia/Kenya partnerships and operations

Our two country leads work part-time and we estimate they will work on average 5 hours/week seen over the entire period.

• 26 weeks * 2 people * 5 h/week * $15/h = $3900

Total: $30300

Our team

Simon Sällström

CEO. MPhil in Economics (University of Oxford), particular focus on the labour market and education in developing nations. Former President of Lund Debate Society. https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-sällström-3659b616b/

https://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/people/simon-saellstroem

Rohan Mitta

Smart contract lead. MASt in pure Mathematics (Trinity College, University of Cambridge). MSc in Mathematics and Foundations of Computer Science (University of Oxford). Atala PRISM & Plutus Pioneer. https://www.linkedin.com/in/rohan-mitta-239029173/

Moses Kahure

Kenya lead. Medical Laboratory Scientist at Mater Misericordiae Hospital. BS.c. Medical laboratory sciences (Kenyatta University). Founder of Save a youth Africa - an independent, non-partisan, non-profit organization working in the field of Youth Sexual & Reproductive Health for women in high school. Part of Obama’s Young African Leaders Initiative, 2019 cohort. https://www.linkedin.com/in/moses-kahure-9b7a5317b/

Fasika Belay

Ethiopia lead. Lecturer at Kotebe University of Education. MA in Urban and Regional Development Planning (Addis Ababa University). PhD candidate in Socioeconomic Development Planning and Environment (Addis Ababa University). Part of Obama’s Young African Leaders Initiative, 2019 cohort. https://www.linkedin.com/in/fasika-belay-7a78184a/

Fabian Friberg

Developer. IT consultant. MSc Computer Science and Engineering (Lund University). Plutus Pioneer. Proficient in Java, Python, C, C, Haskell. Other: SQL, Matlab, OpenFOAM, Git. https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabian-friberg-057643176/

Cecilia Huang

Developer. MSc Computer Science and Engineering candidate (Lund University). Atala PRISM pioneer. Proficient in Java, Python, Haskell. Other: Django, SQL. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ceciliayixihuang/

Sten Georgii Hellberg

Strategy, sales, and marketing. Experience working in several start-ups. MSc Industrial Engineering (Lund University). https://www.linkedin.com/in/sten-georgii-hellberg-79020497/

Mio Hjerpe

Admin. BSc in International Business student (Lund University). https://www.linkedin.com/in/mio-hjerpe-241bb0225/

Unfilled/freelancing roles

• PR & social media
• Frontend developer(s)

Partnerships and collaborations

Educational institutions

Our country leads have so far had informal discussions with four institutions with very positive response - two high schools and two universities. Some pictures from our visit to Kagumo High is attached. We are in the process of formalising this in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding.

• Kenya. Kenyatta University and Kagumo High School
• Ethiopia. Kotebe University of Education ****and Kotebe University of Education Menelik I Science Shared Campus (high school)

Proofspace

Discussion to integrate their existing teacher onboarding and issuance of verifiable credentials. fund 7 winners

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/385204

https://www.zaka.io/

Gero wallet and Kotani Pay

We are discussing venues for collaboration between Gero wallet and Kotani pay to enable a seamless off-ramp (convert ADA to fiat) solution and DID-crypto wallet integration.

https://gerowallet.io/

https://kotanipay.com/

IceAddis

DirectEd is currently part of the first cohort of the IOHK sponsored Africa-focused incubator for Catalyst funded proposals. https://ioincubator.com/

OX1 incubator

DirectEd is part of Oxford only pre-seed startup incubator https://www.ox1incubator.com/

Ayllu

Discussions regarding future venues for collaboration, integrating our scholarships with their decentralised digital-skills and employment focused education platform https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/381053

Advisors

Christian Meyer

Research lead at the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Development. affiliated with Nuffield College, the Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE), and the Mind & Behaviour Research Group. Before my current role at the Martin School, I was a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow in the Department of Economics. His current fieldwork focuses on Ethiopia. https://www.chrmeyer.com/pages/about

Love Ekenberg

UNESCO Chair on Large-Scale Higher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa. Professor in Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University. PhD in Mathematics. 20 years’ experience of project and program management. Worked with EU, World Bank, Sida, UNIDO, WHO, Nuffic, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC and Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a multitude of countries, including education, policy formation, technical infrastructure development. https://people.dsv.su.se/~lovek/

Johannes Haushofer

Professor of Economics, Stockholm University. Prize Fellow in Economics, Harvard University, former assistant professor in economics at Princeton University. Founder of Busara Center for Behavioural Economics, Nairobi. https://haushofer.ne.su.se/

Noleen Mariappen

Founder of Saffa global - sustainability and ESG consultancy firm. Founder and director of Multiple NGOs, including Global director for Global women for good, Think Ocean and IntelliAqua. https://www.linkedin.com/in/noleenm/

Rodolfo Miranda

M.S. Electrical Engineering, Stanford University. 25+ years of work experience in both large multinational companies and startup projects. More than 40 years of self-taught programming with advanced knowledge on many coding languages. Atala PRISM pioneer, Community Advisor and member of the challenge team for “F7: Grow Latin America, Grow Cardano”. Part of several projects working on DID infrastructure for Cardano. https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodolfomiranda/

Yoram Ben Zvi

20+ years of business experience working with technology companies (strategy, partnerships, investors). In the last years, Yoram is focused on combining impact and business. 4 years ago he left his comfort zone and worked for 2 years for an NGO Earthworm.org focusing on sustainable business models across agriculture supply chains. Community Advisor, proposer and active contributor to AIM and Cardano4Climate. https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoram-ben-zvi-446836/

[AUDITABILITY]

We publish monthly progress updates, continuous KPI tracking, research papers, and more on our public Notion page: https://www.notion.so/directed/DirectEd-4a84fe7c756c45cfb7c48ec30ff5f3b5

Current KPIs:

• Github commits.
• Number of user interviews. Goal = 30
• Number of donation pledges. Goal = 10
• Pages written, market and product research. Goal = 20
• The number of Objectives completed (see timeline/roadmap above). Goal = 12.

Later phase KPIs:

• Number of students onboarded to the platform
• Number of students graduating through our program
• Number of DIDs issued
• Impact: student performance increase
• Number of scholarships issued
• Donation amount per month
• Income increase for students

Success for Phase 2 would be to have completed an MVP that enables donations to be sent and received through smart contracts conditional on receipt of verifiable credentials, accessible for testing through our completed browser dApp and MoU signed with our partner institutions in Kenya and Ethiopia.

See timeline for Phase 2 previously in the text.

Past proposal: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/369558

We first received funding in Fund 6 for our phase 1 objectives. This proposal is a continuation of our project and is aimed at funding our phase 2 objectives.

Detailed information on deliverables and KPIs from past proposal:

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/369558

Our main objectives for phase 1 were:

• Build a team
• Complete Prism and Plutus pioneers
• Do further research and plan our solution

Detailed information on deliverables and KPIs from our past proposal can be found here:

https://www.notion.so/directed/KPIs-6b6d0451cee146db8b6ab4d83604fe38

Fund 6 ideafest presentation https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wparX7RLQlcykZuTR8qSIgqn93N7hkhH/view?usp=sharing

Simon has independently been funded for Oxford student hub ($7590) in fund 7,

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/381527 (ongoing, first event https://www.facebook.com/events/258357706505588/?ref=newsfeed)

Research dApp ($480) in fund 6, https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Research-dApp/369582-48088 (completed)

Employment dApp ($600) in fund 6 https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/369587 (completed)

SDG Rating

SDG goals:

Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

SDG subgoals:

4.3 By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university

4.4 By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship

4.5 By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations

4.b By 2020, substantially expand globally the number of scholarships available to developing countries, in particular least developed countries, small island developing States and African countries, for enrolment in higher education, including vocational training and information and communications technology, technical, engineering and scientific programmes, in developed countries and other developing countries