“The integration of AI in early education is poised to transform every aspect of learning – from the classroom to the printed page.”

Emerging markets have long demonstrated a unique ability to sidestep entrenched legacy systems, harnessing the power of compressed innovation to leapfrog traditional, incremental progress.

In regions unburdened by decades-old technological conventions, this dynamic approach enables rapid adaptation and bold experimentation with cutting‐edge ideas. No longer confined to painful iteration cycles, these markets are free to reimagine education as an ecosystem that begins its recalibration from the earliest age.

Compressed Innovation In Action

Compressed innovation has huge implications for the global publishing industry, and the UAE has proven itself a world leader in showing compressed innovation in action, taking Arab publishing from a backwater industry to major market status in a very short time.

This paradigm was vividly underscored this weekend by a headline from, you guessed it, the UAE. In a move that can only be described as transformative, the UAE announced that artificial intelligence (AI) will be introduced as a full subject – not merely a bolt-on module – in its school curriculum, beginning in Kindergarten.

AI For 3 Year Olds? Bring It On!

Music to my ears, I can assure you! When not writing TNPS, I’m running a not-for-profit nursery/primary school in The Gambia, a country where the Ed Min has the bold ambition of a laptop in very school, for administrative purposes.

Now, with students as young as three set to engage with AI concepts, the UAE is not only advancing its technological agenda but also cultivating an entirely new mindset from the ground up. In effect, the nation’s vast resources have enabled it to integrate innovation into the fabric of daily learning, presenting a vindication of policies that favour early, expansive education on every topic.

Exhilarating and Affirming

For me, this announcement is both exhilarating and affirming. At my school, my educational philosophy has always been to introduce every subject from Nursery One – whether it be geography, history, nutrition, engineering, or AI.

Although our tools are modest – just the smartphones owned by our teachers, and my TNPS laptop, which mostly stays on my desk at home – the underlying belief is the same: early exposure ignites curiosity and prepares the mind for a future defined by rapid change.

My classrooms, despite resource constraints, echo the same forward-thinking spirit that the UAE now exemplifies. The challenge here is stark; whereas the UAE can count on expansive infrastructural support, in The Gambia even equipping every school with a single laptop remains an ambitious dream. But this discrepancy simply underscores the beauty of compressed innovation: the framework is universal, even if the pace and payload vary.

Once Upon A Time There Lived…

At which point let me mention an anecdote I’ve presented here before, but that bears repetition because it makes the point so perfectly.

A few years back I had an old desk-top PC with a monitor the size of a car and a clunky keyboard and a floppy-disk drive and Windows XP. Totally useless for me, but great fun for the little kids who got to play games, learn mouse control and become familiar with a keyboard.

A neighbour came in and saw it for the first time. She had no idea what it was. She’d never seen anything like it.

When I explained what it did, she fell about laughing, whipped out her 4G smartphone and sent pictures of it to all her friends on WhatsApp.

I’ve been here almost fifteen years now, but when I first arrived, in the ancient history that is 2010, my 3G phone would not work here. My laptop had no way to connect to the internet. I had to go to a tourist hotel to use the a desktop PC connecting to the internet at dial-up speed. Tortuously slow internet cafes were found along a couple of roads where copper phone cables had been laid, but almost no-one except big businesses had a landline.

Leapfrogging the Painful Iteration Era

Today, I’d struggle to find anyone who does not own a 4G smartphone and doesn’t live their lives jumping between WhatsApp and TikTok. Like many other parts of the world, The Gambia has effectively leapfrogged the whole painful iteration era of landline, pre-internet and dial-up and gone from a landline being an unimaginable luxury to 4G and 5G smartphones.

In the rich west, we talk about “digital native” generations – kids and teens who have never known a life without internet and smartphones. But their enthusiasm and excitement is tempered by the Legacy Generation that makes the rules.

In countries that have leapfrogged the iteration era, the digital natives are almost everyone, not just the kids. Here in The Gambia, the Legacy Generation still calls the shots. But the UAE’s bold move is a shot across the bows of legacy generation thinkers everywhere. Official education policy of AI from Kindergarten is a dream come true for me.

Beyond the Classroom

But the ramifications of introducing AI at such a tender age extend far beyond the classroom. As today’s preschoolers evolve into tomorrow’s leaders, the very fabric of learning – and by extension, publishing – will be rewoven.

Imagine a generation of 3- to 6-year-olds who approach technology not as an afterthought but as an integral part of their world view. This cultural shift will inevitably reshape the children’s book market, demanding stories that are dynamic, interactive, and even AI-enabled.

Reimagining Narrative Forms

Publishers will soon need to reimagine narrative forms, integrating interactive elements and personalised learning experiences into what might well be the next generation of illustrated masterpieces. Such books might adapt to a child’s reading pace, offer real-time story variations, or even encourage interactive problem-solving scenarios that mirror the adaptability of modern technology .

Yet, beneath these sweeping changes lies a simple, powerful truth: set the stage early, and you set a lifetime of possibilities in motion. The recent UAE initiative is a beacon not only for well-resourced societies but also for emerging markets grappling with limited digital infrastructure.

A Practical Blueprint for Fostering Innovation

My endeavours in The Gambia embody this belief. Every struggle to secure the tools for digital literacy is a step towards an education system where every child has the chance to build a future unshackled by outdated practices. This isn’t mere idealism – it’s a practical blueprint for fostering innovation, and ensuring that the next generation is not only technologically savvy but also incredibly adaptive, creative, and forward-thinking.

For publishers, investors, and educational policymakers, the unfolding narrative is clear. As emerging markets set the pace for compressed innovation, the ripple effects extend beyond conventional teaching paradigms and into the world of media and literature.

The integration of AI in early education is poised to transform every aspect of learning – from the classroom to the printed page. In nurturing AI-savvy minds, we are cultivating a creative ecosystem that will redefine what it means to tell a story, to learn, and to imagine a future where technology and creativity intermingle seamlessly.

I’ll explore this further in Part 2 of this essay. Stay tuned.

This post first appeared in the TNPS LinkedIn newsletter.