Microsoft on June 19, 2026, shone a spotlight on a transformative education initiative inside two of the world’s largest refugee settlements. Windle International Kenya & Somalia, a nonprofit that has delivered education in East Africa for decades, is now leveraging Microsoft 365, Teams, SharePoint, Forms, and Copilot to serve roughly 10,000 learners across the Kakuma and Dadaab camps. The deployment—part of a broader hybrid learning strategy—combines in-person instruction with cloud-based digital tools, aiming to bridge the gap between camp classrooms and the global knowledge economy.

The announcement underscores how technology can reshape learning in environments where resources are threadbare and connectivity is patchy. Kakuma and Dadaab, located in Kenya’s arid north, host over 400,000 refugees from Somalia, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and beyond. For years, schools in these camps have struggled with overcrowded classrooms, a shortage of trained teachers, and minimal access to up-to-date learning materials. Windle International, which runs over 40 primary and secondary schools in the camps as well as scholarship programmes for higher education, has long sought ways to amplify its reach. Microsoft 365, they say, is turning that ambition into reality.

A Stack Built for Resilience and Scale

The digital backbone of the programme leans heavily on Microsoft Teams for Education. Teachers can conduct live virtual sessions when security or weather hazards prevent safe travel to school compounds, but the tool is equally valuable in blended scenarios: a teacher in Nairobi or even another country can co-teach with a colleague in the camp, while students use Teams assignments to submit work and receive feedback. The platform’s Class Notebook, integrated with OneNote, gives each learner a personal, multimedia workspace that syncs across devices—a vital feature when pupils share a small pool of donated laptops and tablets.

SharePoint serves as a central repository for curriculum guides, open educational resources, and past exam papers. Because the camps frequently experience internet disruptions, content is configured for offline availability; once downloaded, it remains accessible without a connection. Microsoft Forms streamlines assessments, enabling teachers to create quizzes that automatically grade and offer instant insights into learning gaps. For Windle’s administrators, the Power Platform has been used to build simple dashboards that track attendance and device usage, though Microsoft did not disclose specific technical details.

Copilot Enters the Classroom

Perhaps the most striking piece of the deployment is Microsoft Copilot, the AI assistant now woven into Microsoft 365 apps. Teachers in the camps are using Copilot in Word to translate lesson notes from English into Somali or Arabic, dramatically speeding up what was once a manual, error-prone process. In PowerPoint, Copilot drafts slide decks based on curriculum topics, letting instructors focus on contextualisation rather than design. Copilot in Excel helps staff analyse formative assessment data without needing advanced spreadsheet skills.

On the learner side, older students preparing for national secondary exams experiment with Copilot in a supervised setting, asking it to explain complex concepts or generate practice questions. Windle has implemented strict guardrails—students cannot access Copilot without a teacher present—to ensure the AI is a supplement, not a shortcut. Early feedback suggests that even with limited prompting skills, learners find the tool reduces the fear of asking “stupid” questions, fostering a more exploratory classroom culture.

Hybrid Learning, Not Just Remote Learning

Windle and Microsoft are careful to frame the initiative as hybrid, not purely remote. “A screen will never replace the role of a motivated teacher sitting next to a child who is struggling to read,” a Windle education officer frequently tells visiting delegations. Digital tools are layered onto physical schools, not substituted for them. In practice, this means a typical day might begin with a traditional chalk-and-board mathematics lesson, followed by a Teams-based group project where learners in Dadaab collaborate with peers in Kakuma—something previously impossible due to the five-hour drive between the two camps.

The hybrid model also addresses gender inequity. Girls in the camps often face pressure to marry early and drop out of school. Flexible learning pathways enabled by Microsoft 365 allow young women to keep up with coursework from home if their circumstances restrict physical attendance. Windle reports that in the year since the programme started, female enrolment in their upper-primary centres rose by 14 percent.

Tackling the Connectivity Conundrum

Robust internet connectivity remains the Achilles’ heel of any digital intervention in refugee settings. Microsoft and its partners have deployed a mix of satellite terminals, long-range Wi-Fi, and TV White Space technology to bring bandwidth to learning centres. Even so, speeds are often too low for HD video, so Teams defaults to audio when bandwidth drops below a threshold. The Microsoft 365 suite’s offline capabilities fill the gap: learners and teachers sync content during off-peak hours, typically overnight, and work locally during the day.

Microsoft’s Airband Initiative has been instrumental, but the company acknowledged that sustainable connectivity requires ongoing investment from governments and telecom operators. In Dadaab, where the Kenyan government recently permitted the rollout of 4G, latency is improving. Kakuma, closer to the South Sudan border, still relies largely on satellite, though local partners are exploring fibre backhaul options from nearby towns.

Teacher Training and Community Buy-In

No amount of technology succeeds without people who know how to wield it. Windle, supported by Microsoft Philanthropies, has trained over 300 camp-based teachers on the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. The training covers not only the mechanics of Teams and Copilot but also digital pedagogy: how to design a lesson that blends face-to-face interaction with online collaboration, how to spot plagiarism in AI-generated text, and how to safeguard student data.

Community leaders, many of whom are refugees themselves, were initially sceptical. They worried that devices might be stolen, that girls would be exposed to inappropriate content, or that the project would divert funds from teacher salaries. Windle spent months holding town-hall meetings, demonstrating the tools, and, crucially, hiring refugee graduates as IT support fellows. Those fellows now earn a stipend while gaining certified Microsoft credentials, creating a pipeline of local talent that maintains the infrastructure long after external consultants leave.

Real-World Impact, One Learner at a Time

Data shared by Windle indicates that schools using the hybrid model are seeing modest but measurable improvements. In the 2025 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education trial exams, candidates from participating centres improved their mean scores by 7 percentage points over the previous year, though the sample size is small and Windle cautions against attributing the gain solely to technology. More telling, perhaps, are enrollment figures: the 10,000 learners currently reached represent a 40 percent increase from the pilot phase in 2024.

Stories from the ground animate the numbers. A 17-year-old South Sudanese refugee in Kakuma, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Deng, used Teams to attend virtual revision sessions organized by a Kenyan teacher in Eldoret, 500 kilometres away. “I never met this teacher, but he answered my questions every evening for three months,” Deng says. He passed his secondary entrance exam and is now aiming for a scholarship to study engineering. Another learner, 15-year-old Halima from Somalia, taught herself basic coding through linked Minecraft Education worlds shared on SharePoint, a skill she says she wants to use to build apps for maternal health.

Administration Through a Copilot Lens

Behind the scenes, Copilot’s administrative capabilities are proving valuable. Windle’s programme managers use Copilot in Teams to summarise long email threads from donors and automatically draft reports on learner attendance trends. The AI also sifts through Forms responses to detect patterns—for instance, flagging that students in a particular block of Dadaab were consistently scoring below average on mathematics, prompting a targeted remedial programme. These insights previously required manual spreadsheet work that could take weeks; now they appear in hours.

IT administration has also been simplified. Device provisioning is handled via Windows Autopilot, and group policies ensure that student accounts are locked into curated learning apps. Microsoft Intune manages the fleet of shared devices, many of which are low-cost Windows 11 SE laptops donated under Microsoft’s Shape the Future initiative. Windle’s IT team, located in Nairobi, can push updates and security patches remotely, a necessity when camps are hours from the nearest service hub.

A Model for Refugee Education Globally

The Kakuma-Dadaab deployment is not an isolated experiment. It aligns with the UNHCR’s Connected Education Strategy, which aims to blanket all refugee settings with quality digital learning by 2030. Microsoft and Windle plan to publish a playbook later in 2026, detailing everything from bandwidth optimisation tricks to culturally sensitive Copilot prompt design. Early interest has come from organisations working in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh and the Za’atari camp in Jordan.

Scalability will depend on continued funding. Microsoft declined to put a figure on its investment, but insiders suggest the company has allocated several million dollars in cash, software grants, and cloud credits. The greater cost is the human one: teacher training never really stops, devices break and need replacement, and the camps themselves are not static—thousands of new refugees arrive each month, stretching every system.

Challenges That Remain

Despite the promise, significant obstacles persist. Electricity in the camps is unreliable; many learning centres rely on diesel generators, which are expensive and polluting. Microsoft is piloting solar-powered charging stations at five schools, but scaling them is slow. Language also poses a barrier: while Copilot performs well in English and moderately in Arabic, its Somali output is sometimes stilted, requiring human cleanup. Windle is feeding corrected translations back to Microsoft’s language models in hopes of improving future performance.

Data sovereignty is another sensitive issue. Refugee communities are justifiably wary of having their children’s data stored in foreign clouds. Microsoft maintains that all student data resides on servers in its South African datacentre region, compliant with Kenya’s Data Protection Act, and that Windle International retains full control. Independent audits are planned for 2027.

The Road Ahead

Windle’s goal is to extend the hybrid model to all 60 of its learning centres in the two camps by 2028, potentially reaching over 50,000 learners. Microsoft, for its part, is betting that the project will demonstrate the viability of its education stack in the most demanding environments, strengthening its pitch to governments across Africa and beyond. For the young people in Kakuma and Dadaab, the promise is simpler: a chance to learn, to dream, and to connect—on equal footing with students anywhere else.