Seven million candidates. Five countries. And a technology transition already running into Africa’s oldest obstacles.
By the Education Desk | BETAR.africa | March 2026
In the crowded examination hall of a public secondary school in Ogun State, Nigeria, the usual anxiety of WASSCE season has taken on a new dimension this year. Students preparing for the 2026 West African Senior School Certificate Examination are not only revising trigonometry and comprehension passages — they are also practising how to use a mouse.
For Haruna Danjuma, national president of the Parents-Teachers Association of Nigeria (NAPTAN), the scene is far from exceptional. “Eighty to ninety per cent of students, particularly in rural areas, are not computer literate,” Danjuma told Punch earlier this year, warning that a rushed shift to digital exams could deepen rather than address existing inequality. “The plan to move WASSCE entirely to CBT is not feasible with the current level of infrastructure and student preparedness.”
The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) is pushing ahead with its most ambitious modernisation in its 74-year history: a phased shift to computer-based testing for the WASSCE, the high-stakes qualification that shapes university entry for candidates across Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia and The Gambia. The 2026 edition — scheduled to run from 24 April to 20 June — launches the CB-WASSCE: a hybrid model in which multiple-choice objective papers are administered digitally while essay and theory components remain pen-and-paper.
It is a carefully managed first step. And yet the rollout has already collided with the political system, the infrastructure deficit, and the stubborn structural roots of the exam malpractice crisis it partly aims to solve.
What WAEC Has Actually Built
The CB-WASSCE 2026 is not a sudden lurch into the unknown. WAEC has spent years cataloguing school ICT capacity, tiering institutions by digital readiness, and expanding its network of CBT-enabled examination centres. That network now stands at approximately 1,080 centres across the five member states — up from 661 in 2024, a 63 percent expansion in two years. Nigeria accounts for 673 of those centres; Ghana, 334; Sierra Leone, 34; Liberia, 23; The Gambia, 16.
The council has simultaneously launched WAEC DigiCert, a digital certificate service now operational across all five member states, allowing institutions and employers to verify results online — a long-overdue fix to a market plagued by credential fraud. Dr Amos Dangut, Head of WAEC’s Nigeria National Office, has framed the 2026 pilot as a deliberate sequencing choice. “No candidate will be required to travel more than two kilometres from their location to take the examination,” Dangut stated, adding that the pilot would be restricted to schools that have “volunteered and can demonstrate the required ICT facilities.”
But the infrastructure requirements placed on those schools reveal the gap between policy intent and ground reality. Participating institutions must provide a minimum of 250 functional computers per batch, a dedicated server, reliable power backup, CCTV coverage, and air-conditioned halls. An analysis by BusinessDay Nigeria estimates the total cost of equipping the country’s 23,554 approved WASSCE centres at approximately ₦1.6 trillion ($1 billion) — assuming no school currently owns the required equipment. For a system where the majority of public secondary schools lack consistent electricity, the figure is more indictment than estimate. BusinessDay’s reporting found institutions with as few as two functional laptops serving over 600 students — a ratio that makes the 250-computer requirement read less like a policy target than a different world entirely.
A Legislature Steps In
Nigeria’s House of Representatives did not accept the ambiguity quietly. In November 2025, lawmakers voted to order the Federal Ministry of Education and WAEC to suspend the CBT rollout, citing the risk of mass failure among poorly prepared students and warning of psychological harm.
“Most schools are not equipped,” declared the House committee chairman in debate, echoing concerns from parents’ associations, teachers’ unions, and education researchers who argued that mandating digital exams in under-resourced contexts transfers the burden of state failure onto individual students.
WAEC complied. Full computer-based WASSCE will now commence no earlier than 2027. The 2026 edition proceeds as a voluntary pilot, with candidates given the option to sit either CBT or traditional paper-based formats depending on their school’s readiness. The National Assembly has separately passed a resolution proposing 2030 as the more realistic target for universal CBT adoption.
The political drama reveals a structural tension: West Africa’s exam digitisation has been driven by federal mandate without commensurate public investment in school infrastructure. WAEC has been handed an ambition the governments funding it have not matched with capital.
The Access Equity Question
WAEC’s 1,080 CBT centres represent a real expansion — but the geography tells a more complicated story. An analysis of the centre distribution conducted for this article by BETAR.africa’s Data Desk found that nearly two-thirds of all CBT capacity across the five member states is concentrated in three urban areas: Lagos, Accra, and Freetown. A student in Yobe State, Nigeria’s most remote northern state, or Lofa County in inland Liberia, may travel more than 50 kilometres to reach the nearest centre.
The scale of this disparity exposes the limits of Dr Dangut’s 2km assurance. Across 1.36 million square kilometres of territory, 1,080 centres translate to an average national coverage radius of roughly 20 kilometres — ten times the stated target. The 2km commitment, in practice, applies to designated urban examination zones. For rural candidates, the gap between WAEC’s stated standard and their lived experience remains wide.
The equity calculus varies sharply by country. Ghana, with internet penetration at approximately 73 percent (ITU, 2024) and 334 centres, is best positioned for a digital transition. Sierra Leone, with 38 percent connectivity and just 34 centres, faces the steepest climb; Liberia, with 27 percent and 23 centres, the steepest of all.
Digital literacy compounds the geographic divide. A pupil at a well-resourced school in Accra or Lagos has likely used a keyboard regularly. Her counterpart in rural Sierra Leone or Bong County, Liberia, may not have encountered one — part of the 80 to 90 percent cohort Danjuma describes. WAEC’s proximity commitment addresses geography — imperfectly, as the data shows — but digital familiarity is a separate barrier the council has not yet announced a plan to close.
Education researchers at the University of Lagos have noted that a rushed CBT transition risks producing a two-tier outcome structure: urban students performing better not because they know the curriculum better, but because they are more fluent in the exam interface. If WAEC proceeds toward full CBT by 2027 or beyond, the questions compound: who trains teachers to support digital exam preparation, who pays for connectivity at rural centres, and what recourse exists for the candidate failed not by knowledge but by infrastructure?
Tech vs. Structural Malpractice
WAEC’s push to digital is partly a response to West Africa’s endemic exam malpractice crisis. In 2025, the council withheld the results of 192,089 WASSCE candidates — 9.75 percent of the 1.97 million who sat — on allegations ranging from banned mobile phones in examination halls to question paper leaks that circulated on WhatsApp before papers began.
The 2026 technology response is systematic. Enhanced question randomisation means each candidate receives a uniquely coded paper — generated by algorithm, varied in phrasing and sequencing while covering identical topics and cognitive levels. Optical Mark Recognition sheets are matched to individual candidate codes. In CBT-enabled centres, digital delivery eliminates the physical distribution window that has historically been the most exploited point of leakage.
These are meaningful interventions. But the malpractice ecosystem is not primarily a technological problem. It is sustained by overcrowded classrooms, underpaid invigilators susceptible to bribery, and a market of “expo” providers that have industrialised question paper leaks for decades. A better exam portal does not change those underlying conditions.
Ghana’s approach in 2025 offers a complementary model. Ahead of the WASSCE, the Ghana Education Service drew a firm line. “We will dismiss any staff or invigilator who engages in exam malpractice,” said Daniel Fenyi, head of GES public relations, warning that dismissal would be accompanied by criminal prosecution. The directive, combined with heightened invigilation and daily integrity bulletins, contributed to 8,199 documented malpractice cases being formally processed — a sign that accountability mechanisms, not just detection technology, are starting to bite.
Nigeria has moved in the same direction, introducing a three-year cross-body examination ban for candidates caught cheating. The combination of technological deterrence and institutional consequence is more likely to shift the culture of malpractice than either intervention alone.
The Kenyan Lesson
Kenya’s experience with exam reform offers instructive context. The Kenya National Examinations Council has not moved to CBT for the KCSE, but its broader educational transition is further advanced in a different register. The 2025 KCSE — results released in January 2026 — was one of the final examinations under the 8-4-4 curriculum before Kenya’s full pivot to a Competency-Based Education system. With 993,226 candidates and 270,715 securing direct university entry, Kenya’s reforms centre on curriculum redesign rather than delivery modality.
The lesson for WAEC is pointed: exam digitisation in isolation risks becoming the most visible signal of modernisation without addressing curriculum depth, teacher quality, and resource ratios that determine whether qualifications connect graduates to labour markets. The mode of delivery matters less than the integrity of what is being assessed.
What Needs to Happen
WAEC’s 2026 hybrid pilot is a defensible start. Restricting full CBT to schools demonstrating readiness is more honest than a mandated universal rollout that pretends infrastructure exists where it does not. The 63 percent expansion in CBT centres since 2024 shows genuine organisational commitment. DigiCert tackles credential fraud practically. Question randomisation addresses real leakage vulnerabilities.
But three things the pilot alone cannot deliver remain outstanding.
First, member state governments must fund the infrastructure transition — not mandate it to schools. The ₦1.6 trillion equipment burden is a symptom of policy misalignment; the government that requires CBT should procure the centres. The current model, in which urban schools that can self-fund become CBT-eligible while rural schools cannot, will systematically advantage candidates who are already advantaged.
Second, digital literacy must be treated as a WASSCE preparation subject, not an assumed prerequisite. A 2027 or 2030 timeline is meaningful only if the intervening years include structured keyboard and interface training for all students — not just those at well-resourced urban schools. “Eighty to ninety per cent of students in rural areas are not computer literate,” NAPTAN’s Danjuma warns. A policy timeline that ignores this is not a plan — it is a postponement.
Third, the malpractice fight needs institutional muscle alongside technology. Ghana’s prosecution threat and Nigeria’s cross-body ban are steps in the right direction. Sustained consequences for expo operators and institutions with malpractice records will do more to shift cheating culture than any encryption algorithm.
Seven-point-two million candidates. Five countries. One exam season. Across 1,080 centres that, for millions of rural students, remain many kilometres further than the promise. The scale of what WAEC is attempting to modernise is genuinely ambitious. Whether that ambition is matched by political will, public investment, and honest sequencing will determine whether 2026 is remembered as the year West Africa’s exam system began a real transformation — or the year the gap between intention and infrastructure became impossible to ignore.
This article was produced with AI assistance. All facts, sources, and editorial judgements were reviewed and approved by BETAR.africa editors before publication.
Sources: WAEC official statements (Dr Amos Dangut, Head Nigeria National Office); Ghana Education Service/Daniel Fenyi (Punch, modernghana.com); Haruna Danjuma, NAPTAN National President (Punch, 2025); BusinessDay Nigeria (infrastructure cost analysis); ITU Digital Development Dashboard 2024; WAEC Annual Reports 2022–2024; BETAR.africa Data Desk CBT centre dataset; KNEC 2025 results data; Punch; Vanguard; Guardian Nigeria
