This story was produced by our colleagues at the BBC.

Seated in a classroom, 56 students each received a cable, a headset and a tablet. The children are organized, sat down in rows, very quiet. This room has no tables and has no chairs, but it has tablets and headphones, and children who are eager to use them.

Shamim Hassan, the class teacher, has told the children to put on their headphones and switch on the tablets. But the actual lesson is carried out by a virtual figure on their screen: a digital teacher.

Hassan showed me how it works. A virtual teacher appeared; her name is Alice.

Every time you get an answer correct, a tick appears on the screen. Now you have to put all the balls inside the box. Some of these lessons are direct lessons, like adding, but some of them are games.

“We should read words, letters, even syllables. Further lessons, they tell them to add, divide, even multiplication,” Hassan said.

Despite having free primary schools, children in Malawi are lagging behind. According to Unesco, almost 90% of them can't read a simple sentence at the age of 10. There's a lack of teachers and basic resources, but the government has gone for a high-tech solution.

For half an hour every day, these children learn math and reading at their own pace and in their own language. Through a translator, 11-year-old Matthews [sic] told me why he likes studying on the tablet.

“What he loves most is mathematics, especially the division one,” the translator said. “If, for example, he said, ‘If there are 10 mangoes and there are five children, how many did each one get?’ So that's what he loves to do on a tablet.”

Tablets are common enough in many parts of the world, but in rural areas like this, they are completely new, and they've created a lot of interest. Lloyd Gutsu is the head teacher.

“After the tablet sessions were introduced here, the enrollment rose up to 100%,” he said. “Even the absenteeism of learners has been reduced. Most of the learners are now coming to school daily. They want to touch the tablet. They want to do the activities from the tablet.”

Because Takumana School isn't on the electricity grid, solar panels have been installed to charge the tablets. Amos Zaindi is from Imagine Worldwide, the NGO that supports the project.

“For us to drive learning using the tablet, we need to have power. We are going to schools that are off-grid, so we are providing solar,” he said.

“We provide the facilities for storage of the tablets. We train the teachers and other education officers that are involved in delivering education at the primary school level.”

The tablets cost around $7 per child, and critics say that the money should be spent on more teachers, in a country where there's an average of 70 children in a class. The man behind the project at the Ministry of Education is Doctor Joshua Valletta.

“What we are doing, is bringing extra teaching and learning materials that allow us to do what every educator wants to do, and that is to achieve independent learning,” he said.

“Using one teacher in a classroom that has 106 kids, it's very difficult. Let's create an opportunity for every learner to have at least 30 minutes in a day when they can learn at their own pace.”

In trials, they found that children with tablets made significant gains in literacy and numeracy compared to standard teaching. The plan is to have tablet teachers in every primary school by the end of a decade.