In the backwaters of what many in the United States consider a backwater, a quiet revolution is brewing.

Eighteen years after civil war ended in Liberia, in a school located in a rural village that helps make rubber for Bridgestone, the revolution isn’t around political power or guns. It’s about using technology to personalize learning and unlock progress for children who otherwise would struggle to learn to read and do math.

When I recently visited the school, which is a little over an hour outside of Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, just under 30 students sat studiously learning how to read and do basic math on small, green tablets with headphones. Rising Academies, a fast-growing education company in Africa, works with the village-based government school to do everything from improving its teaching and learning to implementing more humane disciplinary practices—and now implementing this child-directed learning program.