Low cost private schools are becoming more prevalent in developing countries as governments fail to meet the demand for quality education (Heyneman & Stern, 2014). For-profit private schools are systematically being promoted by supra-national organizations such as the World Bank. Bridge International Academies (BIA) is one such low-cost, for-profit private school business. It was founded by Jay Kimmelman, Shannon May and Phil Frei and opened its first school in Nairobi in 2009. Since then it has grown to over 450 academies located in several countries, including Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda (Kwauk & Perlman Robinson, 2016). But what methods do low-cost private schools, like BIA, use to improve education for the poor? And does privatizing education help alleviate issues found in public schools, such as increasing learning outcomes and teacher performance? The present research is a review of literature that aims to analyze the effectiveness of BIA in Africa and emphasizes the importance of utilizing a critical pedagogy as a way to create a meaningful learning environment for students in both public and private education. This study defines a private school as being an educational facility that requires parental fees to cover part or all of the operational cost, making them dependent on courting the educational market to obtain students in an effort to be financially feasible (Ashley et al., 2014).