EDTECH: Building Africa's Education Tech Infrastructure (Part 2)
Notes on African startups that are building Edtech solutions. How they are addressing affordability, quality and inclusion.
This is the final piece to the EDTECH series. In this newsletter, I discuss virtual learning and share some notes on incredible African startups that are building in this space.
Notes on Virtual Learning
Notes from an interview by Sim Shagaya the Founder of ULesson
Virtual learning will help to address the student to teacher ratio challenges in Africa by taking the best teachers available and making them available to as many students as possible. This drives accessibility, quality and affordability.
How inclusive is virtual learning in terms of the affordability of data? Africa is down to 7% of household spending for data from 12% just 5 years ago. Data inclusion is moving rapidly.
Challenges of building a pan-African edtech company when there is no unified curriculum across Africa? There has to be an effort to cover differences in the curriculum in terms of culture, accent & context. Despite the difference in curriculum, there are countries such as Uganda, Zambia, Nigeria and Lesotho where the curriculum is relevant to all for ULesson app users. Primary school curriculums in the sciences are also uniform across the continent. (Newton’s law of motion is newton’s law of motion across the board)
Ulesson has raised $10.6 million from TLcom Capital, Owl Ventures, TLcom Capital, Founder Collective, LocalGlobe e.t.c and was founded by Sim Shagaya a technology industry veteran.
How African startups are innovating around virtual learning
Valenture creates new opportunities for students to choose an aspirational online learning experience by offering fully-supported online high school programmes and pre-college certificates. The institute has partnered with the University of Capetown to offer online high school learning. Private schools which offer high-quality education are very expensive. Valenture seeks to offer high-quality affordable education at around $140 a month ( R2, 095.00).
The partnership with UCT also seeks to prepare students for universities and their careers.
You only need this equipment;
Since its founding in 2019, Valenture has raised $7 million in one round from GSV Ventures. GSV is an edtech focused investor.
Quality Education is very expensive in Africa. Top private schools which have low student to teacher ratios are expensive charging as high as $8, 000.00 a year. It’s an experience that the founder of Kidato School, Sam Gichuru, faced that led him to found the company.
“I have three kids. I moved them from private schools to homeschooling because that was the next option to give them the same quality of education but at an affordable price,” Gichuru told TechCrunch.
The startup has a rich curriculum and introduced activities that are fun and engaging such as coding, chess, robotics and sport. It has also reduced the student to teacher ratio to 5:1.
Since its founding in 2020, Kidato has raised 2 investment rounds totalling $1.5 million from Y Combinator, Learn Start Capital, Launch Africa Ventures Fund, Graph Ventures, Century Oak Capital e.t.c
An interesting graph
GSV Ventures estimates online learning to grow to a whopping $1 Trillion industry. The growth will be accelerated by the covid-19 pandemic. Before Covid (B.C) the online learning industry was meant to grow to $510 billion but After the Disease (A.D) it’s growing to $1 trillion.
I am hopeful that Africa will share a significant pie in this industry.
Next week I am coming back with a piece on the Healthtech sector. Subscribe so you don’t miss future newsletters.