By Alexander Chiejina
A $15 million accelerator programme that will channel support to 72 startups across Nigeria and Kenya is being put together by Co-creation Hub (CcHUB) Africa’s largest innovation hub. The programme of support will run for three years in the first instance.
To be launched under CcHUB’s ‘Edtech Fellowship Programme’ it will support and amplify the impact of edtech startups across Africa, including support to founders offering tech solutions that will address learning innovation in an educational sector riddled with a plethora of issues.
“If we invest intentionally in a very structured Edtech inclusive ecosystem of government, teachers, investors, foundations, and even in some cases, the students and their parents, we believe that we can begin to gain a better understanding of how to use technology to improve learning in schools. It is important that when we build a programme that not only finds the smartest people in the startup ecosystem but also connects the startup ecosystem with government authorities, public sectors, schools, and academic institutions so that we can ensure that there’s a clear understanding of how to scale education solutions in the space,” Tijani Bosun, co-founder and chief executive officer, CCHub said in a monitored media interview.
The fellowship programme targets startups in Nigeria and Kenya, two of Africa’s biggest edtech markets. Of the over 300 startups in both markets, tutorial apps and platforms emphasizing rote learning are among the majority.
“Our thinking is quite broad. We know that the core will probably be narrowed down to a few areas depending on what we see, but we’re challenging ourselves not to fund the most obvious solutions. We’re not just going to back any startup; we’re going to see that these startups are also driving learning outcomes,” Bosun noted.
Business A.M. gathered that CcHUB intends to take on that task with the help of an in-house research team dedicated to working with portfolio startups and testing their products from launch to scale. CcHub will provide to selected startups in both locations, including product development, government relations, pedagogy and learning science, portfolio management, communication, instructional design and community building.
By offering shared resources, these groups will be vital to how each startup carries out team building, MVP and prototyping testing, go-to-market strategies, engagement with organizations, and receiving feedback from users. These value-adds will also complement the initial $100,000 funding startups get to access during the programme.
“Over the next three years, we will have 72 edtech companies launched into the market. We believe this will kickstart the ecosystem and reboot it afresh because out of that number, at least you’re sure about half or 20-30 percent of them would live for another three to four years. And that will allow us to know if technology can truly work for education in Africa,” Bosun explained.
The sub-Saharan region has the most children and youth out of school, with about 98 million children and young people excluded from education, per this report. Even for those in school, the quality of education across all levels, from K-12 to tertiary, is abysmal. For instance, students in computer science disciplines in most Nigerian universities are taught outdated programming languages with no current real-world applications. Other problems are inadequate funding, school strikes, and brain drain.
Over the years, mobile and internet penetration and smartphone access have increased; according to GSMA Intelligence’s report, mobile phone subscribers accounted for 46 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa’s population, while smartphone adoption was 64 percent in 2021. This has allowed several edtech startups to develop digital platforms that have, in some way, seen thousands of Africans receive better learning and work opportunities.
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