For years, offline test preparation centers in Nigeria have provided after-school guidance and tutoring to students who seek to pass entrance examinations. Edtech platforms such as Edukoya have sprung up with the intent to take these models online and maintain affordability for students.
Today, the Lagos- and London-based startup, which builds online education content and offers online tutoring for students and their parents, raised $3.5 million in pre-seed funding led by European VC firm Target Global.
The platform offers a range of features such as a 24/7 exam preparation and homework help, a question bank with step-by-step workings and personalized performance tracking systems.
Edukoya was founded by CEO Honey Ogundeyi in May. She told TechCrunch that the platform, launched this month in beta, plans to go live fully in 2022.
Nigeria’s education system is a stark representation of what exists in most countries in Africa: poorly equipped classrooms, few high-quality teachers, terrible infrastructure, irrelevant curriculum and ridiculous student-to-teacher ratios (it’s been as high as 46:1 in Nigeria for the primary level).
As a result of these challenges, the average parent seeks after-school classes for their kids. Ogundeyi experienced this during her schooling days in Nigeria, and she said she started Edukoya after contrasting K-12 experiences in the West African country and the U.K.
“Sometimes, even the most brilliant students can be let down by the system,” she said. “If my parents hadn’t made the sacrifice for me to go abroad, all the successes that I’ve had in my career would have been completely different. Now, I have two kids and seeing that same problem of going to school and struggling with some subjects made me look into getting after-school teachers. And it just struck me that this thing hasn’t changed pretty much for the last 50 years. If we look at all the innovation across different industries, Africa’s education system has remained untouched for 50 years; it’s been stagnant.”
SOURCE : yahoo
