Education start-ups take Nigeria’s tech space by storm

It was October 19, 2017. Samuel Ndorogo sat comfortably in his Surulere office surfing the Internet. He had been on his computer for six hours. Ndorogo was not alone in the cubicle. Four other young people were also in the game. Their business was simple: To connect teachers to students through the Internet.

Parents seeking to find suitably qualified teachers for their children only needed to go online, fill out a form and then click a Request button. Ndorogo and the young people sitting down beside him would then find suitably qualified teachers who lived closer for a fee. Parents paid with their credit cards or may even pay directly into a bank account.

This is the new wave of innovation in the education sector now. Young entrepreneurs are taking the sector by the storm via technology.

One of such is Tuteria, founded by Godwin Benson, a first-class graduate of Systems Engineering from the University of Lagos.

Benson founded Tuteria to help Nigerian students find teachers near them.

Tuteria manually assesses teachers and also interviews them to ensure they are suitable for the subjects or courses they claim to teach.

Tuteria does not just connect teachers to students for traditional courses or subjects, but also for areas such as beauty and lifestyle, cooking, music and instruments, among others.

Next is Prepclass, which provides home tutors to Lagos residents, offering test-taking strategies and targeted examination practice for students.

In a city of over 20 million people, where most parents are busy from morning till evening, Prepclass is filling up the gap of providing tutors to pupils and students at their convenient time.

“At Prepclass, we have access to more than 1000 tutors in different specialities and locations across Lagos alone. This makes it possible for us to match your ward with the very best of the best tutors without any stress to you. We try to work with your budget and make the entire process as stress free and flexible as possible,” the firm says on its website.

There is also Tutor.NG, launched in 2014, with a view to providing tools for engaging and tutoring learners in Nigeria. Tutor.NG is often seen as the first online education platform in Nigeria, allowing school teachers or other individuals willing to share creative works or teach online.

Through the platform, teachers and trainers can sell their courses at a fee, to whoever is interested.

The platform tutors students on English and French languages, public speaking, as well as on entrepreneurship courses such as bead making, cooking and mobile app development, among others.

At the launch of the platform in 2014, Peter Ogedengbe, co-founder of Tutor.NG, said the platform would solve the problem of learning beyond the classrooms and create employment for smart and versatile graduates.

More so, EduRecords is one of the platforms changing the way the business of education is done. It was founded to track the performance of students and teachers. EduRecords keeps records of students and teachers against loss, damage or alteration; monitors children or school affairs from any part of the world, and provides performance analysis on children.

The platform checks continuous decline in students’ performances as well as decline in enrolment rates, thus enabling the parents to learn the performances of their children.

Launched in September 2016, the platform has Ajayi Lawrence as its chairman and Olatunde Ogunlade as the managing director.

At the launch in 2016, the founders said they were targeting increasing literacy level by 30-40 percent within three years when the platform would be fully deployed. They added that the platform could generate up to 10,000 direct jobs in Nigeria alone while impacting over 10 million lives.

The managing director Ogunlade believes that with a population of about 200 million people in Nigeria, EduRecords is sure of transforming the lives of the people within the age bracket the firm covers.

BusinessDay checks show that e-learning has become a big business across the world, attracting thousands of learners and teachers as well as huge revenues to eagle-eyed firms.

In 2016, an online education or e-learning platform called ‘Teachable’ helped educators to sell $30 million worth of courses, up from $5 million in 2015, said its CEO and founder Ankur Nagpal.

In fact, the platform attracted three million users on the learner side, adding 15,000 more users per day. According to Techcrunch.com, educators have uploaded over 1.3 million videos to the Teachable platform so far, and the company reports an average of 250,000 sessions each day.

Nigerian start-ups are gradually growing the education sector, leveraging technology and innovation.

ODINAKA ANUDU

The post Education start-ups take Nigeria’s tech space by storm appeared first on BusinessDay : News you can trust.