Ubongo seeks to transform the learning experience of 440 million kids in Africa. The social enterprise creates interactive edutainment that makes learning fun. Doreen Kessy, chief operational officer at Ubongo, will represent the enterprise at Slush 2015. Her background is in business and economics, and she has also designed poverty relief programs.
Doreen wants to learn more about the Finnish educational system and hear the stories of Finnish teachers.
Ubongo was born when the five co-founders noticed that there was a lack of educational content for kids in Africa.
“There was and still is a lot of great content produced around the world”, Doreen explains.
“However, because of limited access to the Internet and technology devices such as tablets, this content does not get to kids in Africa.”
Using Ubongo Kids does not require any expensive technology. All one needs is a TV and a simple mobile phone.
“We teach math and science through fun animated stories and catchy songs”, Doreen explains. She does the English voice of one of the characters, Ngedere.
Kids can interact by live SMS, by answering the questions on the show and they also get personalized feedback from the characters on the show.
A new show is currently being developed. It will teach English as a second language to kids under the age of seven.
Every fourth home with a TV in Tanzania watches Ubongo Kids. The show has around 900,000 weekly viewers in Tanzania and over 1.5 million in East Africa.
Ubongo is also planning to expand beyond East Africa. The shows will be translated to other languages, like French and Hausa, the most common languages spoken in Western Africa.
Photo: Nisha Ligon, Ubongo
Ubongo Kids in action
Ubongo Kids is the first step towards digital learning for many Tanzanians children. Here students from Uraki village in northern Tanzania are watching the show.
Ubongo visited Slush already in 2014. Doreen’s colleague Nisha Ligon met some potential investors already then, and now Doreen is looking for more. In addition, she is looking forward to meet other startups.
In Finland, Doreen is expecting to learn more about the educational system.
“I think Finnish teachers and students are sufficient proof of Finland’s success in education”, Doreen says.
She also wishes that the experiences of Finnish teachers would be shared more internationally.
“I hope the world will be inspired by their stories, and seek to reform and improve their own education system”, she concludes.
Besides work, Doreen is looking forward to spending a few hours in the sauna while in Finland.
Venla Voutilainen
“Tanzania at Slush” is an articles series that showcases Tanzanian participants from start-ups and incubators to hubs and universities at Slush 2015.
The participants get support for their trip from the Finnish-Tanzanian bilateral development cooperation programme TANZICT. The programme supports the Tanzanian ICT and information society sectors.
Finland has funded TANZICT with 5,8 million euros in 2011-2015. As its continuation, a programme focusing on the Tanzanian innovation system is currently planned.
