Business Post Contributor
By Sodeinde Temidayo David
Nigerian educational and learning technology platform, uLesson, has received a wider global appeal as it featured on a programme aired on Cable News Network (CNN).
This followed the $7.5 million in a Series A round led by US-based Owl Ventures it received earlier this year. The company was featured in a recent episode of Inside Africa.
Founded in Jos, Nigeria, uLesson’s popularity skyrocketed after the lockdown began, with over half a million downloads between March and August of 2020.
The platform provides pre-recorded educational content for secondary school students, as it leverages best-in-class teachers, media, and technology to create high-quality, interactive, affordable and accessible education for learners.
In just one year, the platform has expanded to numerous countries such as Sierra Leone, Liberia, Gambia, Uganda, Kenya, and has just started to expand into South Africa.
The founder of the platform, Mr Sim Shagaya, noted that after an impressive career in the world of digital start-ups, he believes he has found his true calling with uLesson.
“I had been thinking for a long time as to how we can apply digital technologies to education, and I’ve never had a deeper sense of mission and purpose as I do now,” he stated on the show.
The education platform provides content and resources that serve students of junior secondary and senior high schools.
The team hopes to move to a full streaming model, as well as open up physical learning centres powered by the uLesson content to provide access to education to students who do not have access to the online platform.
According to Mr Shagaya, the plan is to integrate live and interactive classes into the platform to encourage healthy competition between students.
All of uLesson’s content is conceived, developed, and produced in-house, a decision deliberately made to ensure innovation.
“We have a team of illustrators, we have a team of animators, subject matter experts, and scriptwriters that come together to pull these resources and create content in a way that is engaging and useful for our learners.” the founder explained.
Mr Shagaya believes that COVID-19 has shown the possibility of a new way of learning for children and hopes that uLesson will help children contribute to creating a future creative workforce for Africa.
