Our First Client Was a Remote School in Adamawa State-FlexiSAF CEO

Convincing schools in Nigeria to embrace eLearning or digitisation is a monumental task. A good number of these schools from the primary, secondary and tertiary level are yet to grasp the importance and impact of going digital. Amidst this struggle, an edtech company, FlexiSAF has been ‘literarily begging’ these schools to sign up for digitisation. Hence, it should not come as a surprise that the first client of FlexiSAF was a School in Adamawa.  Fast forward to today,  the efforts of the startup at encouraging eLearning in Nigerian schools are yielding amazing results. Today, the edtech company has over 400 schools across Nigeria using their products thus serving more than 250,000 students. This laudable enterprise has being fronted and led by Faiz Bashir,  the founder of FlexiSAF with the support of his amazing team. In this exclusive interview with Innovation-village, Bashir shed more light on FlexiSAF, his first client, why the schools were initially resisting digitisation and much more. Excerpts.

Can you tell us about FlexiSAF?

FlexiSAF which was founded by Faiz Bashir in 2010, is an edtech company that is committed to bringing the best school management, teaching and learning experiences to educators, students, and parents across Africa through its innovative software and technology offerings. Our flagship products SAFSMS and SAFTIMS are currently used in over 400 schools across Nigeria to help them automate and improve their processes and also to manage more than 250,000 students. Being in the education space, we’ve been doing some research and development in eLearning, specifically content development. Our goal is to identify the best model that suits the Nigerian environment that will make a great impact in providing access to quality education at an affordable cost.

How will you describe the reception of FlexiSAF so far? Were the schools receptive or averse to digitisation?

In the beginning, very few schools really understood the need to computerize. Even when they did, access to the computer was a challenge. Currently, the awareness and the level of infrastructure has greatly improved. Majority of schools understand they need to computerize. While a number of them take quick decisions to digitise, there are still a few that take their time before embracing technology.

Nigeria’s Educational system is a long way from being digitised. What role is FlexiSAF playing to achieve 90 to 100% digitisation of education in the country?

Our major role at FlexiSAF is to provide simple and affordable solutions that would support the schools in their digitization efforts. The scope is multi-faceted ranging from process automation, teaching and learning aids. E-Learning solutions are our long term goal to provide access to high quality and affordable learning platform to the vast of Nigerian students.

What are the advantages of digitising Nigeria’s educational system?

Technology has come to stay and it is the easiest method to distribute content and scale talent. To use the words of Salman Khan of the Khan Academy, who developed thousands of Maths and Science videos, he says: If Isaac Newton had developed calculus videos then there wouldn’t have been a need for him to do that. In essence, the point is that by digitizing and computerizing our educational system, millions of students can be reached which reduces the challenge of the shortage of teachers and improves access to quality education. Sal Kahn’s book, The One World Schoolhouse, discusses this in detail and the future of creating a free world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

What are your recommendations to encourage more schools and institutions to embrace the idea of digitisation? What do you think the government can do?

My biggest recommendation is for the schools to overcome the inferiority complex and just start. A good example that I always like citing is that our first client (about 12 years ago before officially starting FlexiSAF) was a remote school in Adamawa State where they barely get 1 hour of power in a week. The school had 1 computer and a small generator and 12 years later they have all their students’ records digitized. For the government, it is the same discussion that is on-going everywhere: quality and reliable infrastructure specifically in terms of power and ICT.

There has been a vociferous call for the government to declare a state of emergency in the education sector? What do you think about this?

In January 2018, we launched FlexiSAF Foundation, a non-profit organization that focuses on providing access to quality education to out-of-school children because of the magnitude of the problem. To give you the context of the challenges, currently, Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school children. According to UBEC, there are at least 13 million of such kids. The second challenge is far beyond access to education and that is the quality of the education. Earlier this year, Unesco’s Institute for Statistics warned of a “staggering” problem in lack of quality in schools, with more than 600 million young people who have been to school but are lacking basic skills in literacy and numeracy. That is 6 out of 10 children in school are what is known as ‘in school but not learning,’ as they fail to meet basic proficiencies in reading and maths. This problem is particularly acute in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 88% of children and adolescents will enter adulthood without a basic proficiency in reading. With these numerous challenges, it is not an overstatement to call for a state of emergency in the education sector.

How affordable are your EdTech Solutions?

Our solutions are very affordable and flexible for different school sizes and the plan they need. More information about this can be found on our website.

What are the challenges of running your startup? Where do you see FlexiSAF in the next five years?

I think I am lucky to have a passion in edtech and a vision to see that FlexiSAF participates in transforming our education system. It is impossible to say that there is no challenge but developing grit in what we set out to do makes it interesting and allows us to progress. Maintaining that grit across the organization definitely requires consistency and staff motivation.

What advice do you have for budding entrepreneurs?

Entrepreneurship is about solving problems. So my advice for every entrepreneur especially in Africa is to clearly define the problem they are trying to solve and then focus clearly on it. We’ve recently been studying the Blue Ocean strategy which really discourages mindless competition in a noisy market but rather focusing on your users – identifying their true pain points & ensuring that your solution addresses it clearly. Like we say at FlexiSAF, be bold, focus on the user &  move fast & create.