Today, KaiOS Technologies announced that Life, an in-house educational app for KaiOS-powered smart feature phones, is now available in Africa. KaiOS users in Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, and South Africa can now find the app available for download via the KaiStore, with more countries coming soon.
Life serves as a trusted educational resource for first-time internet users, and provides curated content in six categories, including Digital Skills, Education, Health, Gender Equality, Agriculture, and Financial Education. These resources help users navigate their internet experience, and are optimized for the non-touch screens of KaiOS-powered devices; as well as gain access to valuable information that can improve their lives.
To date, Digital Skills, Books, and Education are the most popular sections of Life, which is the eleventh most downloaded app in Uganda. Kai has partnered with groups such as Funzi, Worldreader, Care, Girl Effect, Tambero, Esoko, Cell-Ed, We Farm, iCow, and Ubongo, and continues to expand partnerships that deliver high quality educational resources.
The most accessed section overall is Digital Skills, which was developed from GSMA’s Mobile Internet Skills Training Toolkit (MISTT), a resource for organizations who want to introduce the mobile internet to first time mobile internet users. In addition to using the toolkit as the backbone of Digital Skills, a KaiOS focused module has also been added to GSMA’s MISTT material so trainers and frontline retail staff can learn about the key features of the operating system and how to explain to end users.
Claire Sibthorpe, head of Connected Society at GSMA, said, “The GSMA is committed to advancing connectivity amongst users who wish to access mobile internet for the first time. The Connected Society team is delighted to support Life, the KaiOS education platform alongside a dedicated module within our Mobile Internet Skills Toolkit. Together, our collaboration increases digital skills and helps address the affordability barrier, accelerating progress towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.”
“With Life’s expansion into Africa, we’re excited to continue increasing digital literacy and access to health and financial resources amongst those most intensely impacted by the digital divide,” said Sebastien Codeville, CEO of KaiOS Technologies. “Africa alone has close to 800 million people who are still unconnected, and we hope to make a positive impact on that through affordable, yet advanced, mobile technology.”
KaiOS enables a new category of affordable smart feature phones that require limited memory, while still offering a rich user experience. It supports 3G and 4G/LTE, Wi-Fi, GPS, and NFC. KaiOS-enabled phones come with popular apps and services like WhatsApp, the Google Assistant, Facebook, YouTube, and Google Maps, as well as a store for apps called the KaiStore with over two hundred essential apps and counting, from global and local content providers. It is now the third largest mobile operating system worldwide, running on over 100 million devices shipped across Europe, Africa, Asia and Americas.
KaiOS Technologies is particularly interested in working with local developers, who are ideally suited to create apps that address the unique needs of their own communities. Interested developers are encouraged to visit the submission portal to submit content or ideas for the Life app, and work alongside KaiOS to make mobile internet access affordable and valuable for people in the underserved markets.
