Injini, the Edtech incubator headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa has disclosed the startups that will participate in its second cohort. The Edtech received over 800 applications from 36 countries across Africa. The eight initiatives are from Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
Commenting, Injini founder Jamie Martin said the incubator was guided in its selection of the cohort by three criteria.
“Firstly, what we look for is an innovation that creates access. Is this a different tech that’s going to allow more people across Africa to access great quality education? The second thing is we look for a great team. Because as you probably saw a lot of these guys are very early stage, so we as much back the team as we back the innovation,” explained Martin.
He added that the incubator also looked at which of the solutions were “evidence-backed”.
“We always do test them against what’s been tried elsewhere in the world, what approaches in education tend to work. There’s also been a bit of criticism that tech in education is sometimes not evidence-aligned, so we try to be as evidence-backed as we can,” he said.
When asked what stood out for him in the second cohort compared to the first, Martin pointed to the dominance of Nigerian startups.
“One thing that stands out for me is the coming of the Nigerians. We had no Nigerian companies in our first cohort. (In the) second cohort when we held an event in Lagos we got three of eight companies from Nigeria,” he said.
Here are the eight startups that have been selected:
Nigeria
Nigerian duo Favorite Onwuemene and Chukwuyem Obima have developed a cloud-based school management software for early childhood development (ECD) and K12 schools.
Bola Lawal and Maxwell Ogunfuyi are looking to tackle student funding with their platform which assists prospective university students source tuition.
Chris and Emerald Kwekowe are leveraging tech to address unemployment in Nigeria. The duo’s platform enables users to train, hire and manage top talent.
Kenya
eLimu (Kenya): The startup’s founder Sam Rich has developed a literacy app which provides users with stories as well as games written and illustrated by teachers and artists.
Ethiopia
Nathanael Gossaye and Rémi Veyrier are the brains behind this Ethiopian startup which has developed a Facebook messenger chatbot that uses proven gamification and AI to teach languages.
Zimbabwe
Addi Mavengere, Manners Msongelwa, and Sean Magama are looking to disrupt education with their startup which provides users with multimedia educational resources delivered via a solar powered server.
South Africa
Allan and Victor Mushabe have come up with a platform that connects students with experts in addition to allowing them to access educational resources online.
Nahana Africa
Alexandra Flusk and Koki Kapa’s startup aims to provide science and mathematics teachers with both online training as well as teaching content.
The five-month incubation programme will provide each of the eight participants with $50,000 in direct funding, office space and accommodation.
