Africa is experiencing a youthquake unmatched anywhere else in the world!
Today, 650 million Africans are 17 years or younger. By 2030, that number will reach 1 billion; and by 2050, a quarter of the world will be African. The demand for quality education on the continent has never been greater. However, it’s impossible to prepare the next generation for the jobs of the future when we are still using outdated education systems to manage and deliver education to them.
The COVID-19 pandemic magnified this problem as African kids were out of school for months as school administrators struggled to make the transition to online learning. In developed markets like the United States, companies like Power School, a $3B NYSE-listed edtech startup, already provide such infrastructure to a wide network of private and public schools.
However, most African schools still use brick-and-mortar school infrastructure and outdated pen-and-paper methods of education management. This makes it impossible to know how many students are in school, who is performing well and who is staying below their learning targets. As a result, targeted interventions on both public and private levels are impossible to execute or inefficient at best.
As a result of this, as defined by UNESCO, the situation of students falling below the learning target is tagged a "learning crisis" and is causing a skills crisis in the labour market. According to the World Bank, globally, students who can not pass the age-level assessment will lose future earnings up to $21T, about 20% of the global GDP.
EDVES Education is solving this problem and transforming education delivery in Africa by building an operating system that includes comprehensive learning and school management software that is customized for each school. This effectively builds critical infrastructure into private and public sector schools in Africa onto which any provider can leverage their products - we call it the AWS of K12 schools in Africa.
One of Edves' offerings is a comprehensive learning and administration software for schools, which is easily accessible on existing mobile (even with low Internet strength, applicable in rural areas) or desktop devices. This app empowers teachers to enroll students, mark attendance, plan and deliver lessons, monitor and record student progress across a broad spectrum of areas of assessments, and enable parent-teacher collaboration on learning evidence. Advanced technologies such as AI, and data analytics allow educators to transform the National curriculum into a 21st-century relevant scheme of work and provide actionable insights on various assessments, facilitating the swift identification of areas for improvement in each learner's journey.
Currently, EDVES is scaling its platform by leveraging its successful coverage of 2000+ private schools—soon serving >1 million+ students in Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Zambia, and the UK—as a proof of concept to make a push into public schools.
Led by a team of seasoned founders, ‘Dimeji Falana and Dare Adebayo, who are deeply connected to the problem with 10+ years of experience in the space, EDVES is well positioned to play a pivotal role in training Africa’s large youth population into a highly-trained workforce armed with the skills to build Africa’s future. We have a deep conviction in their potential to achieve their mission and become a trusted partner for schools, governments and parents looking for efficient distribution channels for refined curriculum, pedagogy, learning material and academic performance reports.
Africa is on the precipice of a talent boom, and we’re proud to support transformative startups like EDVES with follow-on investments as they build critical infrastructure powering Africa’s talent revolution!
