Enkisoma Africa

The lack of a skilled and future ready workforce is linked to classroom teaching and learning practices that are predominantly geared towards passing examinations, and not towards applying knowledge acquired to solve real life problems affecting changing societies. A workforce with the ability to apply critical thinking, creativity and innovation to create applications/solutions that can be commercialised and create jobs is indeed a desire for all countries globally.

Our Enkisoma Africa program is an affordable bundle of devices that come with curated educational content, tools and hardware sets for engineering/science projects and a Paygo system that makes it possible for every parent to afford. 

This solution is capable of enabling undeserved children across the globe to develop the curiosity, interest and capacity to affordably engage in STEM subjects with little infrastructure requirements.

Africa has the largest number of unemployed youth. Youth unemployment in Sub-Saharan Africa is twice that of adults (12.8 percent versus 6.5 percent) and in North Africa nearly quadruples that of adults (27.1 percent versus 7 percent) (ILO 2012). Only 4-12% of students graduates with STEM related degrees. This in effect means that the education system is not providing quality, equitable and safe learning environment and is consistently failing to produce the skills and opportunities that the current economy values. This problem is exacerbated by the lack of proper infrastructure to support STEM subjects as a result of poor economic conditions within this communities. The trajectory is likely to continue as Africa will have the highest youth population in the world. 

Enkisoma Africa solution bundles endless spark program, kids go tech engineering hardware and a pay-go system to make it affordable for every parent. This bundled program is meant to supplement the existing curriculum for children from the age of 5 -14. The endless Spark program consists of a device with customised content that can be accessed both online and offline. The kids go tech prefabricated hardware and tools are simple and easy to use materials and resources that kids from under resourced communities can use for various design, science and engineering based projects. Our pay-go system offers a payment method that is reliable and affordable. The solutions main innovation is the model where Enkisoma installs the equipment in schools and provides the resources for free and parents get to pay under $1 monthly for use by their children. The installed devices will also be occasional learning centres for the local communities. 

Enkisoma Africa targets children in rural based and economically challenged communities that lack the infrastructure and resources to have a quality, equitable and safe learning environment. Most of the rural based schools struggle with basic amenities and with most of the children coming from poor families, the odds are stacked up against them. These children are expected to compete with their counterparts in well resourced schools. My visit to various schools such as Erishata primary school in Transmara division of Narok county Kenya gave me insights to a population of school children with tremendous potential and who would benefit greatly from Enkisomas initiative. Our solution will enable the children to get access to devices with pre-loaded content that can be accessed offline.  The content in the devices is engaging and includes games that teach Math, Science, Coding and Design. The prefabricated engineering tools and hardware will enable the children learn how to solve problems through critical thinking and will tremendously help in creating a curious learning environment where the children will look forward to attending school. 

The focus on democratising access to STEM opportunities for rural underprivileged primary schools goes to the heart of the equitable classrooms challenge. By providing affordable devices, prefabricated kids engineering tools and hardware our Enkisoma solution goes to proof that all children can have an equal opportunity to compete with their urban based and well resource schools. The future of work will require skilled labor that leverages critical thinking and problem solving and this approach will go along way in creating launching pad for this future. 

We have already conducted a feasibility study at Erishata primary school in Transmara division of Narok county Kenya and we are launching the first endless devices in the school which has a population of 400 students. The lab has been setup and teacher champions for the program have been identified.