e- Mentor

e-Mentor is a platform that enables internally displaced students in conflict afflicted and pandemic ridden areas to gain access to education from the safety of their homes.

UNICEF in a 2019 web publication titled “Education under attack in West and Central Africa” highlights that more than 1.9 million learners have been put out of school by violent crises and war within the region. The Anglophone crisis in Cameroon has singlehandedly seen more than 850,000 students out of school, leaving over 4500+ deaths. I was a victim of the circumstances of this crisis, losing access to education for a year, several classmates, and teachers. Our project aims at enabling students in conflict-affected regions in West and Central Africa to regain access to schooling from the safety of their homes. 

In rural as well as urban settlements in Cameroon, more than 4000 schools have been burnt down in less than 6 years of violent conflict between national defense forces and separatist fighter groups. (https://bit.ly/3QvcA7F). Our solution aims at providing access to education for internally displaced students in conflict-affected areas.  

While advancing Sustainable Development Goal 4, (Quality Education), our project also addresses Goal 10 (Reduced inequalities), as technology is the ultimate equalizer. Through partnership for the goals (partnering with the best universities and schools across Africa), we intend to make education accessible to all students in conflict-affected countries in West and Central Africa, facilitating human capital development and the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals. 

The recent explosion of Extended Reality technologies coupled with the coming of the metaverse has shown us prospects of a drastic change both in the way we interact with technology and its effect on our day to day activities. Virtual, augmented and mixed realities are applicable in different industries such and education, health, entertainment, military and even agriculture. At e-Mentor Africa, we are using Virtual and Mixed Reality to build a device for education. 

Our solution is a stand-alone head mounted device that creates an immersive environment where students and teachers from remote parts of the world can meet virtually and teach/learn and gain relevant skills and knowledge. 
What makes our device stand out is its ability to operate on renewable energy (solar power), and in conditions of low bandwidth. Because of this, students in rural settlements with no power and poor internet conditions can still use the platform. 

The target demographic of our solution is internally displaced secondary level students in conflict affected areas in West and Central Africa.

Due to exacerbating conflicts within the region, more students are losing access to their education as days go by. Being a basic human right, it goes without saying that deprivation of education comes in tandem with severe social ills among which are crime and violent extremism, especially among the age bracket between 12 and 22 (age range of most secondary students). The result of this inequality, in the long term, is not only the destruction of lives and families, but communities and society.
e-Mentor enables these students to regain access to education by taking secondary level courses from the safety of their homes. By accessing curated curriculum-centric courses, students’ academic progress is closely monitored,

I have personally learnt that building a diverse but competent team is necessary for the success of such a project. As such, my team is diverse, yet competent, and made up of an Artificial Intelligence enthusiast and entrepreneur, and computer scientist and Ivy League student, Angela Lum Neh and Moumie Mohammed respectively. 

Angela Lum Neh has a Degree in Computer Science from the African Leadership University in Mauritius. She has launched a tech startup (an app) that enables young Cameroonians gain access to opportunities such as scholarships, fellowships, internships and even jobs. Her background in technology coupled with entrepreneurship experience gave her the opportunity to study Artificial Intelligence at University of Sterling in the US. She adds value to the team by bringing a unique perspective on tech entrepreneurship in Africa. 
Moumie Mohammed being an Open Dreams Scholar and tech enthusiast got a fully funded scholarship to study at Harvard. He is one of the brightest young Cameroonians shaping the future of technology. His experience with programming and his network at Harvard are particularly instrumental, making him an ideal co-founder. 
With a Degree in Software Engineering, I have been trained by HOFT Developers as an Extended Reality developer. My background in technology have seen me serve as a Delegate at the World Youth Forum in Egypt, Yale Model African Union in Rwanda, and the One Young World Summit in Manchester. Being an Extended Reality enthusiast and the founder of e-Mentor, I have built relevant networks with industry professionals in Rwanda and Nigeria. 
While putting together my team, I was intentional not only about diversity, but about competence. My team is ideal. Based on our track record, we envision that this opportunity will accelerate our work significantly. 

After working with my team for several months, we were able to release the second working prototype of our project. It was after this that we emerged as a Central African Regional Finalist at the Global StartUp Awards, and then top 15 at the TotalEnergies Startupper challenge from a pool of 900+ projects across the country. 
Before this, we had a focus group discussion with over 50 Internally Displaced Students within the Open Dreams Network. These were students who had been sent out of school by the Anglophone crisis in the North West and South West Regions. This activity aimed to access their life and educational needs in tandem, to understand not only what their main problems were, but also how pertinent their educational needs were.
Our focused group discussion was a precedent to our test trials with S7 Academy in Bamenda, where we did a more in-depth need analysis, followed by a documented Community Assessment. Our Research provided relevant information which helped us not only in the design of our platform (course structure and assessment methods) and business model, but also with information on how to build a relevant and affordable solution.

An article on industrytraining.com titled “The past, the present and the future of distance learning” makes the case that in recent years, through the use of modern Learning Management Systems, education has been substantially gamified. This gamification, coupled with the infiltration of the internet has led to the use of distance learning, permitting schools to use platforms such as zoom, online chatrooms, and dedicated websites to ease, facilitate and completely substitute classroom learning. However, there has been a limitation to this. e-Mentor capitalizes on that need, thereby becoming innovative – immersion. 

A 2019 Forbes article titled “The Revolutionary Impact of Immersive Technology On Education” makes the case that the introduction of immersive technology (Extended Reality) makes 87% of students more likely to attend class and 72% of them more likely to participate. With this information, we designed our solution using immersive technology (Extended Reality) which allows students to fully immerse themselves into the learning environment, thereby increasing both learning outcomes such as participation and retention. This has never been done before.

When a student mounts our headset, they can manipulate 3D graphic content in real-time as they learn. This level of immersion capitalizes on the hyper-visual processing capacity of the brain (over 50 percent quota) to engage students in the learning process. 

Having released a working prototype of our project, our main objective in the next 12 to 18 months includes 2 main parts: to upskill 100 teachers in each of the remaining 7 regions of Cameroon, and capitalize on new partnerships and opportunities to move from prototype to product.

The Anglophone war has propagated 850,000 Internally Displaced Students all over the country. We intend to upskill 100 secondary schools in each of the 7 regions in which we have not executed capacity-building sessions, on how to use our platform. These teachers will serve as collaborators, curating courses for the platform. This does not only contribute to the success of our project, but also Human Capital Development in technology. These upskilling sessions will also be in partnership with Open Dreams.
Alongside these, we also intend to complete our partnership agreement with the US Embassy in Cameroon, and S7 which will grant credence to the project as Implementing Partner Organization.
The unique combination of upskilling teachers, identifying a suitable manufacturing firm, and creating relevant partnerships is ideal for the success of our project and the implementation of our solution.