KAINOafrica

VISION:

At KAINO, we see a leveled playing field between rural and urban schools with increased access to low-cost and high-quality educational content for learners in Africa.

MISSION:

We are on a journey to ensure inclusive and equitable quality early childhood education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for over 100 million African children by 2030.

CORE VALUES:

Quality, Results, Team Work, and Changing Lives.

Alfred is the Founder and CEO at KAINOafrica, an Early Childhood Development EdTech startup founded in Uganda and can be used by any parent or teacher to access and deliver daily nursery lessons using a web or mobile app that can access over 1,200 easy-to-use guides from 8 learning areas.

Alfred ensures that he communicates the company vision to the team for consistency in technology or content development. He also passes down knowledge to the other team members about the new trends in the market. Alfred ensures that all departments are in sync by having monthly departmental meetings.

Alfred also generally focuses on business growth for the company and securing funds to build the technology and content needed.

Alfred Opio, Founder and CEO: Alfred is an Industrial engineer with a focus on process engineering (reducing waste, and increasing efficiency in any process). He is also a lean Six Sigma expert.

Lyndah Kembabazi, Co-founder and Head of Curriculum: Lyndah is a K-12 curriculum development expert with over 5 years of lower primary and kindergarten teaching experience.

Lawrence Onen, Co-founder and CTO: Lawrence is a software engineer and an EdTech expert with over 8 years of experience leading software developer teams around the world.

Charles Omol, Chief Finance Officer: Charles is a chartered financial analyst with a focus on finance.

David Peinturier, Product Manager: David is a professional in innovation and entrepreneurship.

The KAINO mobile app uses a STEM blended curriculum to teach children how to read and write in just 1-month.

The problem is that children are in school, but they are not learning due to a lack of early literacy and brain-stimulation learning activities.
According to the World Bank report of 2020, 9 out of 10 children in sub-Saharan Africa cannot read a complete sentence even after completing primary school.
According to a UWEZO report of 2021, primary school enrolment in sub-Saharan Africa is at the highest it’s ever been; now at an astounding 99.9%. While this has laid an excellent foundation, access alone has not guaranteed that our children are learning while in school. The report further shows that only 1 out of every 10 children in sub-Saharan Africa can read with comprehension by the age of 10, and this phenomenon is called learning poverty. Focusing on the problems of the now is okay, but this should not make us myopic about the crisis that awaits our children in the future.
This, therefore, means that it’s now time for us to turn our attention to the quality of education in Africa.
If this problem is not solved, a whole generation will not be guaranteed an equal opportunity for productive employment which would result in an economic boost for countries and the African continent at large and hence condemn them to poverty, struggle, difficulty in learning, and acquiring new skills in their later stages of life.
In the long term, it is projected that this generation of children and young people could lose over $10 trillion of future earnings equivalent to almost 10% of global GDP.

We have developed KAINO; an evidence-based and data-driven solution based on the World Bank report of 2015 that showed that children who were exposed to early childhood and brain-stimulating activities were able to learn better and even earn higher in wages as adults, compared to their counterparts who attended regular school.
KAINO is a holistic STEM blended curriculum made up of 5 learning areas developed based on the play-based and child-centered pedagogies for early childhood education for African children by taking the local curriculum and blending it with the British national curriculum for better literacy learning activities and the STEM curriculum for better brain-stimulating activities which resulted into the KAINO teacher guides that nursery school teachers can access via the KAINO mobile apps to not only teach children how to read and write; but also healthy habits, emotional and social development. The solution was launched and piloted in Uganda in partnership with UNICEF and the Ministry of ICT and was found to be able to teach children how to read and write in just 1-month.

We have not done any personal research by ourselves yet. Currently we depend on already done research from organizations like: UWEZO, UNICEF, World Bank, UN etc

According to the World Bank report of 2020, 9 out of 10 children in sub-Saharan Africa cannot read a complete sentence even after completing primary school.
According to a UWEZO report of 2021, primary school enrolment in sub-Saharan Africa is at the highest it’s ever been; now at an astounding 99.9%. While this has laid an excellent foundation, access alone has not guaranteed that our children are learning while in school. The report further shows that only 1 out of every 10 children in sub-Saharan Africa can read with comprehension by the age of 10, and this phenomenon is called learning poverty. Focusing on the problems of the now is okay, but this should not make us myopic about the crisis that awaits our children in the future.
This, therefore, means that it’s now time for us to turn our attention to the quality of education in Africa.
If this problem is not solved, a whole generation will not be guaranteed an equal opportunity for productive employment which would result in an economic boost for countries and the African continent at large and hence condemn them to poverty, struggle, difficulty in learning, and acquiring new skills in their later stages of life.
In the long term, it is projected that this generation of children and young people could lose over $10 trillion of future earnings equivalent to almost 10% of global GDP.

We have partnered with UNICEF and Aga Khan Foundation to pilot KAINO in 6 districts across Uganda and is now being used by 3,000 refugee children to learn while in school.

We are now completing the commercial version of the application so that we can launch the commercial version. This means that we need to strengthen our evidence like never before since we are now going to market. Our customers need to have their confidence up regarding our product. Also, our regulators need to have a working document that documents our evidence of value proposition.

1. Can a child learn how to read and write in just 1-month?

2. Why is STEM important among early learners?

Short-term outputs:

1. Support the development of 3,000 children in East Africa, including 1,000 vulnerable children.

We shall use a direct audience: 

1. Private nursery schools
2. Teachers

Key partners:

1. NGOs
2. Governments

Short-term outputs:

1. Support the development of 3,000 children in East Africa, including 1,000 vulnerable children.
2. Train 250 teachers on STEM-infused Early Education

1. Strengthen the East-African early childhood curriculum with the KAINO blend nationwide.
2. Transform the early-childhood curriculum of 1,000 Sub-Saharan schools