Karabong - Where You're Heard

We are leveraging learnings from the founder, Nonni Hlongwane's experience whose experience straddles various early learning, K-12 and tertiary/world of work initiatives globally. Karabong brings play based learning to existing and start up early childhood centres in low income communities, with South Africa as the beta. The idea is to model the likes of Montessori and Lego Foundation pedagogies at an affordable price point and work with existing community partners while also setting up centres from scratch. We also intend to bring the department of basic education along as a partner, in recognition that the government does not currently have the capacity to service this segment of education yet has a burden of managing unprepared children who enter the K-12 system. The objective is to be effective at an ecosystem level with all stakeholders and still be positioned as a pedagogical innovator in early learning before the age of 5-7.

Paucity in early literacy and numeracy is a challenge in Africa. Affordable interventions within the public sector and in the private sector are few and far far between. 20% of public spending in South Africa goes to K-12 education, and a negligible amount of this to early learning, yet global studies are showing that early childhood interventions in education are proving to alleviate the burden on primary and secondary schools, which carry the burden of affording the majority of children with education. A Montessori or LEGO Foundation model of intervention is largely inaccessible for the majority of African communities, and where it is available it is expensive and efficacy measurement is not at the core of operational capacity or widely shared when there are learnings. Karabong is positioned to mitigate this shortcoming and is intentional about problem solving the quagmire, both from a pedagogical standpoint as well as measuring impact as an adjunct to the offering.

The target market is low income communities in peri-urban and rural areas. My first point of contact will be two communities that are near and dear to me: the township of Soweto where I grew up in Gauteng province and the city of Mafikeng which was my second home until the age of seven. Both account for over 15% of South Africa’s population. My educational experiences in these communities was very different during apartheid: Mafikeng was an independent homeland and I had access to a Montessori style early learning environment, unlike the child minding experience in Soweto where I was merely monitored for my safety and there was limited intention around pedagogy before I entered 1st Grade, which under apartheid at the time was call Sub-A. From my experience, it's much easier to stimulate a mind sooner rather than later, and Karabong’s model is positioned to have that demonstration effect. I have been asked why I was able to catapult myself from an apartheid education system and enter an international paradigm that most from even the wealthiest countries are ill-equipped for. My response and conviction remains that my mind was sparked as a child before my K-12 years.

The solution is to provide a scalable and sustainable gap-plug to the deficit in high quality early childhood education prevalent in low income communities who are underserved through government capacity alone. 

Karabong is developing and plans by 2020 to roll out a pedagogical model of early intervention that sparks young minds before they enter first grade and alleviate the burden of equalising children from parents and school leaders - in the classroom and administratively.

The idea is to leverage play based pedagogy as tested by the likes of LEGO, Montessori and other indigenous models as currently being tested by Professor Macholoko Zulu in South Africa. The outcome is extending an affordable early learning model that make our young ones effective in how they grow their minds into the broader socio-economy and become productive citizens at an accelerated rate given how laggard Africa remains over 50 years since our first independence.

The solution is not about a brand new offering but is brand new in the sense that it makes early learning affordable, and as a result alleviates a burden on parents financially and the government on sparking young minds. Existing pedagogies and technologies, as elaborated above, will be leveraged. There’s no need to re-invent the wheel. Akin to Peter Drucker’s quote, at Karabong, our change is to create a new dimension of performance – this will start with early learning and the intention and overall ethos is to have it translate into K-12 and beyond for every African child.

Our model will be play-based, borrowing from the likes of LEGO and Montessori to create affordable access for parents in low income areas to create sharp, young engaged minds who develop a sense of purpose about their socio-economic engagement early. The idea is to move use all modalities available as tools: there will be some traditional classroom engagement but more advanced technological tools will be used to assess learner outcomes through machine learning and adapative technology. This will be mostly for observational purposes to enhance interventions that assist learners in development areas rather than being punitive.

African governments, including my own in South Africa, are struggling to spark K-12 systems in a meaningful way for the growth of their economies. My theory of change through Karabong is to offer an early intervention by stimulating minds earlier along the learning curve so that the broader education and world of work ecosystem is less burdened.

We are nascent. Hence looking for early stage funding. We are looking to have our first centre up and running in Soweto by early 2020. In a year, we hope to have capacity to serve 1000 parents and are in negotiation with educators and facilities, as well as the government to hit the mark on that roll-out. In five years, as mentioned about, we will be in at least three countries and straddling urban, peri-urban, as well as rural areas.

Our goal is to impact the broader education system by sparking the mind early. The intent is to transform the lives of disadvantaged children and enable government schools in primary learning to be more effective. Karabong's theory of change is premised on a multiplier effect that is affordable, scalable and measurable.

1. The biggest barrier is being financially sustainable as a startup raising funding in the African landscape - which is dry if you're an early stage venture.
2. There are also cultural barriers, as most parents focus on child minding/day care. Developing the mind takes the back seat and motivating play-based and machine learning/diagnostic approaches to pedagogy are a tough sell. As a result, diagnostics of a child's performance in primary and secondary school are unduly delayed - if ever recognised. It's not to say this bridge can't be crossed. Hence our solution offering.

We are currently on the road raising a friends and family round and have also received some positive feedback from the Development Finance Community and government in South Africa.

The cultural issue will take a long time. We are from the communities where we initially plan to operate - so inroads are not too stressful. So far we've been positively received. The bigger task is to convince the communities why early learning is key in the overall outcomes of a broader education system. We have a number of stakeholders that will continue to form part of our advisory board and thought partnership.

Myself and Michael Akindele are vested full time, however we leverage the expertise of external advisors. This includes educators and other players in the broader ecosystem such as the government, education focused foundations and philanthropists. 

Our exposure has spanned key growth markets that speak to our target communities across Africa beyond our origins.We are two passionate young entrepreneurs with a vested interest in the education space as we are both African - South African and Nigerian. We have operational and strategic experience in emerging markets including Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Mauritius, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Zambia, India, Zimbabwe, Togo, Ghana, and outside Africa Europe and the US. Jointly, we have a solid grounding in a combination of investment banking, private equity, in-house operations, turnarounds, start-ups and fund raising for early stage  and mature ventures looking for scale. 

We are making headway with the LEGO Foundation as well as the Department of Basic Education in South Africa. It's a bit of a chick and egg issue as we need funding to make progress. Both have expressed interest.

The Development Bank of Southern Africa is also taking us seriously.

The product is affordable early learning that is play based and leverages machine learning and AI tools for parents and educators. This is currently unaffordable for most black parents/low income communities - our target market.

As mentioned in other questions, the impact theory of change is to spark the mind early and hybridise modalities and pedagogies such as LEGO and Montessori with indigenous ways of learning so as to get young learners ready for primary and secondary school in a manner productive for economic development. 

In our early days, angel funding is critical. We are also working on a Series A round leveraging on Nonni's background in private equity and venture capital. As mentioned above, the development finance community in South Africa has shown interest.  Once operational at the school level in 2020 we will target debt facilities for SME's and other entrepreneural pools of funding. 

The idea is to eventually be self sustaining from our scale and when we crowd in other funders we will have a vetted valuation that minimizes our dilution as founders.

Solve is a network. Everything we've done in our careers has cemented the value of networks. We've learned that one can't go at it alone, even when running  or trying to climb mountains, both of which are our favourite pastimes. Particularly because we've left a very comfortable life in the corporate sector to purusue a life-long dream, we need supporters. Solve is one more step in strengthening financial and social capital to deliver on Karabong's mission to extend quality early learning to low income learners in Africa.

We've made inroads with LEGO, who were a huge inspiration when I spent time with them in Denmark as part of my education work with Omidyar Network before I went to do my Masters degree at Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 2016

We're also making inroards with the Department of Basic Education in South Africa.

Additionally, we're also doing independent research to understand the challenges of primary schools with children who have no early learning interventions before they enter Grade 1.

We're still learning about AI. Our current knowledge is limited to machine learning and adaptive solutions around diagnostics. Our founder, Nonni Hlongwane led an investment in machine learning while at Omidyar Network. She also consulted closely with public and private schools as well as the government and policy implementers on the role of technology in transforming learner outcomes. she is also currently building closer relationships with AI and robotics conscious organisations such as Microsoft to learn more about how technology can demystify  seemingly insurmountable tasks in learning.

For this reason, we exploring collaborations on early learning and have no doubt in due course these will be impactful. 

The founder, Nonni Hlongwane, is an African woman raised by women. Nothing matters more to her than seeing young black children who 25 years after the end of apartheid remain at the margins of society. Socially, culturally and economically, many of us still wonder what the rainbow nation is supposed to mean to us. Women in particular, carry this burden. For me to choose an innovation path in the education space is a luxury I could not dream of as the nerdy young black girl from Soweto, Heilbron and Mafikeng. That I can, tells me this prize will fuel my journey. Our model is empowerment based - to advance education and spark young minds early and have women leading the path, as they always have.

Data, evaluation and monitoring is fundamental to our ethos at Karabong. Core to our model is examining if, how and when we are having efficacy on learner outcomes and how efficiently we are operating. We're lean and bootstrapping at the moment - that said, at the fore of our strategic planning is how we leverage the data we collect from observing and engaging with learners and parents and their communities to get smart around our own solution and how it needs to adapt. It's in this context we see Innospark Ventures playing a role.