On demand skill based learning

Despite the extraordinary gains in access, millions of students in Kenya do not have access to quality and relevant education. Traditional learning and teaching models which dictate  that all students are taught in the same way, using the same materials and at the same speed have failed to cater for the student's specific learning needs. This has led to a decline in the literacy and numeracy outcomes with only less than a third of students in grade 3 having basic grade 2 competencies. Teachers are overwhelmed by routine administrative tasks and large volumes of classes. The pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) in public primary schools has been reported to be 56:1, against a recommended PTR  of 40:1

The curriculum is not well positioned to equip students with future work skills.. Education and skills training in refugee camps and marginalized communities as all education in emergency situations is faced with a myriad of challenges: large classroom size, over age learners, language constraints and students with special needs. In addition to existing challenges of access, COVID-19 pandemic has paralyzed most initiatives geared towards skill based education. This is a ticking time bomb.

Angaza Elimu is an edtech company with a focus of empowering African youth through on demand skill based learning to help them thrive in a digital economy.We are leveraging technology to implement innovative and affordable modern models of learning and teaching. This includes: 

• Kalamu, an AI powered Adaptive and interactive e-learning platform: Through a web and mobile app, students get a personalized learning experience and amplified engagement with their teachers. The AI powered model is able to understand what students are learning, where they are progressing on and their mastery gaps. With this information we are able to customize each of their learning paths. We provide teachers with a supportive tool to identify students' specific needs and help deliver personalized/customized instruction. 

• Teacher professional development training: The program focuses on equipping teachers with right methods and practices of teaching, particularly with online tools to improve teaching outcomes.

• Internet of Things(IoT) School: A hands-on training to empower students to become innovators and creators by equipping them with relevant skills for the 21st century workforce.

Angaza Elimu is primed to transform education across Kenya and beyond by addressing the challenges of quality and relevance. Our sole purpose is to ensure that every child has access to quality and relevant education on demand. Kalamu, our adaptive e-learning platform, is serving 217538 students in public primary schools in Kenya. Among these students a special focus group is the students from Kakuma and Dadaab refugee camps and their host communities where we are serving 25k+ students. We have made significant impact across different beneficiaries as follows:

• 52k+ active user students spending an average of 35 minutes daily on the platform.

• The students have managed to improve on their academic performance by 32% with major improvements on Math, Science and English subjects.

• 3.7k + teachers have managed to save over 15% of their time by reducing administrative burden and can use the saved time in actual instruction and engaging the students.

Angaza Elimu has been made possible by an incredible young talented team drawing diverse and extensive experience from the education, technology and business fields: 

• Kiko Muuo: CEO/Founder: Responsible for overall strategy, innovation and operations. Utilizes his business modelling, market research & analysis and product management skills to establish Angaza Elimu as a leading EdTech enterprise.

• Shawn Cliff: CTO: Leads the tech team in developing and building the interactive eLearning platforms. Has advanced technical skills in software engineering.

• Veronica Mutavi: Operations Lead: Leads the business development team  in implementing the approved strategies through collaboration with other departments of Angaza Elimu, as well as individual projects and initiatives. Brings onboard extensive skills business development and operations.

• Vida Brenda: Business development lead: Leads the sales and marketing teams in initiating, developing and closing sales deals. She brings onboard deep experience in sales and marketing.

• Valerie Githio: Product Manager/UI/UX Lead: collaborates with data scientist, learning designers, visual designers, and developers to create learning tools that are impactful, viable, and enjoyable for our learners. 

• Faith Too: Product Manager/Data scientist: Responsible for building the student adaptive and teacher intervention engines. Brings onboard advanced skills on reinforcement learning for personalized learning. Brings onboard extensive skills in product design and management.

• Kevin Odero: IoT school lead: leads the IoT school unit in building and developing IoT kits and content. Has advanced skills in electrical and electronics engineering.

The team is supported by a competent board of directors and advisors with a primary responsibility to oversee the conduct of the company and to supervise the management. 

Traction: Kalamu is in use in 311 primary schools bringing onboard 217538 students and 3752 teachers.

Our work is supported and funded to a tune of $536,200 by the following organizations: 

• Mastercard Foundation: they are supporting us to provide evidence to inform practice, research and policy from implementing the tool in schools.

• UNICEF Innovation Fund: we received funding and technical support to build the first versions of the adaptive engines.

• Google for Startups: through their funding and technical resources we have managed to keep improving the models.

Strategic partnerships for scale:

• Longhorn Publishers PLC A pan African publishing company with operations in 8 African countries(Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda included); to expand our content offering and accelerate expansion beyond Kenya.

• Safaricom, the biggest telco in Kenya has partnered with us to provide access to their 10m+ users. They are acting as content distributors by providing an affordable internet to enable users to access the content.

Funding: we will deploy the funds to improve and scale our work in the underserved communities: refugee camps, arid and semi arid areas. We aim to build a sustainable model in serving these regions with the ultimate goal of driving maximum impact and closing the digital divide gap.

Product and market development support: we aim to tap in the solve network of experts and mentors to help us in high level product and market strategy with a goal of helping us reach scale and drive maximum impact to our beneficiaries.

At Angaza Elimu we believe every student is unique and deserves their own learning path that meets their specific needs and Kalamu, our AI powered adaptive and interactive e-learning delivers personalized learning experience to students by tracking what students are learning, where they are progressing on and their mastery gaps and amplifies their engagement with teachers. We provide teachers with a supportive tool to identify students' specific needs and help deliver personalized/customized instruction. Kalamu automates assessments, monitoring progress and reporting hence saving teachers time helping them spend more time with students on instruction. 

Angaza Elimu exists with the sole purpose of ensuring every student has access to quality and relevant education on demand. We leverage technology to implement innovative, modern and affordable models of learning and teaching. Angaza Elimu’s holistic strategy for education transformation engages all critical stakeholders, filling crucial gaps in the education system. The ultimate goal is to improve the foundational literacy and numeracy outcomes. This is achieved through two focal points:

• Student perspective: improving learning outcomes through a personalized learning approach and amplified engagement with their teachers

• Teacher perspective: enhanced teacher’s digital competency and ability to utilize digital learning and teaching tools within the classroom 

Our goal is to improve foundational literacy and numeracy outcomes for all students with an emphasis on inclusive skill based education.

We have made significant impact across different beneficiaries as follows:

• 52k+ active user students spending an average of 35 minutes daily on the platform.

• The students have managed to improve on their academic performance by 32% with major improvements on Math, Science and English subjects.

• 3.7k + teachers have managed to save over 15% of their time by reducing administrative burden and can use the saved time in actual instruction and engaging the students.

By 2027 we intend to drive the following impact:

• 1.7M+ students have increased access to quality and relevant education. With notable improvements in literacy and numeracy competencies.

• 80k+ teachers trained on the right eLearning pedagogy skills and successfully relied on digital tools to provide targeted interventions to accelerate learning.

Beyond the normal practice we intend to continue providing accurate evidence to inform practice, research and policy to support education stakeholders.  With these valuable and actionable insights we aim to  support the following players in the ecosystem:

• Educators: to help them develop a culture of making data driven instructional decisions with a goal of improving the learning and teaching outcomes

• Researchers and developers: to be guided in understanding educational data insights to develop better systems and content

• Government agencies: how can the be guided in decision making from the data insights with regards to curriculum designs and investments in the education space

• Investors, donors and NGOs: how can they make wise investments following the interpretation of different data aspects generated from learning and teaching outcomes.

Our adaptive eLearning product aims to maximize effectiveness of personalized learning and teaching though the following ML engines:

• Student adaptation engine based on a relationship feature which establishes the relationship between student performance and engagement with resources and knowledge component feature linking resources with knowledge components along with cognitive skills

• Teacher intervention engine based on clustering feature  aimed at building groups of students depending on their abilities to maximize instructional effectiveness and efficiency.

To power the adaptive model further we have implemented LLMs with advanced natural language understanding capabilities thus enabling them to understand complex instructions, prompts, and queries provided by students and teachers. With this we have managed to automate the following processes to a high degree:

• Content and assessment generation aligning with the each learner specific needs

• Grading of different formats of assessments automatically

• Providing immediate, constructive and personalized feedback to support progress of each learner.

We have a team of 21 full time members across administration, product and business units.

I have been working on this full time since 2018 after graduating from university. We have a full time team of 21 amazing people across technology, product, curriculum and business development departments. 

We have built an incredible team who are committed to driving change in the education space. The culture at Angaza Elimu is based on the following principles:

• Diversity: we hire team members regardless of their race, gender, ethnicity and religious background.

• Inclusivity: all team members are treated equally regardless of their positions. Respect is paramount in all our operations.

• Integrity: At the core of our being, we are sound in our profession and calling. As such, we carry out our activities in a manner that is ethically and morally responsible. Integrity is the foundation upon which all of us build our relationships and trust. Therefore, we strive to demonstrate this value every day at the workplace, both in large ways and in our small daily activities and practices.

• Innovation: The nature of our work depends heavily on us staying ahead of the curve. We therefore believe in having an innovative mindset. This innovation begins with a willingness to make things better and to do things differently. We, therefore, encourage every member of the team to develop new ideas in the course of their work and to be open to suggesting better ways of running processes at the Company. Employees are also encouraged to always strive to produce excellent work that pushes the Company forward.

• Commitment: Each of us plays a crucial role in building strong relationships not only within the team but also with our clients. This calls for everyone to fully commit to consistently delivering on our expectations and to go the extra mile in order to achieve our ultimate goal of quality and relevant education for all students and pupils.

• Accountability: We value that our staff honors their commitments to clients and to each other internally. We own our outcomes and take responsibility for our work. When mistakes or challenges occur, we promptly address or correct them to the best of our 

We are on a B2B2C model selling our products to schools, parents, corporates and development partners.

We price the product offerings as follows:

• Kalamu: $10 per student per year.

• IoT school:  $270 per training individual on the following pieces:

  • $120 to access the training modules 

  • $150 to purchase an IoT development kit

Pricing for the secondary customers who include development partners and corporates is categorized on a consultancy fee which includes the subscription model above for each user and project management fees

Angaza Elimu’s strategic plan is to grow its existing core business and pursue highly attractive adjacent opportunities. This includes:

• Increased strategic partnerships: Build strategic partnerships with development agencies, corporates, donors and the government to power our business development with a goal of expanding our reach in the market

• Agency distribution models: We aim to build and grow B2B2C agency distribution models to increase our market coverage.

• Data driven strategy: Leveraging on data to power business decisions with a keen focus on user behavioural data on acquisition, adoption, retention and churn

• Additional revenue streams aside from current operations: Our educational data mining generates actionable insights which can power decision making by different education stakeholders. We aim to monetize these insights.