AFRICA – THE NEW MARKET FOR ED-TECH PENETRATION
In Africa, access to technology and internet is now a key part of daily life. African youths nowadays would rather buy data than food, as having the means to communicate and stay online with accessible and affordable data subscription charges is now a daily source of sustenance more craved for than food.
In a continent where the current population stands between 1,282,476,195 based on the latest United Nations estimate, Africa is a force to be reckoned with in the world as her population is equivalent to 16.64% of the total world population, and get this, over 60% of the population is under 25. There are a lot of untapped potentials and untapped market in Africa and stakeholders in the EDTECH industry are beginning to see Africa’s education sector as a goldmine to market its digital services.
Headquarters for Digital Technology
There have been a surge in the increase of mobile phone users in Africa, currently there are over 700 million mobile phone owners in Africa, more than US and Europe combined. Data penetration has risen and continues to rise to exponential proportions.
Service providers have discovered a goldmine and are set to expand their services by penetrating the education sector, though largely impoverished with several edtech platforms giving Africans a chance to standard education and exposure which is pivotal to socio-economic development. Although Africans will benefit from improved and increased access to education, these service providers are also benefiting from the rising internet penetration charges. This influx of the digital market with education hardware and software technology is a strategic delivery technique that is reaping dividends in terms of economic development, youth empowerment and job creation and opportunities, giant strides in edtech advancements, agriculture and even in the health sectors, this tidal wave is washing development into every sector of the economy. Africa is on its way to becoming the headquarters for Digital Technology.
Hand to Hand Digital Service Delivery
Technologies like androids, smartphones, tablets, iPhones and pc’s offers great opportunities for academics and is bridging the gap between traditional classroom learning styles which is rapidly becoming extinct. E-learning, M-learning (mobile learning) F-learning (futuristic learning) and online certifications and courses are bringing education to our fingertips. Now less hindrances and restrictions to quality and formal education and economic development due to the easy accessibility and integration of social innovation tools, phones are now the preferred and acceptable way for millions to access the internet especially in areas of mobile banking, e-health, e-learning, e-commerce, etc.
Top of the Notch Quality Digital Services
Exposure is vital because you can’t use what you don’t know and you can’t really know what you don’t use. Therefore content is king in creating awareness and publicity on where to get quality digital services in education, economic, health and every sphere of the economy. passnownow.com offers quality content on the latest edtech mainstream news and information.
If you are ready to plunge into the African edtech market for the latest and popular quality service producers, here are a few online platforms you need to visit.
Passnownow – Passnownow.com as the name implies, is pidgin for pass quick and it’s Nigeria’s only first and comprehensive edtech platform that provides all subjects studied in high schools according to curriculum standards to underserved students and teachers across Nigeria and is revolutionizing mobile learning platform by digitizing and democratizing education content.
Obami – South Africa’s social learning edtech network accessible via both web and mobile device with over 30,000 users within the education space and spreading across Sub-Sahara Africa to Europe and U.S. Users ranges from teachers, students and parents, to trainers and mentors as well as business management, NGO’s and government.
M-Pesa – Pesa which means money in Swahili is a mobile payment system launched first in Kenya and now has more than 30 million users in ten countries. With over 18 million active users in Kenya, over 6 billion M-Pesa transactions have been processed since 2016 lifting more than 2% of Kenyan household out of extreme poverty. The majority of the East African country’s population is subscribed to one kind of mobile payment service or another and the most popular choice is M-Pesa.
Jumia – Jumia, an online shopping market place created in Nigeria with over 1.2 Billion consumers and 15 million SMEs modelled to serve across Africa with more than 500,000 local African companies transacting business on Jumia every day and operating in over 23 different African countries. Since inception it has gathered 82% of African internet users, housing 50 thousands active merchants in the ecosystem and recording over 550 million visits per year across Africa dealing on products ranging from hotels, restaurants and other listed services. The success and growth is phenomenal within and outside Nigeria spreading across Africa.
