Denis Opudo
Japanese startup Arcterus was the winner of this year global Edtech Startup (GES) Awards held in London. This year GES competition attracted over 2,000 startups all over the world. Paul Maree, co-founder at Paper Video noted that it was a great opportunity for Africa startups to participate in London 19 edtech. In addition, it was an inspiration and learning platform for challenges facing entrepreneurs in the world.
African startup M-Shule from Kenya managed to secure the second position while Indian startup Mentor Mind Company closed the top three. Kenyan startup focused on delivering educational content to the primary pupils by the combination of artificial intelligence via SMS. According to the chief executive officer (CEO) of M-Shule Claire Mongeau, innovation in the global market can be achieved edtech companies. Mongeau added that the goal of the company is to ensure personalization of learning activities by use of a basic phone. This technology, therefore, catalyzes learning in Sub Saharan Africa given its impact on bridging the gap of learning activities in the continent. Besides M-shule from Kenya, Paper Videos of South Africa also made it to the final lap. The Paper Vides was established to air Maths and Science educational videos by use of offline microSD card or android app. Finally, Lizzie’s Creations startup of Nigeria crowned up the African list of finalist. The core mandate of Lizzie’s Creations was the dissemination of African language learning app Teseem, forktale telling, and Afro Talez.
This marked the first year of African invitation to compete in streams of rounds of startups competition worldwide.
