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Education Made in Africa
About 10 years ago, Joyce Muthoni was like millions of African women out there hustling and eking a living under the bright and hot African sun, the only thing which set her apart was perhaps just a burning desire and a big idea to change the world.
Ms. Muthoni would spend her days running her small protocol and etiquette consultancy company, whose mission was to train children and adults soft skills. She dreamt of setting up a finishing school and train children between the ages of 5 years to 18 years old on life skills such as dining etiquette, presentation skills, poise, good manners, public etiquette, proper dressing and grooming and much more. However, like they say ‘life happened’ and she shelved her dream until now.
So important are life skills that it has quickly become the singular determining factor that ultimately decides whether an average student ends up becoming a CEO and a bright kid who passed all their exams with flying colors ends up depressed and jobless.
Parents across the world, more so in developing countries like Kenya, fork out millions of shillings to send their children to school since in the words of South Africa’s icon,Nelson Mandela, “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.
The fatal flaw with most educational programs in Africa, however, is it’s grossly short on life skills choosing instead to emphasise on cramming and passing exams further worsening an already bad situation of an unequal world.
As a parent, have you ever questioned if your child is self-sufficient? Do you believe your child possesses the required life skills to face the challenges life will throw at them head on in a global economy – an economy that demands mental flexibility and awareness? Your child’s education must go beyond what he or she learns in school. Real education should be something that teaches children life skills so that at the end of the day they can have a rough idea of what they want to accomplish with their lives but more crucially, always remember the type of person they want to be.
So important are life skills like simple dining etiquette that Kenya’s 5th president, William Ruto came out when he took power and announced to all and sundry that Kenya Kwanza Coalition will hold sessions to teach its members how to handle cutleries to avoid embarrassment.
“We are going to have a session where we will teach you a bit of etiquette. Sometimes we get embarrassed when senior people don’t even know how to hold a spoon or fork,” President Ruto said during the coalition’s Parliamentary Group meeting held in Naivasha.
Enter AMUA, making learning fun and enjoyable through storytelling and game play
On a sunny afternoon in ‘the green city in the sun’ as Nairobi likes to fondly refer to herself I sat down with Joyce Muthoni to try and make sense of AMUA over a cold milkshake and sumptuous chips masala accompanied with fish fingers.
Here are some excerpts of our conversation:
George: So first thing first, what is AMUA in a layman’s term?
Joyce: AMUA is an interactive learning platform that offers short, fun and enjoyable lessons through storytelling and game play. The player gets immersed into the lives of a nomadic family traveling across Africa, moving from place to place, in the process they get to discover each location’s history, culture and mysteries. The player is also able to unlock different parts of the story as they play education based games. The games are based on school curriculum learning areas as well as general knowledge, financial literacy, soft skills, mental health and more.
George: Sounds cool, what inspired you to come up with AMUA?
Joyce: The inspiration for AMUA cannot be summed up by one experience .The journey of how I ended up here started about 10 years ago when I was still running my protocol and etiquette consultancy, training children and adults on soft skills. I spent four years running the training business, four years building and thriving in a helium balloons supply business which at the time was the first of its kind and we did very well, opening up the Kenyan party supplies market. It gave me so much joy to see children celebrate their special days happily and be completely blown away by the balloons we supplied. Whichever route of work I took, it led me to children.
George: Aha! I see…but I am sure it wasn’t a walk in the park so how did you set up everything?
Joyce: Getting into game development was as a result of several things; following my intuition, observing market trends and still deeply desiring to impact children positively, I ended up landing my first gaming project with an NGO called CREAW that had a mandate to impact societal change through games for children.
This motivated me to think of how I could use games to make learning fun, engaging and memorable. My project called AMUA was born.
George: Congratulations…so how unique is AMUA, what sets it apart from its peers? What is the solution AMUA offers that is currently not in the market?
Joyce: There is currently no platform like this that exists in Kenya and I dare say the continent of Africa. There are several education game platforms that exist such as education.com, abcya and adaptive mind. These are all good and interesting to play through. However, in my search to find a platform with more localized content that appeals to and features African characters, colloquial content and provided relatability to the African market, the options were non-existent. I was not able to find anything that allowed learners to get more information about Africa, learn new skills and still engage with their classroom lessons. The platform seeks to encourage students to continue learning even after they leave their classrooms.
George: Beautiful, feels like I need to enroll today (laughs) Tell me about the biggest milestone AMUA has achieved since you came up with it?
Joyce: We are still a long way away from launching the platform. However, over the past three months we have been able to do an FFF round of funding and raised USD13,000. With these funds, we set out to develop a pilot for the project so that we can validate our business model. As a game developer, it is important to remain objective and practical about any idea you come up with. I understood that even if I felt strongly about my idea, if the market didn’t respond well to it, then it would not be viable.
At the tail end of the third month, we had a rough structure of the games, characters had been designed and a landing page for our website created. We decided to test the market with the most basic information about AMUA, to see if there would be interest and action taken to learn more about it. We ran our first test through online advertisements, which was a one week campaign targeted at two markets, the USA and Africa. We used a programmatic advertising platform called VG Tech running under my digital marketing agency by the name Viral Gorrrila Limited.
The campaign budget was USD 500 across both markets and the results were amazing. We needed to place our ads in front of a target audience that was already looking for educational content and would be interested in our platform. Our art work and placement strategy delivered compelling results and proved that there definitely is interest in what our platform offers. We were able to reach a total of 28,253 people and got 442 clicks to our website. According to the data, we achieved an average CTR of 0.41% on banner ads and 11.3% on search ads in both markets after splitting the budget and spending $300 in the USA and $200 in Africa. By the industry standards, we are performing better than the average CTR’s. These statistics are very encouraging for my team and I and have given us even more reason to keep going.
George: Wow, you must be some kind of a super woman to achieve all that (laughs) So what is the future of AMUA, like where do you see it in 2 years?
Joyce: AMUA is the first of its kind in the education field in Africa and this presents us with a lot of opportunities and possibilities. The platform which is subscription based and developed as a web based tool will initially be targeted to the US and African market with a goal of hitting 1,000,000 subscribers three years after we launch. For us to achieve this, we need to continue working on the platform , developing the games and building on the stories.
I see the platform launching and being available to the market by the end of Q3 2023.
George: You know AMUA is quite something, an idea that can change the world literally, I am curious to know what AMUA project has taught you about life, business in Africa, this industry, even about yourself?
Joyce: Working on this project has taught me a few things: Life is a continuous unfolding of challenges, opportunities and experiences. I have grown and expanded my capacity to do things I never would have imagined possible because I dared to move into unchartered waters. I have faced many setbacks but none of them have stopped me from pushing forward. Amua is another story blossoming and I celebrate every step of the journey.
Running a business in Africa is a blessing, we have access to low cost of labor, great talent and the opportunity to keep developing solutions for regions in the continent that are nascent in some sectors. Game development, some technological innovations, and digital marketing are areas that are highly dependent on access to the internet which is at 50% penetration in the continent . Africa’s fastest growing industry is Fintech, with over 500 financial solution providers and growing. A majority of these are based in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya.
The economy of Africa has consisted of trade, agriculture, industry and human resources but in recent years, other sectors have been experiencing rapid growth such as banking and financial solutions, transport and logistics, information technology and telecommunications, mining, healthcare, agriculture and agro processing sector. There is room for further investment not just in these areas but also other creative and innovative sectors.
I believe that I am in the right place, doing the right thing at the right time.
You can support the AMUA project today by going to.
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