Posted by Cape Town, South Africa
HyperionDev is very excited to be part of Africa’s first EdTech incubator called Injini. Hyperion will play a pivotal role by providing mentor support and guidance to the eight new startups, selected from across the African continent.
Injini will have its inaugural moment on Tuesday 10 October at 5.30pm at the Jameson Hall, University of Cape Town, where they will unveil its first ever cohort of startups that display innovations in the edtech sector.
In the historic hall that has hosted speeches by Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama and John F Kennedy, each of the 8 companies will give a lightning pitch on how their innovation will change African education.
The 8 companies are from 5 countries across Africa, with innovations ranging across technologies and stages of education, but united in their applicability to the most in need students, teachers and communities. There is more detail on them here
They include:
- A South Sudanese entrepreneur based in Juba who believes spreading reading via e-books and an online store can help heal a nation divided by civil war;
- A team of young South African engineers who have abandoned jobs at firms like Amazon to solve the higher education and youth unemployment crisis highlighted by #feesmustfall ;
- A Tanzanian team in their early 20s who have built an offline artificial intelligence search engine for students without internet access ;
- A Kenyan company with the first adaptive learning software for feature phones on the African continent.
The programme is a partnership between Jamie Martin – a former Special Adviser to UK Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove – and the Cape Innovation and Technology Initiative, the oldest technology incubator on the African continent.
Based in Cape Town, South Africa, it is open to EdTech entrepreneurs from across the African continent. At 6 months with follow on support it is longer than programmes in more developed markets, and builds on CiTi’s expertise in local business incubation. It places a strong emphasis on trialling ideas and measuring impact. It has established partners across South Africa, Africa and outside, ranging from government and business to education institutions and over 60 expert mentors and speakers.
Speaking ahead of Tuesday’s event, HyperionDev’s co-founder Riaz Moola said:
“Hyperion has built an online course platform that teaches students programming and tech skills in a novel way. Using our methodologies, we’re very proud to be offering mentor support and guidance to these eight startups via Injini, especially as we’ve harnessed the top technical educational talent from Africa and we work with a wide variety of the world’s leading tech firms to deliver quality content in software development. It’s great to be applying our knowledge and educational know-how to startups that are sure to make a difference in the African educational tech sector.”
The CEO of CiTi, Ian Merrington, added:
“CiTi, through its CapaCiTi programe, has been one of the most effective technology job creation and technology skills development programs on the continent. It has become abundantly clear to us that the skills requirements of Industry 4.0, will require a complete rethink of an already weak education system, if labour is to meet the demands of the new Tech driven economy. We believe that agile, tech savvy entrepreneurs are likely to be the best antidote to a stodgy outmoded education system and that our new EdTech Incubator is the key to unlocking and supporting these emerging solutions. Utilising technology to solve Africa’s education challenges may well become the catalyst to unlocking unprecedented economic growth on the African continent.”
Get your free ticket for the Launch of Injini on Tuesday 10th October 2017 at 17:30 here.
NOTES
HyperionDev courses: https://www.hyperiondev.com/courses/
