A team of Facebook software engineers based in Lagos, Nigeria has built a mobile application that the social media company hopes will address the problem of access to education in the most populated country in Africa.
The app, Sabee, is the first app by Facebook to be entirely built-in Nigeria by its research and development team based in the country. The company said it does have a name for the app yet but has released it to a select group of top educators and students in Nigeria to test and give feedback. The feedback will then determine whether it is a viable solution for the company or it requires modification.
Facebook said it is hoping to understand how it can help educators build communities that make education available to everyone. It would be deciding what to do from there.
“The test is with a small group of NDAed participants only. It is not currently available beyond that, but we’ll keep you updated should that change, and more people can sign up to try,” said Emeka Okafor of Facebook.
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Access to quality education is a major problem in Nigeria, with over 10 million children out of school and many adults having to forgo education because they could not afford it or they needed to work and support the family. According to UNICEF, only 61 percent of 6-11 year-olds regularly attend primary school and only 35.6 percent of children aged 36-59 months receive early childhood education.
The northern region is considered the most affected with a net school attendance rate of 53 percent. States in the north-east and north-west have female primary net attendance rates of 47.7 percent and 47.3 percent, respectively, meaning that more than half of the girls are not in schools. The education deprivation in the region is driven by factors such as economic barriers and socio-cultural norms and practices that discourage attendance in formal education, especially for girls.
A spokesperson for Facebook told BusinessDay the objective of the company is to provide access to education leveraging digital technology, which is a primary working environment for the company.
But the company is not in doubt about the opportunities in Nigeria’s education.
“There are 50 million learners, but only 2 million educators in Nigeria. With this small, early test we’re hoping to understand how we can help educators build communities that make education available to everyone. We look forward to learning with our early testers and deciding what to do from there.” Okafor said.
Since entering the Nigerian market, it has collaborated at various times with stakeholders in the local tech ecosystem to upskill the technology skills of many Nigerians.
One of the training initiatives is the I4G Facebook program which covers topics on brand storytelling, community building, advertising, audience discovery and using digital tools (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.) to promote yourself and advance in your career. In November 2020, Facebook partnered with Ingressive for Good to train young Nigerians interested in developing their digital skills for personal or professional reasons. Before then, in 2018 Facebook had launched the NG_Hub, its first flagship community hub space in Africa in partnership with CcHUB.
The company has also partnered with MTN to deliver digital marketing training to small businesses under the telco’s first accelerator programme, Y’ello 200.
Although it already has a significant presence in Nigeria with local teams working remotely to serve its millions of customers in Nigeria, Facebook plans to make it permanent with a first-ever office in Africa to be located in Lagos.
The app was not on Google Play when this article was published.
