Prior to incorporating Gidi Mobile in 2012, an ed-tech startup, the co-founder Adetunji Adegbesan, then as director of competitiveness and strategy for Lagos Business School (LBS) was part of a team handling an educational project for the Lagos State government, under Babatunde Fashola.
The project focused on improving the quality and the future of education in the state. Then the population of the state hadn’t grown to where it is presently, but it was significant at about 19 million people to get Adegbesan concerned about the future of education in the state and the entire country.
The project team was mandated to ask what the future of Lagos would look like with a population of 50 million people.
“I started to feel scared actually because if you look at a situation where you have 100 million young people, and you say university enrolment is 3 million, secondary school enrolment is 10 million, primary school enrolment 20 million. That is 33 million young people. Where are the 67 million young people?” Adegbesan says.
Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school children of primary school level at over 10 million, according to Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, Minister of State, Education. This report often does not include the number of out-of-school young Nigerians of secondary and tertiary school levels which Adegbesan says is much higher and constitutes a danger if not addressed.
Apart from that, there is a job crisis that is getting worse. The country graduates 400,000 youth corps members every year who would most likely not find jobs waiting for them given that those who graduated years before constituting the large base of the unemployed population in Nigeria. The whole banking industry employs just 200,000 people, the telecom industry has 40,000 workers.
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It is this population of out-of-school and unemployed Nigerians that Gidimo was set up to tackle. However, its approach is different from the conventional ed-tech startup Nigeria has come to know.
Edtech, short for education technology and which refers to new technological implementations in the classroom, is a growing space in Nigeria. Buoyed by the seeming educational crisis, tech entrepreneurs have come into the space with promises to improve the standard of education. Some of the popular ones such as uLesson leverage adaptive and interactive tests that help students master concepts, Gradely helps schools and parents deliver a personalised learning experience for K-12 students in Nigeria, and Prepclass connects potential learners with skilled tutors.
Gidimo approaches education differently. In fact, Adegbesan says the team hardly uses the word education to describe the service they provide. The best way to define Gidimo is a learning science company.
Learning science is a strategy that enables Gidimo to draw on its ability to recognise the needs of students and their technical skills, all combined into working solutions that add real value to the learning experience. It combines research, data, and practices to help educators teach better and students learn more. Learning science draws from disciplines including cognitive neuroscience, learning analytics, data science, behavioural economics, and educational psychology.
Learning science gives Gidimo the advantage of reaching out to everyone with a learning need and it helps them see education differently. The company said it has seen 275 percent growth in daily return and social learning engagement. A survey conducted on learners found that 97 percent of participants said Gidimo helped improve their knowledge of their subjects.
Gidi Mobile’s mission of building human capacity in learners that will help them advance in life has always struck a positive chord in everyone it was pitched to, says Adegbesan. The company received a $1 million grant from Google in 2017. The grant also led to the Edo government working with Gidi Mobile to provide its mobile application to about 20,000 senior secondary school pupils in the state to improve learning outcomes. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google recently recognised the company in a video message on the company’s programs in Africa.
“Gidi Mobile is helping low-income students in Nigeria access learning,” Sundar Pichai, Google CEO said in the video.
Gidi Mobile uses a game and community-driven learning machine to make learning fun and easy for students. This also means that learning can take place anywhere and at every time the students consider convenient. According to research, using games in teaching can help increase student participation, foster social and emotional learning, and motivate students to take risks.
After three years of iteration, Gidi Mobile launched “The Land of Kyrion” in 2020 as the newest version of its Senior School Program (SSP). The SSP which is an advanced secondary school curriculum mastery platform helps learners to master their curriculum ahead of class schedules.
Adegbesan takes pride in the company’s ability to build its technology locally. In that, he has a faithful ally in Chinedu Okafor, his co-founder and who is in charge of the engineering processes. The Land of Kyrion is a learning game with over 54,000 syllabus-based Socratic learning questions and explanations, and 450 summaries across 14 subjects.
In the game, the learner who is first a Citizen is to move up the ladder to become a Knight, a Consul, and then a Master. The learner is also expected to conquer 13 kingdoms in order to become a Grandmaster.
Gidi Mobile looks beyond the opportunity in Nigeria and Africa. India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan are other exciting destinations. It now runs a program that is tailored to different students irrespective of the country they come from. Adegbesan says this ensures that all learners’ needs are sufficiently met.
“If you go to a trader and say there is money here but you need to learn this. In learning science, it is the educator’s job to find out how best to give you. If you don’t want visuals I give you audio, I give it to you on the phone. For secondary school we do it this way, for primary we do it this way, etc and they are all powered by tech,” he said.
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