While Nati Gossaye was learning French with the different language apps he found, he noticed it was quite tough to learn on those platforms. So when Facebook launched its Messenger Bot Challenge for Middle East and Africa, he decided to build a gamified chatbot that teaches French. His startup LangBot won the challenge with a prize money of $20,000 out of 1,000 entries submitted. So far, it has partnered with Ethiopia’s major French school; Alliance Ethio-Francaise to test its chatbot with its students. It also won the Ethiopian leg of the 2017 Seedstars competition. Nati Gossaye is one of a number of innovators who are building the future of education in Ethiopia, a country that was ranked one of the world’s worst education systems.
From Techcabal. Story
The population in the horn of Africa is estimated to be about 107.6 million, it is second only to Nigeria. About half of the population are between ages 15 – 54 years. Although internet penetration in Ethiopia is about 15%, internet grew at 164,278% in the past seven years.
Ethiopia’s government is also serious about investing in Education. It almost doubled its budgetary allocation to the sector between 2000 – 2013 from 15% to 27%. The country has one of the highest student enrollment rates in Africa. The number of students enrolled grew from 3 million to more than 18 million within 1996 – 2015. Literacy also grew at 35% between 2010 and 2011. Some startups are working hard to increase this number especially in rural areas. An example is Scientific Revolution Earth, a company that has put together a portable solar-powered wifi device called Siree. The device contains learning materials including over 7,000 videos and offline content like Encyclopedias.The startup was the winner of the 2016 global World Summit Award in Education.
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