What is the name of your organization?
DirectEd Development
What is the name of your solution?
Remote Learning & Internships
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
Fully remote low-cost bootcamp education and internships with 50%+ completion rate
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
London, UK
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
Kenya
What type of organization is your solution team?
For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
Employers struggle to find skilled technical workers. According to a 2024 survey by staffing firm Robert Half, 95% of tech are facing challenges with hiring top talent. By 2026, the global IT skills gap is projected to become a critical challenge for organizations worldwide, with estimated losses reaching $5.5 trillion, based on insights from an IDC survey of North American IT leaders.
This could be a great opportunity for talents in Africa, but most lack the skills required to seize this opportunity. Most African economies have youth unemployment rates exceeding 50%. But at the same time, the African Center for Economic Transformation reports that ”graduates lacked exactly the kind of technical, cognitive, and soft skills that will increasingly be in demand. Almost half of employers across the six countries said graduates lack technical skills...”
While in-person education is exceedingly expensive, remote learning has largely failed to produce quality educational outcomes. Most MOOCs report completion rates in the single digits or, at best, in the 20% range. New Cengage Report: "Upon graduating, more than one in three (38 percent) say they hardly use the skills they learned in college."
The traditional education model also fails to recognise the importance of practice over theory.
What is your solution?
Our solution is threefold:
1. An inclusive business model that enables students from all socioeconomic backgrounds to partake, as long as they meet the standards: $0 up front, and an outcomes-based tuition paid only if the student earns around 2x more than they otherwise would have.
2. State-of-the-art learning experience design combined with behavioural science to induce higher retention and engagement during our initial 4 month long bootcamp.
3. Managed Internship teams. We put invite top bootcamp graduates to join our Talent program, meaning they need to pay outcomes based tutition if they succed from this point onwards. The first part of said program is the "Tison.io Managed Internship teams".
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
We work with high-potential youth in Africa, mainly recent high school graduates and final-year university students who from leading academic institutions. Per our own data, around 63% of households earn less than $380 per month, and about a third don’t have access to a laptop.
Our model removes the biggest barriers while delivering education with an unprecedentedly low quality/cost ratio. Students pay nothing upfront. If they succeed and land a well-paying job, they contribute back through income-sharing. This only happens once they’re earning significantly more than they would have otherwise.
