TYD Innovation Incubator (Smart Elimu)

The Problem

Lack of:

• Quality
• Relevant

Education

Caused by:

• Small number of capacitated teachers
• Expensive learning materials
• Small number of Books in the Libraries

The Solution

We have designed and developed a citizen-centric solution known as Smart Elimu:

• That transforms educational contents from hard copies into illustrative Multimedia and simulations
• That is accessible online and offline
• That is affordable for lower income societies

Impact of the solution if scaled globally

• Increase availability of education for everyone
• Encouraging on the self-study behaviour
• Foster competition in academic content development
• Increasing chances of formal employment, creativity and self-employment capability
• Encouraging Academic content developing
• Additional self-income for teachers
• The higher the knowledge, the higher the quality of life.

ACCESS OUR WEB BASED MVP

Tanzania is among the developing countries that are faced with the challenge of stumbling education status. A large number of Tanzanians are uneducated while those perceived as educated have no self-reliant education. According to (UNESCO, 2017), level of literacy in Tanzania is 77.89%. A large number of those educated live in urban area, thus have access to satisfactory educational facilities like, books, schools, teachers, demonstration facilities like science laboratory and Computer laboratory (resource centres). 

However, the said facilities are insufficient in the urban areas too. Despite the fact that the government is striving to increase the number of teachers and Science laboratory in the Primary and Secondary education levels, access to books and other studying materials is still a big challenge. Most of the books are found and/or sold in hardcopie, making it hard to carry them and keep them safe. There are no multimedia books/ lessons that are portable and demonstrative; this makes the learning process unfriendly and somewhat cumbersome.

There are at least 1.7 million children who join primary schools every year. At least 70% of these reside in villages where access of such educational facilities is a challenge. Smart Elimu is designed to ensure inclusive education.

The solution uses one or all of the following technology for one to access:

• The old model USSD mobile phone
• Smart Phones
• Specialised Tablets
• Laptop computers
• Desktop computers
• Kiosk
• PoS
• Encrypted Flash memory
• Solar powered TV set

A.      Economic Impact

• Increasing chances of formal employment, creativity and self-employment capability
• Encouraging Academic content developing
• Additional self-income for teachers

B.       Increased highly skilled capacity (Level of Literacy)

• Availability of education for everyone
• Encouraging on the self-study behaviour
• Foster competition in academic content development

C.      Social impact

The higher the knowledge, the higher the quality of life. In alignment with SDGs

• Goal 4: Quality Education
• Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
• Goal 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure

D.      Uniqueness

• No provider of eLearning in Tanzania has transformed books into multimedia
•  Most are eLibraries based on internet
• We are developing a Digital Learning System

E.       Competitive Advantage

• Reachability (the solution will be accessed everywhere including remote areas)

Currently a Tanzania pupil relies on so much text which is not friendly for their understanding, further most schools do not have teaching aids.

Every stage of the solution development is participatory by use of different data collection tools, such as; questionnaires, observation, interview, reference from different researches. Just to mention few, following are among stakeholders who have been consulted:

• Parents/Guardians of the children;
• Children (Pupils and Students);
• Teachers;
• Government bodies (Tanzania Education Authority (TEA) and Tanzania Institute of Education(TIE));
• Commission for Science and Technologies (COSTECH); and
• Mobile network operators (Halotel and Tigo)

The solution is very simple and user-friendly in a way it attracts a child to use it. And because most of them enjoy playing games, we have as well included that as part of their learning contents just to attract them towards the main themes of education.

Tanzania is yet to exploit the accessibility to multimedia facilities such as online library, kindles, podcasts, online tutorials, teaching videos etc. to improve its quality of education.  

Taking advantage of ICT and Innovations related to it to improve our learning capabilities, Tanzania have 2 reliable Internet infrastructures the NICTBB and Halotel which are as well accessible to remote areas. Smart Elimu Solution is conceived for that purpose, whereby the transformation of contents into multimedia and use of different channels will be done to ensure that every child in Tanzania has access to relevant and quality education.

We are in the prototype mode where we have both, the web based and the mobile app. The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is accessible online through: http://mvp.smartelimu.ac.tz/. 

We are in this stage because we want to do product validation and improvement before we pilot it. Further more, piloting shall need some more funding for the actual content development, the stage that we are not capable in terms of funds.

Its uniqueness

Most eLearning solutions in Tanzania are eLibraries just transforming hardcopies to softcopies, unlike Smart Elimu which is a multimedia content based, which shall ignite children to inclusive learning whereby they see the reality and interact with it.

Its reachability

If one does not have a real time internet and electricity connectivity can still use Smart Elimu because it runs in both, analogy and digital mode, online and offline mode, thus in urban and villages.

Even those in urban areas are going to have an added advantage, that being the case, this solution is solving a much broader problem.

Affordability

It is planned that every syllabus will be charges by Tshs 5,000/= per year, which is less compared to just 5 books which a parent can spend 7 times of that amount.

This year None

In One Year: at least 1 million

In five years: at least 7 milion

We will be assessing the impact by measuring the quality and relevancy of education delivered and the outcome from those who use the solution. 

For instance, one of the back end functionalities of this system is statistics, will be having different type of statistics of those who use the system. However, with the government interventions, if all children will be allowed to use the solution, it is going to be easy to assess the impact.

We are all full time

As shown on the image above, we have different education and experience. We meet every Wednesday for recap, update and progress reports. We conduct monthly performance check.

TYD Innovation Incubator is an equal employment opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against on the basis of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, ancestry, or national or ethnic origin.