Loop Academies

The audacity of our vision (providing a holistic education that prepares millions of Africa's youth to find or create employment) requires bold partners to fully execute. Elevate Prize allows us to believe in a possibility to have a brazen dream that, when executed optimally, will create a new equilibrium in education for the global south. Funding and support from the Elevate Prize will be used to build the most detailed content library for learners in Africa, beginning in West Africa where there is a shared curriculum. This will allow us to effectively end the access to contextualized knowledge and excellent teachers that stifles learning across Africa. Once we have achieved this, the work will be to continuing creating access to this education through partnerships with governments, foundations, schools, etc. Understanding the value of school culture on student learning and outlook, we will use these funds to create an evidence based school improvement kit that can be scaled across the different schools we will be reaching with our technology.  

I grew up with a single mom in a community ridden by poverty, high unemployment, high illiteracy rates amongst other ills. My community, though small in size, is a microcosm of the larger Liberian and Sub-Saharan African societies where youth unemployment and poverty are rife. Every year since leaving Liberia for school in 2011, I have returned home to my community to continue assessing the need and finding solutions to some of the challenges. Throughout these numerous trips and finally moving back in 2017, I have had to live with the same challenges that are a result of our crumbling human capital. My family’s house, like everyone else, never had pipe-borne water nor electricity at the time. With too many young people unemployed, crime is on the rise as these young people find other desperate means to survive. I have siblings, cousins, and nephews who have been shortchanged by the system to a point where, even after graduating high school, they are unable to compose a simple friendly letter. Loop Academies for me is more than a venture. It is the culmination of a decade of working with young people and seeing the many hopes and promises left unharnessed. 

We have set out to reimagine secondary education in Africa to tackle the continent’s massive youth unemployment crisis through software and an experiential, activity-based learning model. Africa is experiencing what has been termed “the learning crisis”. Over 90% of pupils cannot read at their grade levels - that’s about 220 million children and adolescents across Sub-Saharan Africa. Africa’s youth unemployment is over 50% at around 140 million youth. Another 147million young people are vulnerably employed. Ultimately, Africa’s education system is not preparing students for work today or to have the skills to create their own jobs. The MasterCard Foundation reports that of the 98 percent of young people who enroll at the primary level in Sub-Saharan Africa, only nine percent make it to tertiary education and only six percent graduate! 

With the majority of Africa’s youth only acquiring a secondary education in their entire lifetime, we believe it is possible to re-engineer their education so that it is just enough for them to secure or create jobs. Using existing technologies and evidence based teaching methodologies we will deliver a quality, holistic education that provides young people with relevant skills to secure jobs or create their own employment. 

Our Reimagined School Model is based on the following:

A holistic learning experience - between our technology platforms and our campuses (hubs), we will deliver a full learning experience for our students where students would otherwise have no access to additional learning inputs such as experiential labs, entrepreneurship, etc. 

AI & Adaptive Learning Technology - with our learning assistant we are employing AI and data analytics to create a personalized learning experience for each student.

Improved Teacher/Parent Support - We aim to improve the skills, reduce workload and allow them to play a nurturing role in the development of our young people. 

Context-relevant content - Using stories, examples and voice from the context of our students. This allows for social modeling. 

Local engagement (Ubuntu) - We afford every individual the chance to directly affect educational outcomes in their communities. From recording an audio/video lesson, reading a poem, purchasing lunch, etc., individuals can play a direct, measurable role in shaping the future of education.

Focus on Work - Through a periodic employment climate survey, employers will suggest new job growth areas which will then be transformed into curriculum and lesson plans for all of our students - just in time.

Our long-term impact is to build a Pan-African company that ensures millions of young people receive a high quality education, have skills that provide employment opportunities, and can create jobs that employ several others. Our goal is to enroll at least 1m students over the next 10 years. With our vision of building the software at the heart of Africa’s education and future of work revolution, we will provide just the right education a student needs to secure or create their own jobs. We estimate that 5% of our student pool will create ventures that hire at least 15 people over the span of their ventures. This means our students will create employment for 750,000 individuals in ten years. With the average household in Africa at 6.9 people per household, this means we are effectively impacting over 5.1 million individuals across the continent. To drive these results, through our entrepreneurial leadership curriculum, we will equip all students leaving secondary school with the ability to create their own ventures. Each year, we will invest in several ventures through an active startup competition that allows us to select the most promising and impactful ideas for acceleration.