Motivar

Poor education quality in Africa has resulted in a lack of skills and knowledge needed to compete in the modern workforce among its young people. 

This causes low innovation and productivity, high unemployment and underemployment levels, and a large informal economy that keeps them in low-income jobs. 

Thankfully, digital education and skill acquisition mechanisms can break this trend and democratize access. Yet it is not distributed and leveraged effectively.

According to UNICEF, two-thirds of the world's learners do not have access to digital education. Coursera’s 2021 impact report showed that only 3 million of its 118 million global users were from Africa. This is abysmally low when compared to our youth population, which numbers over half a billion people. Also worrisome is the high attrition rate among learners who have access. An independent survey we ran showed that out of four young people who enroll in an online course, three will not complete it.

This sad reality is due to socioeconomic reasons such as inability to afford online course, limited access to internet-enabled devices, internet data challenges, problematic electricity, need to work, lost motivation, etc. UNESCO estimated that nearly 90 percent of students in Sub-Saharan Africa do not have access to household computers, and 82 percent lack internet access.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these inequalities and forced a tectonic shift of learning and opportunities online. Implying that already disadvantaged young people will be even more excluded.

Our work will improve the efficiency and distribution of digital skill training and education, especially for underserved demographics. We will offer learner support services and be the easiest way for learners to find, start, and complete courses online. This service will be distributed through a digital platform and offline community centres.

Digital platform: We will build an AI and Big Data-enabled learner support platform that implements a framework of motivation, accountability, and community designed to bypass the barriers that limit learners and strenghten their intrinsic motivation to learn online effectively.

Community Centers - Our community centers will be physical infrastructure in locales with a low distribution of internet-enabled devices and low digital navigation skills among our target demographic. It will be equipped with computers and other digital learning aids and host our learner communities offline. The centers will be managed by Motivar and funded in partnership with local community interests.

Motivar will ultimately become the operating system for e-learning support.  The Africa Union is working to ramp access to digital education up from 22% to 60% by 2030. Our work will enable that vision and help bridge educational inequalities by providing access for rural and remote communities and learners with special needs.

Our target are young people between the ages of 12 - 40 who want to build skills and gain certification to improve their socio-economic mobility. 

They lack access to internet-enabled devices, stable electricity, or strong internet connectivity, or face social barriers such as discrimination, poverty, or have special needs that limit their learning. They are in rural areas, street children or born into low-income families.

They are often out of school or attend schools that lack the required infrastructure and do not provide them with the education they need to succeed in this century. 

We address their needs in three key ways:

1. Personalization, gamification, incentives, social recognition, and peer communities will help improve the learning experience for learners and bolster their commitment to complete the courses they start.

2. Alternative financing mechanisms through BNPL and crowdsourcing that we would implement would help more learners pay for online certifications and degrees they need and cannot afford.

3. Our community centers would be equipped with electricity, digital learning aids, and internet-enabled devices powered by our platform. It will be open for young people to use. These centers would host our learner communities offline.

This work will help increase the completion and enrollment rates for online courses and maximize learning outcomes for learners. This will contribute to reducing the gap between available job and market opportunities and the skill level of young people available to fill them. These outcomes are important to ensure educational equity, assure economic and social mobility, and reduce poverty.

As a young person, I am very deeply bothered by inequities and see every day how dire the impact is in determining what my life trajectory is and what opportunities are available to me.

The divide that the lottery of birth creates is widened by systemic inequality. As undergraduates, we experienced this firsthand when public universities  spent 10 months on strike. Schoolmates who had richer parents who could afford private education switched to private universities. They had the opportunity to continue their education while ours was on hold. 

This is slight compared to the realities of millions of young people who do not have access to organized skill and knowledge acquisition systems simply because they cannot afford them or because they have special needs. It is heartbreaking to see the immense potential that these young people have underutilized because they don’t have access to the correct training.

We are currently a team of six young people and have been working together since 2021. Competencies on the team include project and product management, strategy, marketing, and software development.

Over a period of six months, we successfully executed three batches of training using our framework. Through us, 102 students enrolled in online courses. 44 of them across 8 skill tracks completed those courses and have begun to build their competencies within our community.

This is a completion rate of approximately 43%, which is twice the average online course completion rate from the survey we ran and thrice the global MOOC completion rate.

Two things I am looking forward to are the support I will be able to access, and the community. There are other benefits as well, such as the validity it gives to my ideas, the exposure my mind and thinking gain, and the network and resources to execute faster and on a larger scale than I currently can.

The lessons and support from this fellowship would enable us to build a resilient foundation, strong enough to cause Motivar grow into a successful organization

A key pillar of our work is partnerships, with e-learning platforms, corporations, development partners, Government and community stakeholders. MIT Solve's influence would make it easier to attract and engage them. 

In the end, I would be in a better position to support efforts to deepen social equity by ensuring socioeconomic mobility and boosting educational equity, both of which will increase wealth and well-being for all young people.

Motivation, accountability, and community are critical pillars for effective learning that naturally occur in live classrooms. These pillars are almost absent in digital education. Causing less than maximal learning outcomes for learners, as evidenced by the high dropout rates from online courses.

Our solution will deploy a framework that leverages elements of these pillars. The closest competitor to what we want to do is Classcentral.com, which aggregates courses from various e-learning platforms. The extensive learner support services that we provide will differentiate us from them. Our singular goal is to maximize the effectiveness and reach of digital education. We are ensuring access to the last mile.

Other platforms that provide learner support services are usually industry-specific. Ingressive4Good and HNG internships, for example, are designed specifically for tech communities. We are a no-bounds platform that will offer support for all forms of online skill and knowledge acquisition, from short courses to degree programs.

Finally, our offline community center is novel and will aid in the distribution of online courses and ensure more learners, especially in underserved populations, access digital education.

Our solution aims to deepen social equity in digital education by providing comprehensive learner support services tailored to the diverse needs of young people pursuing online courses. We will remove obstacles related to access and strengthen learner's intrinsic motivation.

Specifically, 

1. Help learners find and select online courses that match their individual competencies, preferences, and realities.

2. Provide personalized learning experiences that cater to each learner's unique needs and learning style.

3. Enable funding alternatives( BNPL & crowdfunding) for learners to pay for courses & certifications they need to upskill but cannot afford.

4. Foster learner communities

5. Enhance learner engagement and motivation through personalized recommendations, feedback, incentives, gamification, adaptive learning, accessibility tools, and social recognition.

6. Enable learners to track their progress and learning outcomes in one place.

7. Provide data-driven insights to course providers and education stakeholders to improve the quality and effectiveness of online education.

We will actively engage with stakeholders such as learners, educators, employers, and community partners. Through this approach, we expect to see a significant increase in online course enrollment and completion rates, and improved post-program outcomes like higher employment or continued education for the learners we serve.

In the long-term, our solution will contribute to a more equitable distribution and efficient delivery of digital education. We will track metrics around career progression, life outcomes, and the adoption of online learning.

The African Union is working to bring access to digital education up from 22% to 60% by 2030. Our work will enable that vision and help bridge educational inequalities by providing access for rural and remote communities, and learners with special needs.

Our solution would incorporate AI and machine learning to create a personalized student learning pathway that ensures a fit between the learner's current capabilities, learning, and professional goals and the offerings and structure of online education providers.This profile would be created from the personality and interest-based tests taken by learners, as well as other relevant datasets. 

We would implement learning models to determine incentives. And data analytics to provide insights on learner performance and engagement. We will also integrate assistive technology/accessibility tools, and communication and collaboration tools. 

This will be deployed via web and mobile applications

Six, 1 full time and 5 part time staff

One year

At motivar, we prioritize diversity and inclusion by actively recruiting from a wide range of background and experiences. We encourage open dialogue and feedback to create a culture of belonging where everyone feels valued and respected.

We also have a female as part of our founding team. 

We are providing comprehensive learner support services to help young peple effectively access and leverage digital education and learning tools. Creating solutions to bypass the social and economic factors that limit their access. This service is distributed via a software product and offline community centers, co-owned by local community interests and managed by Motivar. 

We would operate a freemium model, charging subscription fees for advanced features as well as fees for offerings, for services provided to e-learning platforms, private interests, and government.

Our major revenue sources are: 

1. E-learning platforms pay us affiliate revenue to drive course enrollment & completion on their platforms.

2.  Learners pay us for lifetime access or a monthly subscription to access support services that we provide.

3. Government, development partners, and private interests pay us to offer support services to a group of learners.

4. Recruiters, government agencies, course providers, and research organisations can pay us to access data insights.

We can also receive grants and donations. We recieved a grant award of 1,200 pounds from Innovate UKTN.