The Batazia Knowledge-equity Solution

Up to 90% of Africans in most African countries do not understand well the language of education and governance in their countries (Mackey;Kwesi Kwaa Prah…). The implication of this for Africa defies space here to list, but here are some pointers to those implications.

•  Of all regions of the world, Africa has the highest education exclusion and school dropout rate (UNESCO). Why? Margie Owen-Smith, Head of South Africa's Home-Language Project (HLP) states that: “Most learners in South African schools face a language barrier in the classroom. Any child who cannot use the language which he/she is most familiar with (usually the home language), is disadvantaged and unlikely to perform to the best of his/her ability… This disadvantage has cognitive, psychological, social and cultural aspects, all manifested in the ongoing failure of our education system. ‘  
  • In 2012, the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) policy paper reported that: ‘In schools across sub-Saharan Africa, students find themselves at an inherent disadvantage because their classes are not taught in their native language. Native-language instruction is crucial to optimize a student’s success, for many reasons.’   Yet, in the same year, UNESCO reported that ‘Africa is the only continent where the majority of children go to school for the first time and are confronted  with a foreign language’. ‘Many people know what it is like to struggle in school.’ Writes Nobel Peace Laureate, Dr Rigoberta Menchú in his foreword to the Education and Language: The Missing Link,  ‘Others know what it is like to be forced to drop out. For many children, this deep frustration and disappointment is not caused by physical or monetary barriers, but by the decision to teach in a language which they do not understand’. A study carried out in 2014 amongst San primary and secondary students in Botswana found that 100% of the school dropouts said the English was the main reason they dropped out – because they did not know it (Australian Journal of Indigenous Education).

•  These examples are endless. However, the long and short of it is that “Education for all is not possible without the use of African languages in the Educational systems.”  Adama Samassekou, ACALAN 2012. For, ‘It is impossible to eradicate illiteracy on the African continent without the empowerment and greater use of African languages in education and without using the forms of knowledge built on African culture and delivered in African languages.’ (Dr Viera Vilhanova)

•  Batazia was founded on the belief that Africa will only be free from poverty if its peoples can access transformative knowledge in their mother-tongue. Our technology is designed to make that possible, and, for this proposal, we are focusing on foundational learning in South Africa, amongst children 4 – 10 as our  point-of-departure.

FOCUS ON SOUTH AFRICA

Our focus for this proposal is to work with the South African National Library to reach upwards of 5 million children ages 4 to 10 – to effect change in their poor reading ability and habit.(Source S A National Library)

Our solution is the creation of technology that not only offers Africans access to information and content in any language via their own languages, but the ability to read and learn in their own languages – anywhere, anytime, without the barrier of time, space or logistics.

Our solution is further to make all this accessible and possible for users directly (B2C)through the ubiquitous mobile phone (both smart and feature p hone) on the one hand, while continually innovating to soon bypass the internet (with geospatial technology) to reach users; and on the other hand through third party stakeholders (B2B) such as organizations via API integration.

 All of these through AI and Afrocentric machine translation technology

How our technology works

We apply Afrocentric Natural Language Processing (ANLP) and Neural Machine Translation AI technologies in text-to-speech, speech-to-text translation, speech recognition, and cognitive machine learning protocols to achieve content translation and localization ability in 3,000+ African languages. This technology is not only made available to third parties who want to integrate use our API into their systems to turn their educational and other content into natural sounding and authentic African languages, but through our own mobile and web applications to stream  millions of books, e-learning educational content, and stories on our mobile and web application platforms. Whatever content is uploaded on our platform is automatically transformed into every language in the system, giving users instant access to that content and thousands others in their own languages (regardless of the source language of the content).

 Secondly, we are innovating also to not only work with established high and low-resourced African languages, but with African languages that are essentially oral with little or non-existent written data - via human traditional linguists as well as computational linguists.

Focus on South Africa

The focus on South Africa is to work with a third party - the National Library of South Africa – to markedly improve the Literacy skills and levels of 4-to-10-year-olds through employing our language localization and e-learning technology, and developing and implementing engaging gamified e-learning technology to enhance the children’s mother-tongue literacy skills. By blending technology, culturally relevant content, and a gamified learning experience, the project would ideally make literacy acquisition a joyful and effective journey for young learners (who now are not engaging with learning and reading content due, in large part, to the language of instruction, and also the paucity of reading content in mother-tongue languages, and limited access to needed content. 

Getting this particular project off the ground will enable and empower at risk South African young learners (4-to-10-year-old) who face the prospect of either never getting an education or dropping out of school all together, to acquire the literacy skills and understanding they need to remain in the educational race. And Secondly to increase the literacy rate and skills of all of South African children in the very delicate 4-to-10 age range. The languages of focus would be all official languages in South Africa, including the 12th sign language.  

All of Africa, but with a initial focus on FOUNDATIONAL LEARNERS IN AFRICA (particularly the younger group) - Starting with South Africa.

• As our initial focus is on very early learners - from enfants (at the listening and reading comprehension stage) through to lower and upper primary school children.

And to a lesser extent, and for now only incidentally,

• Late stage learners who fall in the illiteracy and semi-literate spectrum – be they youngsters, young adults or working adults and beyond.

These are our stage one target group; for they represent the group in society, particularly the pre-schoolers and primary schoolers, whom we see as the foundation of the continent. They also represent the segment in society we see as at the best stage in life to quickly absorb our technology and make its impact truly sustainable and impactful for everyone else in the long run. For the older learners who are vying to escape illiteracy or lack of access to information, we see our technology quickly bridging the gap of access to knowledge for them as they too are at a early stage of their educational growth.

 PRESENT REALITY IN SOUTH AFRICA

Some of the biggest problems affecting children’s reading and listening compression in South Africa include “limited experience with books”, issues with how teachers are trained to teach, and parents not being involved in the learning journey of their children’s reading. Studies show that this results from language of instruction and lack of access to enough books and reading materials in mother tongues

• Eight out of 10 South African school children struggle to read by the age of ten.

• South Africa ranked last out of 57 countries assessed in a 2021 report ‘the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study’ that tested the reading ability of 400,000 students globally.
• Illiteracy among South African children rose from 78% in 2016 to 81% in 2021.
• So, in 2021, 81% of grade 4 children in South Africa could not read for meaning.

 Our technology aims to make reading content widely and easily available in all of South Africa’s 11 languages (later the 12th sign language).  We are convinced that access not only to school but reading material in mother tongue will address the general “disinterest in reading and school attendance amongst children in South Africa”(The SA National Library).

Also, teachers and parents struggling with English and Afrikaans will be able to better help their learners in mother-tongue.

 Our ‘reachable’ target group (of 4-to-10 year olds in South Africa) are upwards of 5 million children and are part of a stretch of schools and other institutions and persons connected to the South African library system.

For the founders of Batazia, the language barrier to education and correspondent struggles of children to learn, as a consequence, is a lived experience. Barbara Gwanmesia (President and Chief Visionary Office) was brn and grew up in Cameroon. And so was the Ndipabonga Atanga (Chief Technical Officer). Bengyella Gwanmesia (acting CEO) grew up deeply conscious of the challenges facing Africa. But this is the passion and commitment part of the drive that makes our team particularly suitable for this task. The more practical part is our skills – or he skills set of the executive team.

 FOUNDER: Barbara Gwanmesia (President and Chief Visionary Officer) is dedicated to steering the company in, and keeping it focussed on its vision of universalizing access to knowledge. Barbara is a

 Writer, editor and social anthropologist. She is a graduate of Webster University and Leiden University – with a Master’s Degree in international relations, and an MPhil in African studies: Barbara's passion for improving living conditions in Africa has seen her pioneer various initiatives to change various realities on the continent. The language barrier to education is for her a lived experience.

Co-FOUNDER: Ndipabonga Atanga (CTO - Product and Development)

Ndipabonga is a Product Lead with 10+ years’ experience. Leading digital innovation in the

zero-carbon sustainable energy sector. A graduate of Sullivan University Louisville (KY) has a master’s in information technology management and a Master in Analytics: For Ndipa, the challenge of language is also a lived experience and a state of affairs in need of such urgent change that for her too it is a life mission, not merely a state to correct.

Co-FOUNDER: Bengyella Gwanmesia (New CEO):

Entrepreneur and business marketing strategist. First to introduce an African street food concept at #1 Dutch supermarket chain, Albert Heijn. A graduate of Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam has a master’s in finance & Investment: Bengyella's business acumen, commercial, strategic & financial skills set him apart as a particularly gifted leader to carry the vision of Batazia forward.

INVESTOR RELATIONS: Emmie van Halder:

Emmie was the first to believe in and invest in the Baazia project. With a track record in foreign direct investment, impact investment, funding solutions and international business development, Emmie is CEO of MPower International; and brings that wealth of knowledge to the Batazia effort.

South Africa

For almost 20 years, Emmie has done extensive business in South Africa and worked with a vast number of peple and businesses. We also team members workng of South African heritage - working from South Africa.

 The inflexibility of the choices given above gave me no opporunity to indicate that our technology is now leaving the prototype phase. And we are entering the pilot stage. In other words, weare between the two growth stages.

EXPLAINING OUR STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT

We have built:

1. a translation portal web app and mobile app 
2. multiple custom language models 
3. Content-focused mobile app artefacts
4. Currently, we are serving & testing services with 5 client - beneficiaries 

WHAT DO WE HOPE SOLVE WILL HELP US IN

• Financial
• Strategic
• Network opportunities
• Legal
• and especially Talents (personnel)

We are hoping that SOLVE will help us grow stronger in these areas: 

Financial: The personnel cost (burn rate) in high/deep tech is legendary! Little did we know when our founding team embarked on this journey how much we would have to pay personnel even before entering the market. So, it has been a constant climb. Getting not just access to funders, but funding advisers and people in the tech world who understand how to manage cost in this field would be just amazing.

 Network: The thought of working with solve brings inspiring imageries of important and transformative networking events. From the literature on SOLVE, working with SOLVE would be a true solution to access knowledge, mentors, and resource opportunities I believe we know nothing of at the moment.

Legal: Our solution cuts across borders and our engineers work from different areas of the world. Our headquarters in Europe is only administrative. Our tech headquarters is in the US, and oversees engineers works with us. So we are often reminded of legal considerations that must always stay at the forefront of our thinking. Legal advice on, for example, international business would come in absolutely handy.

Engineers/Talents: One of the things that has been a constant, has been finding the right tea members at a cost that will not break the bank. It is an area we really hope work with SOLVE will seriously help us in

SOLVE’S value proposition, modus operandi and culture of fairness and equitability paint a picture of a place where opportunity to grow, learn and access help and advice  abound. To get into the SOLVE program would therefore be an opportunity to learn to understand our market better, strengthen our organizational structure and build technical and funding partnerships. We see becoming a part of the SOLVE ecosystem as opportunity to access funding possibilities, advice, mentoring and education. For this opportunity, we absolutely hope we can make it into the SOLVE program.

Four things make our solution innovative and different: 

1. Our proprietary Afrocentric AI/machine translation technology that not only approaches African languages from their respective root-groups or families, but also from inside the belly of these languages, capturing their intrinsic nuances, semantics and pragmatics, as well as their grammatical structure, syntax, phonetic characteristics and unique phonological and phonemic components – amongst others. This, and the employment of human computational linguists, localization specialists and quality specialists (QAs)have helped to push our approach not only far from the eurocentric point of departure of the current established commercial translation bodies, but deepened the particularity or uniqueness of our approach.
2. Secondly, our approach is not only translation-centred. Our specialist 'computational' linguist (and her team) are also focused on reducing oral languages into written languages too, thus breaking past simply making content translatable into only 'written' African indigenous languages. 
3. The third differentiating aspect of our technology or solution is our purpose. Ours is an implementation approach or rather an ‘intent to implement’ as opposed to a merely research and discussion-based approach. In other words, we are customer-facing rather than scholarstic. Our aim is to translate results instantly into usability... to put our results in the hands of users... to see immediate use, and to do this commercially not just on a non-profit basis. So far, the great work in translation of African languages that have been done (and being done) has been largely in research. In contrast, we do not merely wish to research, we want to take our results into the market, into peoples hands, and into people’s lives.   
4. The final aspect of our approach to be added here may not seem relevant at first glance. But it really is the benchmark of the core potential of our technology: Our determination to leave NO AFRICAN LANGUAGE BEHIND. This determination has ensured that we take the most cutting-edge approach towards making universal knowledge accessible in every African language. For us, not only the major African languages need be given access to universal knowledge, but every single African language – low-resourced or well-integrated. The particularity of this approach is our willingness to break any grounds to make this possible, in spite of over 70 years of failed attempts to make Africa’s multilingualism an asset to education in Africa rather than an obstruction... our determination to make the notion of quality education possible solely in ex-colonial languages a thing of the past... our determination to make the seeming impossible possible for Africa.     

OUR IMPACT THEORY

Our AI-driven (Afrocentric machine translation technology) will transform how education is delivered across Africa, by making learning materials instantly accessible in indigenous languages through mobile devices and other communication devices.

 By providing instant translation of educational content into multiple African indigenous languages and reducing oral languages into written form, our technology will make learning accessible and inclusive for millions of Africans both within and beyond the continent. Whether through B2B integrations that allow organizations to offer content in local dialects, or through our B2C platform where individuals can access materials in their mother-tongue on any device, we’ll be boosting literacy, improving school retention, and building a skilled workforce. This isn't just about education—it's about empowering a whole continent with the tools for a brighter future from nothing more than its fast spreading ubiquitous mobile (smart and feature) phone.

2) THE IMPACT PROCESS

The Action:

Batazia's technology directly addresses the challenge of educational access and learning effectiveness in Africa by making learning materials available in multiple indigenous languages. Here's how and why we expect significant impact:

 Activities:

We deploy a proprietary Afrocentric machine translation software that works in two main ways:

• B2B: Integrating our API with the systems of educational institutions, governments, and businesses allows these entities to offer their existing learning materials in learners' mother tongues.
• B2C: Our streaming platform lets individual learners access educational content directly, in any African language they choose, through simple devices like mobile phones.

Outputs:

The immediate result of these activities is that educational content becomes accessible in several African languages almost instantly after being input into our system. This transformation occurs within minutes, thanks to advanced AI and machine learning technologies.

Outcomes:

• Increased Literacy: We know from research that literacy improves significantly when learners have access to education and reading content in their first language.
• Enhanced School Retention and Continuity: Students are more likely to stay in school and pursue continuous education when they study in a language they fully understand.
• Educational Inclusion: Providing learning in indigenous languages tackles the exclusion of non-dominant language speakers from full participation in education.
• And more...

Impact: 

Over time, these outcomes will lead to a more educated and skilled workforce, ready to contribute more effectively to their communities and the broader economy. Literature supporting this includes data from similar educational interventions where language-appropriate materials increased student engagement and success rates (Examples in Ethiopia, South-Africa, Nigeria and many other countries in Africa and elsewhere.) 

By removing language barriers, Batazia will not only be improving individual educational outcomes, but will also be promoting broader social and economic development across Africa.

OUR PRESENT SOUTH AFRICA LIBRARY PROJECT

We envision impacting the lives of northwards of 5.5 million children (ages 4-10) across South Africa who at present not only have difficulty with literacy but no easy access to physical books. We expect that giving them access to our digital content in the language they understand best will improve their listening and reading comprehension as well as their numeracy skills. 

Uprooting endemic poverty in Africa: We believe that endemic and sustained poverty in Africa only can be uprooted for good through the knowledge (to do so) and the education (to apply that knowledge). We believe that language barriers prevents Africans from truly accessing that knowledge and education and our technology will help change that. 

Ending illiteracy in Africa: Batazia's goal is to end illiteracy in Africa by creating technology that makes reading and learning possible in the language that people understand best. 

Equity: Everyone has a right to education in the language that they understand. By providing education in African languages, we eliminate the language barrier that has prevented communities and people across Africa from accessing the knowledge and education that they are entitled to as a human right. 

Inclusivity: Educational exclusion perpetuates cycles of poverty in Africa,  hugely contributing to social unrest, political instability, and conflict on the continent. For that reason, we are dedicated to continually refining our strategy and learning-approach techniques to make access to quality education for all Africans, irrespective of socio-economic status, race, gender, or other factors 100% inclusive. 

 Empowerment & Accessibility: We believe that education is a powerful tool for personal and community empowerment, and that by making it accessible in African languages, we create a more inclusive and equitable society, especially for African girls and women. 

 (Decent Work & Economic Growth) Increasing Human Capital in Africa: In order to provide Africans with 21st-century opportunities for success, investment in Africa’s human capital is imperative. We prioritize foundational education because of its long term and entrenched lifelong impact on human capital; and on skills-creating education because of its ability to raise human capital and break the cycles of joblessness, hopelessness and desperacy in Africa.

Prioritising Foundational Learning: Difficulties in reading and listening with comprehension is at the root of school illiteracy - where children attend school but cannot read or count, and adults distance themselves from both. This is why Batazia’s journey starts with an emphasis on foundational learning.

 Cultural preservation: We recognize the importance of preserving African cultures and languages; and view education in African languages as an effective way of promoting cultural diversity and preservation of African heritage.

 Technology and Innovation: We believe that technology and innovation are key to solving Africa's educational and knowledge access crisis. At Batazia, therefore, we prioritize innovation and technology in paving the way for an African educational renaissance. Our approach involves leveraging innovative technologies to create relevant, engaging, and effective educational possibilities, resources, and services. 

In summary, we believe that it is impossible for any peoples to grow if they cannot cess the knowledge they need to rise in the language they understand best. Without access to the knowledge to change one’s situation in the language one understands best, the possibility to have achievable hope could well be nihil. Our technology at Batazia is thus not just about translating content into African languages, but changing the existential opportunities of African societies and a continent.

What it is: A Mobile and Web app, and API for instantly and authenticallly translating audio and written content into African languages.

What we do:We apply Afrocentric Natural Language Processing (ANLP) and Neural Machine Translation AI technologies in speech-to-text, text-to-speech, speech translation, speech recognition, and cognitive machine learning protocols to achieve content translation and localization    ability in 3,000+ African languages. 

How we do it: We build NMT Models (Neural Machine Translation models), which are at the heart of the translation process. They are responsible for assessing the source language, interpreting its meaning, and producing a natural-sounding translation in the target language.

Full time: 10    

(These 10 team members have been working as full time, but on a contract basis, as we have been careful to act strategically based on our funding options) 

Part time: 3

These 3 team members are to be converted into full time in the next 6 months, as their attention would become fully focused on the work with Batazia 

3 years. We are now entering our 4th year, starting in 2021, when the researh process began.

Diversity and Inclusion

We are working to serve a continent beset, amongst other things, by joblessness. That has been the foundational base of our first approach to our team in Africa - to make sure the solvers of the problem Africa faces are Africans on the continent - solving an African problem.

However, we are headquartered in Europe and technically lead from the US. So we have decided that we will take into consideration differently abled people and not only Africans on our team in the countries where we work. At the moment, our team in The Netherlands is made up of people with Dutch, Indian, Yugoslavian, English/Ghanaian and Cameroonian background. Our team in the US is made up of only two people presently, both of whom are from Africa.

Our team in Africa is made up of people from Cameroon, Ghana, Chad, Rwanda, Tanzania and South Africa

Our policy makes diversity and inclusion an important benchmark of equity and inclusivity. And it has ensured that we develop a quota system in the future of who gets to work with us, so as to ensure diversity.

 Diversity and inclusion to us mean not only offering an opportunity to work with us for people who are differently abled, from different segments of society, or from different background and qualified to handle the tasks available, but also creating a safe working environment (mentally, emotionally and culturally)for them - which applies to everyone else.

Ours is a SaaS Business Model – where we use primarily direct sales to offer our translation services to Africa-focused businesses and organisations, through custom projects, APIs, and our translation portal.  

ANSWER SECTION ONE:

I have separated this answer into two parts. First part(Answer Section One) will answer the question on our plan for becoming financially sustainable. The second part (Answer Section Two) will respond to the question on examples of how to demonstrate success of our approach.

 I will answer section one in two parts. Part one explains how we have approached raising capital so far and part two looks into our operational modus.

Part One: We took the decision earlier on to try to look for angel investors, crowdfunding and later grants to raise money while we were at the earliest stage. Angel investors from amongst our acquaintances and debt-based crowdfunding in order to be able to manage our equity portfolio. And grants to not only raise capital but to grow. And so we started on those grounds, while building our strategic muscle and technology to enter our sustainable capital phase – a phase we are entering now: The commercial side.

Part Two: Our strategy here has been a B2B and B2C strategy, starting with the B2B. With a clearer go to market strategy in the B2B phase – as well as the dependence of the B2C phase on one of the driving elements of the B2B phase (language technology), we have made the B2B focus our first port of call for at least the next 36 months (2024 - 2026 – while remaining flexible and open to make adjustments). So, the commercially-based funding option I am going to discuss now will be based on our B2B market.

B2B: To best demonstrate how we plan to become financially sustainable through our B2B market, I will give a short tour of our process – taking you through our target revenue streams, our go-to-market channels, our pricing model, and our customer focus.

Our target revenue streams are: 

• Education localization Projects 

• API calls for fintech, agritech, ecommerc 
• Translation Subscription plans (by character volume) 

Our Go-To-Market (GTM) channels are:

• Direct sales to primarily education focused organisations which we currently approach predominantly through industry events. The target is to create a track record with positive project outcomes, so that they will start coming to us. 
• Our second approach is to utilize Google and LinkedIn ads to make SMEs in our active geographies come to us. 

Our pricing model include: 

• Custom Solutions: determined per project requirements 
• API: $0,0015 per call-token 
• Content translation:  

Our customer(s) of focus now are:  

• Organisations planning/executing education projects targeting mothertongue-speaking Africans. 
• Tech companies servicing native African markets. 

ANSWER SECTION TWO:

SOME EXAMPLES OF RESULTS  

Examples for Part One: We have been able to raise a total of 410K euro in the form of two angel investments and two successful crowdfunding rounds. Examples for Part Two: We're also in ongoing talks with multiple capital providers who are interested in potentially funding our (rapid) growth phase. We just had our first commercial client this month, and expect to see the agreed funds in our accounts shortly.