Afrigather 
uLesson, Nigeria’s main ed-tech, just lately introduced it had grow to be a bunch with a non-public open college underneath it, the primary in Nigeria. Right here’s how they moved from Ok-12 to tertiary training.
At 10:20 a.m. on October 28, 2023, Professor Tayo Arulogun, Miva open college’s vice chancellor, mounted the stage at The Podium occasion centre in Lagos, Nigeria, and kicked off the college’s first matriculation ceremony. With 532 college students in Lagos and Abuja, Miva was making historical past as Nigeria’s first absolutely accredited non-public open college.
Miva’s launch will contribute to fixing the capability drawback in Nigeria’s tertiary training system. In 2014, as an illustration, virtually 1.2 million candidates who sat for college-entry exams into Nigerian tertiary establishments didn’t achieve admission. Nigeria’s 170 universities can solely maintain 1.8 million students, and tright here are usually not sufficient locations for even those that move school entry exams.
“The normal technique of brick and mortar can not tackle the calls for of fifty to 60 million Nigerians attempting to get into tertiary establishments on the similar time,” mentioned Sim Shagaya, the founding father of uLesson Group, Miva’s mother or father firm. “We’ve to have the ability to use the web in some way.”
Shagaya shared these ideas in a 2014 interview when he was nonetheless CEO of Konga, Jumia’s e-commerce rival. He had a thesis for on-line training however would dedicate the subsequent 4 years to constructing Konga earlier than promoting the corporate in 2018.
With time on his fingers, Shagaya launched uLesson, an edtech firm concentrating on the k-12 class, in 2019. “I made a decision to revisit this training alternative, which I had been occupied with for some time,” he instructed TechCabal in a digital interview.
In contrast to most companies, uLesson refined its enterprise mannequin away from Nigeria’s financial capital, Lagos, and main cities like Port Harcourt or Abuja. uLesson began constructing in Jos, a metropolis not bothered by visitors congestion whereas making the most of a lockdown that pressured workers to work from one constructing. Inside 4 years, uLesson would develop to beginning Miva College in one of many quickest enterprise expansions within the edtech area. Right here is how uLesson did it.
uLesson’s Day 1 in Jos
uLesson’s concentrate on Ok-12 training was new and vital. As Ok-12 training was changing globally with technology-assisted studying, ed-techs like uLesson helped Nigeria try to catch up. uLesson’s strategy concerned three phases: pre-recorded content material, reside content material, and personalised companies.
uLesson’s time in Jos (early 2019 to late 2020) was spent constructing the pre-recorded content material library, which finally turned their best-selling product once they went to market in 2020. At inception, the educational content material was accessible to college students via USB dongles and an Android app which college students may entry with out the web. The reside content material had educators train college students in actual time, and the personalised companies allowed lecturers to assist college students immediately and in addition give them homework
Having all of the workers in a single place, and constructing an enormous library of academic content material, meant that, for a very long time, uLesson couldn’t pursue income. “We had been attempting to show tutorial rules in a manner that’s enjoyable and interesting via wealthy animation and interplay between reside people and animation, and to check efficacy whereas we’re doing that,” Shagaya mentioned. “It was very powerful. It took a yr and a half earlier than we may even moderately go to market.”
uLesson planned to go to market in February 2020 in Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Gambia. To realize that, they went into overdrive.
First increase, COVID-19, and enlargement challenges
Late in 2019, Shagaya was on the cellphone with an previous buddy, Omobola Johnson, a one-time ICT Minister in Nigeria and now a companion at startup funding agency, TLCom. He talked about uLesson to her and she or he was excited to spend money on uLesson, as its general goal matched what TLCom was seeking to spend money on.
Johnson and her companion, Ido Sum, travelled from London to Abuja, from the place they took a four-hour highway journey to Jos, to see the uLesson crew, focus on progress plans, and determine how TLCom may help the corporate.
In November 2019, uLesson announced its $3.1 million seed spherical led by TLCom. Johnson was not only a buddy of Shagaya’s; she was now on uLesson’s board of administrators with Sum.
In 2020, months after uLesson introduced all its workers to its Jos hub the place all of them lived and labored, and after it had raised capital, the COVID-19 lockdown began.
Abdulafeez “Penzu” Ojetola, who was the pioneering illustrator at uLesson mentioned of these days that: “Work wanted to maintain going, the library wanted to be accomplished, [so] we didn’t cease work in any respect. We had two completely different lockdown shelters. One was the [residential] mansion and the opposite was the workplace complicated. We had individuals who had been cooking for us. Work was occurring. We weren’t commuting, we lived in the identical place. We bought our salaries. We bought our allowances. We wanted to work extra time as a result of we weren’t going wherever.”
Two different former workers who didn’t wish to be quoted shared related sentiments about work not stopping and everybody in Jos working around the clock.
Ojetola mentioned he “labored from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. for weeks on finish. There wasn’t a lot to be completed due to the lockdown so we labored double time. The workload of six months was completed in three months.”
In 2020, uLesson went to market as deliberate. “The primary product was very fundamental and was Android solely. We lined solely senior secondary college sciences,” Shagaya instructed TechCabal.
Whereas that they had initially hoped to learn from rising web utilization, Shagaya mentioned the market allow them to know convincingly that “for us to offer a compelling tutorial expertise, there needed to be a bodily part due to the web points that continued to problem us.” As uLesson made extra USB dongles, they skilled new issues.
“It was buggy,” Shagaya instructed TechCabal. “They [the customers] would put the SD playing cards of their telephones and typically they gained’t work, and we’d should ship out one other one. However they had been shopping for and we had a core base of customers that had been affected person with us, and we tried very onerous to make them completely satisfied and simply targeted on that base which was very small. There have been lower than 1,000 for your complete first yr.”
Clients additionally complained that the USB dongles had been vulnerable to laptop viruses. An insider mentioned uLesson spent a number of time resolving buyer complaints as an alternative of delivery new merchandise. Regardless of the challenges, uLesson continued to increase its database via the lockdown.
Many individuals, together with former workers, imagine that the lockdown helped uLesson develop considerably. Ojetola instructed TechCabal that “the pandemic was the period the place we launched the web lessons. The pandemic helped the corporate develop to new heights.”
Nonetheless, Shagaya has a special perspective: “I believe what COVID did was, it arrange the setting for our longer-term progress, however didn’t present a short-term increase or something like that.”
Whether or not it was a long-term increase or a short-term accelerant, the COVID-19 lockdowns quickly ended, and so did uLesson’s time in Jos.
The curtain closes on Jos
As lockdowns began to ease and uLesson began occupied with enlargement, it began trying exterior of Jos to rent engineers. In response to Shagaya, many of the skills they wanted in that interval had been accessible within the south-west and south-south areas of Nigeria. uLesson must fly them to Abuja the place they’d journey by highway to Jos as a result of there weren’t many flights accessible to Jos. In some instances, individuals refused to journey due to insecurity within the north-central area.
After the lockdown, the corporate’s management additionally wanted to talk to extra traders and pitch at occasions to get extra individuals to help the uLesson objective. Presently, Shagaya mentioned uLesson was principally B2B as most of their merchandise had been being bought immediately to varsities, with a smaller fraction being B2C. The sources they wanted to scale had been elsewhere. So, uLesson began contemplating a relocation to Abuja.
“It was very tough to broach it to the crew,” Shagaya mentioned. “It’s one thing I struggled with for some time as a result of they had been all settled in. A few of them began discovering romantic companions and I mentioned, look, we now have to go to Abuja. Everyone protested.” A number of early-day workers, together with Ojetola, refused to make the relocation with uLesson on the finish of 2020, though uLesson managed to retain a number of expertise and employed quick for replacements.
The corporate’s relocation didn’t cease its lofty plans. In January 2021 it announced a $7.5 million Sequence A increase, led by US-based Owl ventures. It modified its technique and shifted from dongle {hardware} to focus absolutely on on-line studying. “The problems with that [SD cards] had been simply an excessive amount of,” Shagaya mentioned.
In July 2021 uLesson began working bodily centres throughout Lagos, Port Harcourt, Asaba and Abuja. However the firm rapidly realised that the mannequin wasn’t sustainable as colleges had been again absolutely onsite and uLesson may solely get the primary-secondary-level college students for barely three months in a yr. As revenues couldn’t carry the price of operation, uLesson shut down the centres that very same yr.
Regardless of the challenges, Shagaya instructed Techcabal that uLesson is now money circulate optimistic. “Each monetary objective that we set for traders we achieved.”
uLesson has advanced to a studying bundle mannequin, promoting tabs with pre-installed studying sources and a subscription meaning college students don’t have to fret about extra web prices.
From uLesson to Miva
Having recorded success with the Ok-12 division, Shagaya and the board knew it was time to increase. So, uLesson tried opening places of work in South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, and Ghana to develop the distribution of its bundled services. Nonetheless, they confronted a number of challenges, particularly with Ok-12 syllabuses being completely different throughout these international locations.
Shagaya instructed TechCabal in a digital name that as a substitute, round this time, “I began interacting with the Nationwide Universities Fee (NUC), calling them and attempting to elucidate to them what we may arrange [an online university].” However the NUC didn’t appear to be prepared.
The NUC, which regulates the creation of tertiary establishments in Nigeria, doesn’t presently have pointers for establishing on-line universities. Nonetheless, it has one for open and distance studying (ODL), a studying technique which doesn’t occur in real-time. The present NUC guidelines for ODL state that “For all tutorial programmes to be taught by ODL, interactive texts shall be on the coronary heart of instructing and studying. These shall be supplemented with different sources similar to: CD-ROM, DVD or USB sticks to ship ebooks, simulations, evaluation and so on”, all of which uLesson excelled at with its pre-university purchasers.
Shagaya convened an emergency board assembly the place he tried to make the case for Miva. “The factor about on-line universities or universities, basically,” he mentioned, “is that the curriculum is identical in all places.” This meant that in the event that they made it work in Nigeria, they may simply replicate it elsewhere with out having to construct a brand new syllabus. He mentioned that the enterprise may both preserve attempting to determine Ok-12 enlargement or they may grow to be a pan-African tertiary establishment inside months, making use of the teachings that they had discovered from constructing giant academic sources with uLesson.
The board unanimously supported a college enlargement.
In Might 2023, after a number of conferences with the NUC, Miva On-line College turned accredited to offer open and distance studying training.
Miva College had two colleges at inception: the Schools of Computing, and Administration and Social Sciences. Months later, it added the Allied Well being Sciences college. Collectively, they provide 10 bachelor of science levels.
To realize admission into tertiary establishments in Nigeria, candidates should have a minimal of 5 credit within the Senior College Certificates Examination (SSCE) earlier than writing matriculation exams organised by Nigeria’s Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). Afterwards, candidates who attain marks set out by each JAMB and the establishment can then proceed to put in writing one other matriculation examination set by the establishment. At Miva, the exams finish at SSCE.
Arulogun, Miva’s first VC, instructed TechCabal over WhatsApp that “Miva Open College recognises the distinctive alternatives and challenges related to utilizing expertise to bridge academic gaps in Nigeria and past. We’re dedicated to addressing the recognized academic gaps, which is essential to reaching the nationwide training targets within the areas of entry, affordability, and high quality training.”
Fifteen years in the past when Shagaya first considered constructing an open college in Nigeria, Muneerat Shitta-Bey had simply been born. Fifteen years later, she is matriculating as a Miva scholar.
Shitta-Bey’s relationship with Miva began in 2020 in the course of the COVID-19 lockdown, her mom, Mrs Shitta-Bey, instructed TechCabal on the matriculation occasion in Lagos. “Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, when everyone was locked down, they had been doing on-line lessons at her [Muneerat’s] college. However we would have liked further classes to assist her focus and do higher. It was tough getting lesson lecturers. I used to be questioning, why can’t we get lesson lecturers from wherever? I went on-line and found uLesson.”
When Muneerat completed her secondary college training, she was trying ahead to gaining admission into college. In Nigeria, conventional tertiary establishments are not excited about giving college admission to college students underneath 16 years previous. As a 15-year-old, she would have needed to wait yet another yr.
Talking about her daughter’s matriculation and never having to attend an additional yr, Mrs Shitta-Bey mentioned, “After I knew that they [uLesson] had a college, we had been so completely satisfied. COVID taught us that you simply don’t have to be there bodily to study.”
Muneerat, who’s finding out for a BSc in public coverage for the subsequent three years, as towards 4 years in a conventional college, instructed TechCabal that “uLesson was superb for me as a result of, in class, typically when lecturers discuss, it was tough for me to concentrate. uLesson helped me as a result of the teachings had been damaged down and effectively visualised. I had a non-public instructor monitoring my progress. Miva is nearly the identical. I wished to do animation, however they don’t provide that but.”
One other alternative that Miva supplies to individuals like Muneerat is that they will do a number of programs on the similar time, experimenting with their preferences and selecting what they’re most occupied with. Muneerat instructed TechCabal that she’s doing different programmes exterior Miva, and she or he’s completely satisfied she has the chance to do different issues. Her mom confirms that “she is doing software program engineering as effectively”.
Shagaya mentioned Miva will function with an identical mannequin as uLesson’s with pre-recorded classes, reside lessons and personalised help, which can come from high professionals and professors globally.
Whereas Miva appears a promising various to conventional universities, one wonders if Nigerians with a minimal wage of ₦30,000 can afford the ₦200,000 to ₦250,000 annual tuition. As uLesson has completed, time will inform the place Miva will go within the subsequent few years.
On October 23, 2023, Shagaya introduced on Twitter that he was transitioning out of his function as CEO of uLesson right into a broader function because the CEO of uLesson group and chancellor of Miva College.
We began @ulessonapp as a K12 (major & secondary) training enterprise. Just lately we now have added @mivauniversity – our tertiary providing.
This tertiary addition has remodeled us to a bunch with two divisions: K12 and Tertiary.
Joyful to share that @elishaayooluwa shall be…
— sim shagaya (@SimShagaya) October 23, 2023
He introduced Ayooluwa Nihinlola, who has been on the firm since 2019, as the brand new CEO of the uLesson Ok-12 division.
Nihinlola mentioned, “By displaying what’s attainable by way of this enlargement into tertiary, we hope to encourage different organisations within the ecosystem to leverage the sources at their disposal to
present world-class training at scale.”
