CI-NEWS

Young Cameroonian’s dream-come-true: Low cost e-education without internet.

2019-09-24

No: 448

Young Cameroonian’s dream-come-true: Low cost e-education without internet.

Cho Nkarimbi is a young Cameroonian digital entrepreneur, author of a series of projects with Miya Academy as a solution to smart e-education without internet.

Disturbed by the gap existing between studying and comprehension, he saw this as an opportunity and decided to take the challenge by putting up of a digital service that will permit parents, guardians and students to easily assess the level of comprehension of thecoursework of the student through a smart app that not only works without internet connection but equally keeps track of the learner’s assessment and use the data to better orientate the student.

In an interview granted him by CRTV, he outlined the reasons for his ambition to tackle the loopholes he found in education with the use of modern ICT.

Miya Academy is a smart, objective and offline-first e-educational service that permits learners in general and students in particular to easily revise their coursework by offering them random customized exercises for their level; keeping pace of the time taken; marking the exam session; showing you where you went wrong and the explanation; and giving you insights on your progress as you keep revising with the service.

The learner will therefore have the unique opportunity of building their academic CV as they go along and making their future career choice based on their data (long-term results) which orientates the learner at any given time just by taking a look at the graphs of their cumulative statistics over time.

Parents, guardians and students can now easily follow up the progress of the student after school hours and after home-teaching too. The Miya Academy service evaluates the learner based on the national programme.

The service is available on play store: miya academy and online at the address: https://miya.academy

Why the name Miya Academy? And what does it mean?
I hail from Akum in the Santa-subdivision, North-West Region and ‘Miya’ stands for ‘Thank You’ and Academy always refers to education so the 2 words were a perfect fit for the project.

What problem are you solving?
The lack of quality basic, secondary and higher education is still plaguing many societies in Africa in general and Cameroon in particular, be it in the urban cities or the enclaved areas or those caught up in the political turmoil. There is therefore the need for a smart digital service to leverage smart education in the urban cities and rural areas alike, this is where Miya Academy comes in.

Miya academy is a digital service that runs 100% with or without internet connection. The web service has the various course contents based on the national program and permits the learner to interact with it via mobile, web or desktop (in development) and evaluates the learner based on their understanding of their coursework and brings corrections where needed. The service does not only have the potential to breach the educational access between the urban rich and the rural poor due to its very low cost and huge availability, but to self-evaluate the learner in real-time, thus encouraging self-learning and creativity.

What inspired you to solve this problem?
When I was a pupil, right to student-hood, I used to like to evaluate myself whenever I was done with studying a particular topic, but this was not always possible as reaching out to a teacher or a competent facilitator was not always possible. I equally used pamphlets which still had a couple of major setbacks: errors could only be corrected during the next update, no personal assistant keeping track of how much time you spend on the exercises or giving you insights into your progress; it is so static. While assisting some students afterschool, I realized there were some procedures in education that could be automated and with my knowledge in computer programming I decided to embark on this problem (a problem I once faced and that I was watching some other students face too) once and for all. I then moved on to do a survey among parents and tutors and they related so much with it and that is when I knew I was on the right track to solving a real problem.

Who sets the evaluations?
Miya Academy works in partnership with a team of trained teachers most of which are GCE examiners who see to it that the project can stand the test of time.

What is the vision and mission?
The vision of the project is to permit learner’s get oriented in life based on their own data (statistics) gotten from their cumulative results.

The mission of Miya Academy is to provide a smart and offline-first e-education to learners. Miya Academy aims at easing the way learners will assess themselves to better master their subject matter at a very low cost with or without internet and having insights on their progress.

What is your business model and how do you make money?
Miya Academy operates on a freemium. You start free and after a while you are asked to pay 1000 frs CFA only to have access to more services. The low cost permits the project to pay her trained teachers, and sponsor for research and development.

A PHP Error was encountered

A PHP Error was encountered

Young Cameroonian’s dream-come-true: Low cost e-education without internet.