When Toni jetted into Kenya, little did she know that an idea of mobile phone innovation for learning would happen sooner than anticipated. Starting her work from Muhuru Bay in Nyanza, west of Kenya, Toni was determined to improve the system of learning in an unfamiliar territory. The community there faced challenges of malaria infection and poverty but that did not deter an idea whose time had come. From the rural areas of Nyanza, Wajir and Mombasa, Toni mobilized teachers and this led to the birth of MPrep, an assessment-based platform that gives an individualized feedback and high level of engagement. Two years later, the company is moving to another level.
In a week’s time, MPrep will change its name to Eneza Education Ltd in an elaborate ceremony to take place at MM Chandaria Primary School in Baba Dogo, Nairobi. We shall have a refreshing website as well. This will mark a new dawn for MPrep, which is popular in Kenya’s capital city schools. The lead partner in the national launch is Safaricom, Kenya’s Telecom Company known worldwide for its mobile money transfer service, MPesa. Eneza seeks to spread its wings across Kenya and later to the other East African countries. The major aim of Eneza is to provide quality education resources to students, teachers and parents across its network.
Eneza provides a platform for revision by students in Kenya. It runs on web, USSD, mobile web and SMS which is accommodative for everyone with any kind of phone be it the simple feature phone, java phone or smart phone. A student who wants to register for Eneza has to text the word START to the short code, 8512, and follows the subsequent instructions. Our USSD is *851# and will be live any time before the launch.
With the ever-rising population in the third word, Eneza comes as a timely problem solver to education matters. Teachers are overstretched in these countries whereby they attend to over 50 students per class. This is a tall order for them since they do not attend to student individual needs. Eneza therefore provides quality and engaging content to the students at a low cost that is accessible and affordable.
By 2014, we aspire to enroll 200,000 students to our platform and further improve their performance by 20% in 2016. Furthermore, our stakeholders will continually get valuable data reports through our robust system. Click on this link to view an Info graphic of what Eneza is. We look forward to an exciting week ahead!