Calls for more funding for education technology startups as financing dips

There is a need to increase funding for education technology (edtech) startups in Africa to help advance digital literacy and bridge the country’s learning gaps. The call to increase funding was made on Thursday last week during a one-day MasterCard Foundation-sponsored cohort three startups demo day at the iHUB in Nairobi

“I mean, when you look at the wider side of the tech ecosystem, edtech startups receive a very tiny fraction of the percentage of funding that goes into that space and for a myriad of reasons,” said Nisii Madu, managing partner at iHUB.

During the demo day, 12 transformative startups known for advancing inclusive and localised education, which are part of the MasterCard Foundation EdTech Fellowship, and majority owned by women, showcased their solutions at iHUB’s Demo Day that re-imagine technology-driven learning.

The selected startups will receive equity-free funding of $100,000 (Sh13 million) from MasterCard Foundation and incubation by iHUB. For Rhodah King’ori, co-founder and chief operations officer at Zydii, an online learning platform said: “When you think about the buying ability of Africans, even a few from the west, they put money in fintech because users who are mature people can afford but they think a student in Marsabit County will not be able to buy, despite the sector having many people in it, so they think it’s not viable since.“

According to Abdinoor Almahdi, founder and CEO of M-Lugha, failure to attract funding has denied many solutions from scaling up to offer more digital literacy to learners in rural areas in the country. M-Lugha is a multilingual education app for rural communities that offers Early Childhood Learning learning content in 19 local languages.

The app uses mother tongue languages to aid rural kids to learn in their first language, solving the literacy challenges experienced in places where there is a shortage of schools and teachers, or most teachers do not speak the local languages.

Jonah Wanjohi, the managing director of Infoney, which owns Klickit Education, a digital learning app with animated content and interactive lessons for pre-primary and primary students, says the lack of capitation in public schools that covers technology costs has denied many learners from getting digital literacy.

Edtech startups on the continent face significant funding gaps, where the sector captured only 1.1 per cent of total venture funding in 2024 and 1.4 per cent in 2023. This is a minuscule amount compared to sectors like fintech, which captured 60 per cent. The post-Covid-19 pandemic landscape has seen fewer mega-deals, with no African edtech company securing a $100 million (Sh13 billion) or more venture round in 2023, in stark contrast to 2021.