[Transcript] #11: African EdTech & lessons from Byju's - The story of the world's most valuable EdTech company & the emerging opportunities for technology to scale education across Africa
Recorded September 6th 2020
Bankole here,
Sharing the transcript of the episode on African Edtech and Byju’s. Paid subscribers can scroll down and read the whole thing.
Since we recorded this 3 years ago, the outlook for Byju’s has been less than stellar. Although they are in talks to raise over a billion, it seems to be one crisis after another, from Indian government investigations to public complaints from high-profile investors.
In this end of the world however, edtech seems to be getting along just fine. uLesson is expanding to tertiary education, with many more marketplace businesses connecting students to learners.
You can listen to the full episode here.
Till next time,
Bankole.
[00:00:00] Olumide Ogunsanwo: Welcome to Afrobility, a conversation about African business and technology. Today we're going to talk about Byju's and EdTech in Africa. We'll start with some context about education in Africa. We'll also talk about Byju's success in India as a reference point. We'll discuss major edtech African players, and then we'll end with our views of the future of African edtech.
[00:00:24] Olumide Ogunsanwo: This episode was recorded on September 6th, 2020. Banky, what's up? I'm good. How are you? So far, so good. It's the holidays, so I'm relaxing.
[00:01:14] Bankole Makanju: wasn't excited at first. I wasn't as excited as you at first, but the more I looked into this, the more I realized there's a lot to talk about. So I'm looking forward to unpacking it today.
[00:01:20] Olumide Ogunsanwo: Yeah, I think edtech is just an important topic because it's like, the importance is so obvious, it's even hard to overstate it. Like, education is important. It's like the great equalizer. It gives more people opportunities. It's just an important topic. I'm actually surprised it took up to episode 11 to discuss it.