Meet Gidimo, a learning platform that fuses learning and fun to deliver value
The Nigerian educational system leaves a lot to be desired. The problems range from a lack of funding and infrastructure to a scarcity of qualified teachers.
Despite the fact that primary education is officially free and compulsory in Nigeria, approximately 10.5 million children are not enrolled.
In 2021, education received only N742.5 billion, or 5.6 percent of a budget proposal of N13.6 trillion, the lowest allocation in a decade. Insecurity in the north has also contributed to an increase in the number of children who are currently absent from school.
Private schools are preferred by parents who want a better education for their children and can afford it. However, this is not a foolproof solution because poor results in placement exams such as the West African Examination Council (WAEC) exam and the United Tertiary Matriculation Examination continue to be recorded (UTME).
Technology innovations have spread throughout all sectors, including education. Technology in education is assisting students in becoming better, as various edtech startups use various means, models, and resources to customize solutions to accomplish this.
Gidi Mobile, an edtech company, came up with an intriguing learning twist: gamified learning. The Global Edtech Startups Awards recognized it as the best edtech in Nigeria after a decade of hard work.
For the startup, it is a validation for the hard work and perseverance so invested.
It is beautiful, it looks like what we’ve been doing, the effort we’ve been putting in is definitely worth it. The job, really for us at the end of the day is to create that platform that is truly engaging and that is truly delivering value
Funmi Okubanjo, VP Operations, GidiMobile.
Gidimo provides more than just learning.
Tunji Adegbesan founded Gidi Mobile, which launched as a learning platform in 2012. Gidi Mobile’s goal is not just to get students to pass their exams, but also to provide them with knowledge that will help them succeed in life.
The magic happens in Gidimo, Gidi Mobile’s learning app. It contains the School Success Program (SSP), which allows students to master the entire curriculum of up to 14 subjects in a fun and engaging manner.
Students read summaries of the subject topics before taking a quiz to ensure comprehensiveness and mastery. Students in JSS1-SS3 can use the Gidimo app to help them prepare for placement exams such as WAEC, NECO, and UTME.
We are not just giving you learning, we are also giving you the opportunity to put that learning to good use in a way that will make your life better financially, socially and in a way that delivers value to the continent.
The app’s gamified feature is a tournament in the fantasy world of the Land of Kyrion. Users must be paying subscribers to participate in the tournament.
Users must gain mastery in subject topics in order to compete. The number of badges earned determines the user’s title, which ranges from Citizen, the lowest, to Grandmaster, the highest. A Grandmaster is a person who has mastered the entire curriculum.
The top ten Grandmasters will be taken on a tour of Ivy League schools, including Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Silicon Valley, at the end of a school session. Because this concept was developed near the beginning of the pandemic, the startup has had to postpone its travel plans.
In the midst of a pandemic, education
The covid-19 pandemic disrupted all activities, bringing industries to a halt as the world struggled to comprehend it and its consequences firsthand. It had both positive and negative effects, but one thing they all had in common was that it changed the way the world worked.
Because schools were also on lockdown, the education sector was not immune to the pandemic’s effects. To ensure that learning continued, video content, recordings, and online classes were created.
The pandemic’s impact on most edtech startups was determined by their product features.
Funmi stated that these solutions, while well-intended, had little impact because most students were exempted from the process. They created mini-programs where students could come together and have their activities directed in the community for an after-school learning platform like Gidimo.
we tried to do mini-programs during the pandemic where students who were not in school or those still in school come on the platform and learn together, where you could direct their activities. We saw some traction in that regard.
Funmi, VP
What does Gidimo promise?
For Fumi, the pandemic aided in improving parental digital readiness. They saw how a child could use their mobile phone to learn and how schools could reach out to their students through various platforms.
We are primarily an after-school learning platform so our job is to reinforce what is happening in school in a way that the student does not feel exhausted or doesn’t find it boring.
Funmi, VP
