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So, why does this matter to us?

At Ubongo, we reach as many children and families as possible with our edutainment content through the technologies that they already have access to. Our TV shows are watched in over 7.2 million households every week and hundreds of thousands more on radio. However, we are aware that the children who need our content the most may not have regular access to TV – but their caregivers may have a simple feature phone. As a result, we partnered with Viamo in Tanzania, to provide their interactive voice response (IVR) platform 3-2-1 with education-themed content.

Viamo operates in 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia to provide low-literacy people with interactive, educational, and life-saving content. People can call into the free service (provided through Vodacom) and listen to literacy and numeracy songs and lessons with their children. Furthermore, caregivers can get parenting tips and advice on topics like stimulating learning through play and positive disciplining techniques. Our content has been available on 3-2-1 since November 2017, and over the course of the year, education is the second most popular content consumed by users of the service – just 3% behind the most popular topic – health.

So, how exactly does IVR work?

It’s hard to explain IVR without getting technical, so maybe an example will help. IVR is the technology that you interact with when you call your mobile service or bank provider and have a ‘conversation’ with an automated voice that asks you to either say ‘yes or no’ or ‘dial 1 for customer service, 2 for account details, 3 for something else. Basically your call is directed through a series of scripted prompts delivered to you through an automated computer system, rather than interacting with a real person. So, while the technology is more commonly used by organisations with a large client base like banks and telecoms, it can also be incredibly useful for companies like ours, who work to reach people with life-changing messages.

What have we learned from 3-2-1?

• Over 75% of callers to the service are male: This isn’t surprising due to gender inequality and the lack of economic independence that many women in sub-Saharan Africa still face. Here’s what we are doing about it.
• Majority of the callers are young adults between the ages of 18 and 24: Many Tanzanians are young parents who need resources and support to help them ensure the wellbeing and development of their children. In fact, we are in the process of creating easy-to-use caregiver toolkits that will provide parents and educators information on nutrition, cognitive development, social emotional learning, and so much more in engaging and localised ways.
• Most of the users are not in  Dar es Salaam: Most of the callers for educational content are based in Northern, Western, and Central Tanzania. This means that the content is reaching people beyond the major city of Dar es Salaam, which is located in the East.

Reaching People Where They Are At

Many of the innovative mobile applications available in the marketplace cater to people with smartphones. As a result, the people who may need them the most are often left out of accessing services that could improve education, health, transport and more. At Ubongo, we believe in reaching children and caregivers through the technology they already have access to, and this includes feature phones. Working with 3-2-1 wasn’t our first attempt at adapting our content for IVR. When we first launched Ubongo Kids we had a partnership with Tigo and EduMe, where kids could subscribe to receive daily math and science questions, and get songs from their favourite characters. We used many of the insights we learned from this first attempt, in our work with Viamo. Currently, we are working towards replicating the success we’ve had with 3-2-1 in Tanzania in other markets, starting with Nigeria in 2019.

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U-Report is a Unicef program that uses Facebook, Twitter and SMS to poll mostly young people. It is an entirely new model for engaging young people, empowering communities and holding governments more accountable. Today, young U-Reporters from 15 countries, mostly in Africa are using it every day to voice their opinions, connect to their leaders and help change the conditions in their communities.

Look at Tiny Tembo and Mama Ndege working alongside David Beckham!

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Posted by Vincent Matinde on September 04 2015

Learning in Africa is experiencing a small but rapid change with the implementation of digital learning tools. Various African governments, including Kenya, are looking to boost education by adopting comprehensive e-learning channels.

One company that is making waves in this sector is Ubongo, a Tanzania based ‘edu-taiment’ company aimed at primary schoolers which are currently extending its reach over east Africa.

Ubongo Kids, an animated children’s show and its flagship learning product are reported to be reaching over 1.2 million households through free-to-air and pay television across the region.

“We also have Ubongo Mobile, a mobile service that allows kids in Tanzania to interact with the TV series and keep learning even after the show is over. It works via SMS and interactive voice response, which means that it can be accessed from any phone, even the ‘dumbest’ phones which only do voice and text,” Nisha Ligon, the founder and CEO of Ubongo told IDG Connect.

Kids are required to register using a shortcode and then they answer questions on what they have learnt during the programme. Each user gets one free question per day, but for 500 Tanzanian shillings (USD $0.23) they can receive unlimited access to quiz questions.

“It’s also gamified so that each time a user gets five questions right, they receive a phone call from Mama Ndege [one of the characters in the show], with an encouraging message and a sing along song,” Ligon explains.

The great success of Ubongo Kids highlights the need for children’s entertainment across the continent. Yet the supply is almost nonexistent.

“Yes, there is very little kids’ content on TV in Africa, and even less localised kids’ content. I think a lot of that has to do with the market,” Ligon said.

“It’s incredibly difficult to get funding for a TV series here since TV stations don’t commission productions and very few pay sufficient licensing fees,” she reiterated.

But Ligon sees the internet penetration as a great way to monetise and even reach more kids in Africa.

The company’s expansion into a mobile application has served it well as Ligon and her team see the mobile phone as a key to solving various issues in education in Africa.

Africa has a rapid growth of mobile phone penetration. According to the latest Ericsson Mobility Report, there are over 900 million mobile phone connections in the continent. With this reach, the business cannot ignore its power.

“The big question is how to get great content out to kids on the ‘dumbphones’ that most of their families will have,” Ligon posed.

She explained that the company currently produces rich media content that cannot be accommodated on ‘dumbphones’. But it is still innovating content for both smart and ‘dumbphones’.

“We’re still working on ways to get a full learning experience to kids and families, just on a ‘dumb phone’. Eneza Education has done an incredible job with this in Kenya, and we’ve tried to learn from them as we’ve developed Ubongo Mobile in Tanzania,” she revealed.

The core difficulty arising from the lack of content is not really in motivating the content creators but finding monetisation routes. Ligon said that it is really hard to produce a series of a children’s programme in Africa.

Few have achieved this including Kenya’s Know Zone and Nigeria’s Bino and Fino.

“Monetisation is really hard.  In the rest of the world, a lot of children’s content production is government subsidised, while others make most of their revenue off merchandise,” Ligon stated.

Ubongo Kids were able to recruit sponsors for the show including CRDB Bank and other NGO’s to fund the production of the show and this has worked well. “Traditionally, TV in Africa has been supported by corporate sponsorship, and that’s still how we make most of our current revenue,” she said.

She added that her team is looking to go the merchandising way to open up avenues for more revenue.

Ligon said she is looking to have another kids show, aimed at three to six-year-olds. The new programme will help them learn languages and literacy skills. It will offer its own mobile platform to deliver education content to parents of the young ones.

Television expansion might not be at par with mobile penetration. But the possibilities are very large indeed, as this gives content creators and distributors a new channel they can reach nearly a billion Africans, and create a vibrant entertainment industry for the continent.

http://www.idgconnect.com/blog-abstract/10367/ubongo-kids-ridiculously-innovative-african-learning

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Here is how it works:

Primary school-aged children select a topic such as Multiplication, Fractions, Malaria, or Body Systems which are topics from Ubongo Kids episodes or the national curriculum.  They receive one question at a time via SMS, and after they answer several questions correctly they are rewarded with an original song or encouraging message from one of their favourite characters, such as Mama Ndege, a bright green bird who loves math.  If they answer a question incorrectly, they are given an explanation of how to get the correct answer, then given another chance later to try again.  Many of the questions are word problems and help with problem-solving skills but are made interesting by including characters or scenarios from the cartoon.

In its first few months of use, Ubongo Mobile has been extremely popular with children across Tanzania with kids in every region of the country playing: from Mwanza to Mbeya and even the small island of Mafia.  With 80% of households in Tanzania having a mobile phone this is a great way for us to reach and teach youth, many of whom go to government schools with 100 pupils in a single classroom and who may not receive individual attention from their teachers.

Give it a try – let’s see how YOU do with a few sample questions! (answers at the bottom)

1. Kibena’s family has a farm that is in the shape of a square with each side being 20 metres.  What is the perimeter of the farm?
2. Uncle T is the tallest mammal on Earth.  What animal is he?
3. Mama Ndege cut an orange into 4 equal pieces and ate 1 piece.  What fraction of the orange is remaining?

As of today, over 40,000 unique phone users have tried Ubongo Mobile in Tanzania with this number expected only to rise.  There are also plans to expand to other countries across Africa so more children can have access to this simple yet fun and educational tool!

(Quiz answers: 1. 80m 2. Giraffe 3. Three-quarters)

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