Kenyan startup M-Shule gets investment from Engineers Without Borders

Canadian seed-stage investor Engineers Without Borders Canada (EWB) yesterday announced a cash investment worth $40 000 in Kenyan edtech startup M-Shule.

M-Shule is an SMS and web-based learning management platform which makes use of artificial intelligence to design tailored learning experiences. It was designed to handle 144 million primary school students across Sub-Saharan Africa and was launched in January in Nairobi, Kenya by Claire Mongeau.

In an email interview with Ventureburn, Mongeau said although they currently operate in Kenya, they intended to expand into East Africa by 2019 and throughout Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia in subsequent years.

“We are excited and thrilled to work with EWB Ventures as a partner and investor, given their deep expertise, commitment to ongoing support, and shared focus on groundbreaking and sustainable change. The partnership will enable us to continue to innovate in primary school learning alongside our stakeholders, and scale our impact across the region,” she stated.

Canadian investor has invested $40 000 in M-Shule

To date, M-Shule has received more than $70 000 in funding.

This is the eighth such investment that EWB has made through its investment vehicle EWB Ventures, in a Sub-Saharan startup.

“What we love about M-Shule’s platform is that its holistic and unifying approach arms stakeholders in the primary school ecosystem with data-driven tools critical for improving the quality of education for all students.

“We are delighted to welcome M-Shule to our portfolio where they join other bold teams defiantly tackling some of the world’s most challenging problems,” the managing director of EWB Ventures, Nicky Khaki, said in a press release.

The investment into the Sub-Saharan edtech startup scene comes at a time in which has the region is experiencing the fastest growing and youngest population while grappling with illiteracy and drop outs in primary school children. Innovation in edtech solves the challenge of how to educate this demographic.