Kiko Muuo: 'Quality education is a fundamental provision to the growth of every economy'
Q&A with the edtech entrepreneur on leveraging your personal experiences to build a business, on being driven by a purpose to help others, and the dire importance of Africans believing in each other.
Kiko Muuo is the Founder and CEO of Angaza Elimu, an EdTech enterprise primed to transform education across Kenya and beyond by addressing the problem of inefficient classrooms and inadequate quality educational material. Angaza Elimu was recently selected for the first-ever Google for Startups Black Founders Fund Africa.
What fundamental belief system inspired the creation of Angaza Elimu?
It’s all about my personal experiences. I was born and bred in Kenya and went through the free education system. As we all know, when there is free education, there are few resources available to serve students. This reality means the quality of education depletes as well.
About fourteen years ago, there was a massive project launched on EdTech at the school I attended. The project uncovered how EdTech can be leveraged for virtual learning in secondary schools. This exposure gave me an interest in what computers can do, which led me to pursue a degree in Electrical and Telecommunications Engineering at the university. Inspired to give back and solve the problems existing for young Kenyans, I set out to launch Angaza Elimu. In addition, I genuinely believe quality education is a fundamental provision to the growth of every economy.
What’s something you do every day that is non-negotiable for you?
The one thing that keeps me awake is fulfilling the purpose of that kid in the deep rural part of Kenya. What I mean by that is whenever students come to our platform, do we give them the service they need to explore their potential? And we continue to accomplish this purpose in a couple of ways, such as ensuring that the uptime of our service is 99.9%.
What are the formative ingredients in your childhood that came to create your perspective?
I’m passionate about giving back to the community. This passion stems from the fact that a couple of people have played a role in shaping who I am today- especially in an educational capacity. In addition, growing up in a Christian family, I developed the value of always doing something for someone. As it says in the Bible, ‘whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
What do you consider to be one of the greatest challenges for developing a business on the African continent?
There are several challenges, with the norm being access to capital. However, I believe Africans also need to start believing in themselves and supporting their own. For example, many companies would prefer to give work to expatriates as opposed to local talents.
Supporting our own people will give local entrepreneurs the motivation required to build confidence in their skills and ideas. Once we develop this mentality, local entrepreneurs will be assured of a market and ecosystem that would support them with the appropriate regulations and policies. I believe supporting each other will lead to a mushroom of ideas that eventually grow into unicorns.
Building a company from scratch takes grit. What drives you on?
I’m the kind of person who wants to build hard things. This drive was inspired in college while taking an engineering course as it taught me that it’s doable to take a class, crash it, and excel at it. I picked up the lesson that I can undertake any challenge.
For entrepreneurship, I also knew the journey was never going to be easy. Every day I woke up, I knew I would have to fight. And having that at the back of my mind always keeps me on my toes. Even when we hit a wall, I know this is what I am prepared to undertake.
There are a tremendous number of opportunities on the African continent. How do you stay focused on your journey?
Because of my personal experiences, I have always wanted to build an impact company and change the existing narrative. I believe that in Africa, we are a hundred years behind as a continent. People are now seeing the reality that by 2035, Africa will produce the largest workforce in the world. However, it’s imperative to assess whether our educational systems are preparing Africans for this opportunity. As a result, through Angaza Elimu, our goal is to be counted as a platform that is changing the continent concerning getting our economies to shape up and compete with other developing countries and continents.
If you could do it all again, what would you have done differently?
During the first few years of building Angaza Elimu, I was trying to do everything by myself. If I were starting over today, I would have absolutely built a decentralised team and delegated the work accordingly.
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Jeph Acheampong leads Blossom Academy; an edtech company that provides world-class data courses and transforms careers.
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