Interview with Elvis Austins | Founder | SpellAfrica Initiative
SpellAfrica is a Nigeria based enterprise working with improving English skills in impoverished areas. The founder Elvis is a social entrepreneur based in Benin City, Nigeria. The idea behind SpellAfrica Initiative is to improve English vocabulary across Africa using short message service (SMS) on mobile phones. Last 2013, Elvis was awarded the first annual Global Innovation Award at a ceremony in Berlin. Today, SpellAfrica has more than 100 volunteers and continuing to develop apps as well as spreading their advocacy across Africa.
What was your career before SpellAfrica was founded?
Before SpellAfrica, I was nothing of importance, just like thousands of youths across Africa, I was looking for the right opportunity to escape the harsh economy in Nigeria. In fact in even contemplated passing through the desert to Europe .
Can you tell me a little more about SpellAfrica?
SpellAfrica Initiative is a EdTech Startup with a mission to improve the poor standard of education across Africa. In January 2013, we launched a simply service known as mVocabulary, an SMS based future with the goals of helping people young Africans learn a word from the English dictionary daily via text messages. This simple idea attracted over 55000 users in a space of 3years. We are currently taking it to the next level by building a more robust application using Artificial intelligence. Our newest product is a chatbot. Using AI the chatbot will serve as a personal English teacher for millions of people across Africa and beyond. Think of it as Siri for literacy education
What’s your motivation in opening SpellAfrica?
I was a victim of poor basic education, I totally understand what it feels like to be limited by education. Although I was privilege to have gone to school in my later years. I know for sure that I am the right persons to disrupt the educational system across Africa.
Who is/are part of building/founding it?
I am a sole founder, although I received a lot of support from friends and family
What was technically the most challenging part of starting this business?
Change in the market space. Africa like you know is the fastest growing mobile market in the world after Asia. That makes it very hard for you to predict the technology landscape, the bestselling produce or service today, can be kicked out in a few months. It was and is still a challenge to always follow the wave of technology. To mitigate, I am constantly following the news, attending international seminars for the purpose of know what next
How did you get the funding? Is it just from your pocket? or you have partners?
Personal money, family and friends were also helpful
So far, how was your business doing?
SpellAfrica is going stronger and stronger, we are proud to have signed partnership with some of the world’s biggest brands and we have also won numerous awards within and outside Africa. I am currently Jerusalem, Israel where I am a finalist in the 2016 MassChallenge accelerator
Can you tell me a little bit about your products/services?
Let me tell you a little more about our newest product called “Sabi”
Sabi is a Chatbot for Education”, upon completion she is going to serve as a personal teacher with the first phase will be able to teach all key accept of the English language, including, reading, comprehension, pronunciation and punctuation with the ability to assign homework and tests the user learning capability and progress. The Demo version of Sabi is currently been develop at the MassChallenge Lab in Israel.
A later version of Sabi will be designed with a mobile pedagogy for the ability to train teacher to teach more effectively.
Although Sabi is targeted to benefit the people of Africa, the service is readily available for use to all interested persons or organizations worldwide. We understand that illiteracy is a global issue as it cut across all nationalities
How do you handle stress like during the times that you need to meet deadlines, some unexpected problems, technical issues etc ?
Granted! Stress is inevitable if you must be successful as a startup founder, but I think what is helping me is to carefully drawing a list based on my priority. As startup founders, sometime we tend to put our hands into many things. From experience, I have come to realized that, I need to let go of some certain things in other to focus on a few important ones.
What are your plans in the future? Do you vision to go worldwide?
Sure! The problem of poor education is not limited to Africa alone, Almost all countries in the global south is affected.
In one word, how would you describe SpellAfrica?
“Impact”
In one sentence, how would you market SpellAfrica?
Would you like to hear how illiteracy can be wiped out in Africa using technology?
Do you have any message/quotations to aspiring CEO’s/Founders?
Sure! “ After using the internet to the fullest extent, I can only encourage aspiring Founder with this short quotes: Everything you need to make and break you can be found on the internet — browse with care”
Originally published at www.millionrising.com.
