Safaricom in partnership with Eneza Education last week launched Shupavu 291. Shupavu 291 is a USSD based education service which works equally well on basic/feature/mulika mwizi phones as it does on smart phones. Safaricom has been quietly piloting an education portal since 2013 and so far has reached 572,000 mobile learners. Out this number atleast 469,000 are primary school pupils while 86,000 are secondary school students. It seems to have been quite a success with learners hence the launch. The service costs Ksh 10 per week and this gets you unlimited sms quizzes and content, an “Ask the Teacher” service and a Wikipedia query service.
Speaking during the launch, Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore had this to say, “We want to ensure that the same way mobile devices are being used for banking, Kenyan children have access to educational material through mobile devices. Not only will it make learning convenient but also interesting”. “Together with UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Vodafone foundation and education NGOs we created the Instant network Classroom designed to answer connectivity, configuration and supply chain issues encountered when implementing a mobile device based education programme in remote locations. It provides an all-in-one easy and quickly deployable solution. To date 3,000 students in Kakuma and over 20,000 students and 378 teachers in Daadab refugee camps have benefited” He added.
Eneza Education Co-Founder Kago Kagichiri had this to say, “Through Shupavu 291, learners are able to access 8-4-4 aligned lessons, assessments, ask a teacher and Wikipedia services at only Kshs.10 per week. Teachers can also access teacher development courses.”
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