StartupBus Africa’s Sterio.me Secures Partnership With Zimbabwe’s Higher Life Foundation

Speaking to TechMoran, Christopher Pruijsen, Sterio.me’s partnerships and marketing lead and co-founder of StartupBus Africa said, “We are therefore the first startup on the bus to have real life commercial commitments. We will be raising funds for the pilot phase and I will be moving from London to South Africa and Zimbabwe soon to pursue sterio.me full time.”

Launched after less than 72 hours of work, Sterio.Me engages young rural African learners through a simple, teacher-generated, pre-recorded and free phone-call to reinforce learning outside the classroom. The startup aims to end the difficulties of engaging learners out of the classroom and an even bigger difficulty tracking their performance especially in Africa.

According to the team, there are some solutions on the market using data, video streaming among others which offer open-source and free educational materials, however not all learners have access to a smartphone or even stable data connections required to consume content. Using only GSM voice signal for quick quiz delivery, Sterio.me is able to cover almost the entirety of the African continent with pre-recorded lessons and SMS quizzes.

“When a learner texts this code, an automated and free VOIP call from our servers to the learner is triggered,” said Chris. “This VOIP call is interactive, including multiple-choice answers and open-ended questions in  the same way a call from your bank would work, but with the familiar voice of your teacher. The teachers receive real-time analytics on our platform, which saves them time on collecting results and marking. These analytics empower teachers to measure how their individual learners understand class content, as well as providing regional and national comparisons with other learners using the platform, allowing long-term tracking and measurable learning improvement.