Congratulations to our member Fuzu who has been listed on Holon IQ’s first annual EdTech 50 in September 2020.
Holon IQ Africa Edtech 50 analyzes 700+ organizations from Sub-Saharan Africa using data and insights from their Global Intelligence Platform.
According to HolonIQ, there are an estimated 226 million young people between the ages of 15-24 living in Africa, representing nearly 20% of Africa’s population, and making up one-fifth of the world’s youth.
Educating Africa’s youth is a major focus for every country and remains a key challenge for many geographies. At the same time, there are thousands of African EdTech entrepreneurs working across all parts of the sector to support teachers, schools, students and parents for greater access to education and impact from learning.
The HolonIQ Africa EdTech 50 recognizes the most innovative and impactful EdTech teams working in Sub-Saharan Africa and it’s not surprising to see a focus on the provision of access to learning through content and resources, language and literacy as well as organizations whose focus is to amplify the work of teachers, schools and institutions. Tech upskilling also features throughout, from K12 coding to adult IT skills and jobs.
However, there is a huge skills gap and it accounts for the 25% unemployment rate in Africa and Fuzu is on the forefront to curb that by helping its users upskill.
To make it to the EdTech 50, these are the parameters (also referred to as HolonIQ’s startup scoring rubric) that HolonIQ used to grade the organizations:
Market – The quality and relative attractiveness of the specific market in which the company operates.
Product- The quality and uniqueness of the product itself.
Team – The expertise and diversity of the team.
Capital -The financial health of the company and in particular its ability to generate or secure sufficient funding.
Momentum – Positive changes in the size and velocity of the company over time.
Kenyan startups that also made it to the HolonIQ EdTech50 include:- Andela, Moringa School, M-Shule among others. Kenya had the second-highest number of startups that made it to the EdTech50 after South Africa.
HolonIQ is a global education market intelligence platform that was formed in 2018 with the aim of connecting people and ideas through innovation.
Since its launch in 2015, Fuzu has been a member of Nairobi Garage. The company aims to change the landscape of job search and recruitment in Africa, providing AI-powered personalised guidance to individual users, and talent acquisition and data services to organisations.
Over the last five years, it has become the most popular career development platform in Kenya and has expanded to Uganda in 2018 it has more than 7.5 million lifetime users. Earlier in March, Fuzu secured Series A backing to expand its platform, team, and geographic coverage.
In 2018, Fuzu was also named among East Africa’s top ten tech companies to watch out for by I-DEV International.