Our correspondent Justice Godfrey Okamgba had a chat with Maxwell Ogunfuyi, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Scholarx about Edutech platforms in Nigeria. Enjoy…
Lots of Edutech platforms are springing up in Nigeria of which Scholarx is one of them. In view of this, what is the principal goal and objective of Scholarx?
Our objective at ScholarX is to impact lives by connecting students with education funding opportunities. We want to fund 5million students in the Next Five years.
2. Do you have any unique value proposition, what are the features that separate your platform from others?
We created a Scholarship Aggregator App, An Education Crowdfunding Platform (Village) and a Scholarship Management Service for corporations and individuals that wish to sponsor students or Schools in Nigeria.
Our platform provides access information to study home/abroad for free or even at cheaper rate. Even students from low-income families’ access funds for education, the link that connects organisations and the diaspora with people who need help with education finance
3. In what specific areas has technology disrupted education in Nigeria, not globally?
The use of Social Media Platforms like Facebook and Twitter, as well as a professional group like LinkedIn to reach more people, both users, and sponsors.
However, millions of Nigerians are actively online and the only way to reach them is to tap in the environment they can be found
4. What have been the reactions of Nigeria towards Scholarx in terms of patronage and income generation?
The reaction has been good in the last 6months after we launched the ScholarX Village Platform, but at the beginning, it was discouraging as many of our users were skeptical about the genuineness and authenticity of our content.
You know that Nigeria is a unique market, so we had to understand the market first then we introduced what they really needed.
5. If you received a grant from any investor, how would you channel the resources towards Schorlarx?
We need sponsors; we need grants as well as investors. If we receive grants, it will be used to build a 10,000 Diaspora Donor Database -Expand reach across 10 states in Nigeria – Onboard 50k students on Village Platform, grow tech team with 3 front-end and 2 back-and developers, build the Marketing and Business Development function to grow to 200,000 users by Q1 2019.
6. Nigeria still looks very much an offline country at the moment, in line with what you are doing, what are your views about that?
Nigeria is an online country. Many youths are always online, especially in the cities. Our target is to cover this space.
As for Nigerians that are offline, we have teamed up with Npower, a Federal Government initiative to see how teachers posted to remote areas that can onboard offline students to ScholarX platform. More news on this will be shared later on this year
7. In what areas do you think the government could help platforms like yours soar?
Invest in startups; Create more funding opportunities; create more scholarships especially in areas less covered – Arts, Business and History, and Culture in addition to the STEM curriculum that is currently being promoted by UN.
