SA's FoondaMate is helping students with limited internet study using WhatsApp … – Disrupt Africa

South African ed-tech startup FoondaMate is enabling students with limited internet access to study online using just WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.  Basically, by sending a text to the startup’s number on WhatsApp you can search anything you are confused by, get help with maths, and download practice questions and memos. For all the details, watch this demo. FoondaMate was launched in August of last year by Dacod Magagula and Tao Boyle, but its roots go back to Magagula’s time in high school in Daantjie, Mbombela.  “At the time, he was the only student in the school with a computer. He would walk to his local internet café to download study resources and practice questions. However, because no one else had smartphones or computers, he struggled to share the resources with other students,” Boyle told Disrupt Africa. The top matriculant in his year, Magagula ended up becoming the first student ever from his school to be accepted to the University of Cape Town, where he studied computer science before leaving to pursue opportunities in South Africa’s growing e-commerce sector. When WhatsApp opened up its business API in 2020, he saw a way to solve the problem his classmates had faced in…
Read More