Over 43 startups battled it out in the ZOL Jumpstart Challenge held in Zimbabwe’s capital Harare over the weekend.
Six start-ups were chosen from the 43, as the finalists including mTutor, Footballzone and Assist.
mTutor, set for official launch later this month, wants to take Zimbabwe’s education mobile, according to the developers.
mTutor is the brainchild of Douglas Chifetete and Prince Kaguda. The two say the app is SMS-based and helps the primary school pupils to improve skills in maths.
The two toldTechZim that with the app, pupils can request for questions according to their levels or topics, answer them and get their performance report from the system.
The questions are sourced from past exam questions used under the approved curriculum.
mTutor’s founders say the idea came to mind when Prince’s sister was doing her ‘O’ level exams in 2011 and they wanted to give her past exam questions over SMS but later changed mind when they realised that advanced symbols couldn’t work on a mobile phone and chose primary school mathematics instead.
They say mTutor allows parents and students to get revision questions by SMS and allows pupils to respond to them then the system sends the right solution and formulae.
At the end of the session, a pupil gets his or her grades according to their performance. mTutor also allows the pupils to share the quiz results with their friends or parents
Talking to TechZim Kaguda said real work began after they won the Forgetmenot App Challenge . They decide to move to the market though pupil monthly subscription as they said there were nearly 3 million pupils in the country who will benefit from the system.
The developers say they are also working on adding high school content and discussions with the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture are ongoing.
