Kgounna, an academic social networking site, could change how students do their research and relate with their tutors and peers in the whole of Africa — and not only in Benin — if it maintains its momentum.
The site, Iaunched nearly three months back, is targeting 1 million downloads by the end of the year.
Boris Padonou, the founder and group CEO Gounna Corporation says the firm has 1 million page views in its first three months.
Speaking to HumanIPO, Padonou said Kgounna enables researchers to share knowledge and documents between professionals, former students and college students.
He added that the social academic site enables students, their teachers and peers to share information as well as handle urgent research needs online.
The site was founded in Benin with a view of going global. According to Padonou, he found the site with his two friends, Prudence Ogatcha and Sossou Aymar, inspired by the more than 10,000 students joining college each year while facing the same problems.
Padonou said: “Students do the same research papers but they can’t get any help from their close friends just leaving college and coupled with deteriorating performance. Therefore, we saw that sharing knowledge online would be possible with the alumni, lecturers and friends who would be miles away in full time professionals but willing to chip in to help a student finalise an urgent project.
However, as the site aims at helping knowledge sharing simpler among students in institutes, universities and schools in Benin and also among professionals in the corporate world, one major hurdle, Padanou says, is the limited Internet access to the majority of Benin students.
Universities like the University of Abomey CALAVI offer free WIFI though restricted.
Therefore to quicken the site’s adoption and use, the firm is developing mobile applications expected to take the site to a larger community in Africa.
Africa has some half a billion mobile connections and according to Informa Telecoms, they are projected to reach 1 billion by 2016. Padanou says that by going mobile, it would give them an advantage.
Presently, Padaou says Kgounna is a favourite of students from other universities and institutes in Benin as well as Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast Niger, France, Kenya, South Africa, Togo, Madagascar.
Kgounna is in both English and French and already runs on Nokia mobile and work on other mobile extensions is ongoing.
Padaou said that apart from education materials shared the site can also be used to help SME’s as it also allows users to share documents necessary for starting a business, running NGOs, incorporation firms, land titles application processes and travel documents.
Gounna Corp hopes to be the largest startup of out of Africa in two years, and to raise over $US1 million in five years.
