2021 has been a stellar year for Digify Africa as we celebrated ten years of digital skills delivery across Africa. A large part of this success has been the launch of our Mobile Innovation team, who have developed groundbreaking new WhatsApp learning bots with the potential to change the landscape of mobile learning forever.
As the future of technology continues to impact the world, we are committed to finding solutions that revolutionise how education can be delivered for young people across the African continent. Using WhatsApp as an innovative learning solution will allow us to achieve greater impact in communities that need it the most.
As one of the most widely-used messaging platforms, WhatsApp offers a learning solution that is easily accessible and cost-effective for marginalised youth in Africa who are in desperate need of work opportunities.
Our WhatsApp bots, Naledi, Kitso and Lesedi are tailored to our target markets and are designed to bring learning to life through personalised interactive experiences. Added to that, we’ve created one of the most sophisticated user experiences on WhatsApp via dynamic menus, gamification and keyword recognition.
Here’s a quick peek at each WhatsApp bot.
NALEDI
Naledi, our award-winning WhatsApp learning bot, was made in partnership and powered by Facebook with the support of Techsys and Geekulcha. Naledi aims to create Facebook Digital Marketing Pros and equips students with the skills they need to grow businesses and pursue a career in digital marketing – and all directly from their phone.
Naledi offers an immersive learning experience with rich content, quizzes, and study groups, as well as a layer of gamification through badges and leaderboards to encourage engagement. The beauty of learning with Naledi is the flexibility she gives you to learn conveniently and at your own pace.
Every step of the learning journey is measured via analytics and displayed on our dashboards to ensure we continuously improve the learning experience. We then use this data in partnership with UNISA to ensure that we are contributing to the vast pool of research into ed-tech and mobile learning experiences.
Naledi has already won a New Gen Award for ‘Most Innovative Learning App’, as well as winning at the Assegai Awards for ‘Use of New Technologies’ and ‘Innovative Solutions’. This was followed by several other finalists, including various innovation and mobile categories in the Smarties Awards, MTN App of the Year Awards, and The Loeries.
KITSO
Kitso is an exciting addition to Ilizwe Lam, (or ‘My World’), and is an online safety programme delivered by Digify Africa and Facebook for high schools across South Africa. This youth-targeted programme promotes online safety and seeks to empower learners, educators, and parents with the tools they need to navigate their online space safely. A certificate is awarded to students that complete the course content. As in-person learning becomes harder to do, we developed Kitso to help educators facilitate easy access to digital learning material right on their phones.
Through our partnership with the Department of Basic Education, we are helping thousands of teachers across the country with the knowledge they need to train their students on the basics of Internet Safety.
To learn more about Internet Safety, add Kitso as a contact on WhatsApp by clicking the button below.
LESEDI
Youth unemployment in South Africa has escalated to an all-time high, with 64.4% of young people facing unemployment. There is an urgent need for practical interventions that will help curb this crisis. One of the key contributing factors is the lack of basic digital skills, which hinder many young people from accessing opportunities.
The Chat For Impact accelerator programme was launched to help organisations use WhatsApp to address various social issues and amplify impact. When Digify Africa was selected as one of the 10 global organizations to participate in the programme, we knew basic digital literacy was a problem we could tackle with one of our learning bots.
Lesedi has exploded since its recent launch with 1mil+ messages being sent on WhatsApp in under a month, and over 13k registered learners consuming over 10k topics of content. And this is just the beginning.
Lesedi tests users’ digital literacy skills, and then provides multiple mobile-first topics combining voice notes, text, and images – all to help them harness the power of their mobile phone to learn basic mobile skills and supercharge their lives. Once they complete all course content, they are awarded with a certificate that can be added to job applications and CVs.
Lesedi is our most successful bot to date, and has exploded since its recent launch with 1mill + messages being sent on WhatsApp in under a month, and over 13k registered learners consuming over 10k topics of content. And this is just the beginning.
To learn more about basic digital literacy, add Lesedi as a contact on WhatsApp by clicking the button below.
The Digibot Learning Management System
All of these bots have been built using our Digibot LMS, co-developed with our partner Techsys. This ever-improving system includes a Content Management System, Quizzes, Registration, and our gamification layer (leaderboards, badges and certificates), as well as advanced WhatsApp UX functionality (menus, reminder messaging, stickers, etc.), bought to life by our Mobile Innovation team of experienced WhatsApp-Innovation centred Digifi-ers!
The Future
We are excited by the potential of WhatsApp Learning as a catalyst for change that will allow millions of young people across the continent to access quality digital skills education. As we forge ahead with our mission to accelerate digital inclusion, create a digitally savvy and resilient youth, we are confident that through WhatsApp and our Learning Bots, young people across the continent will finally have the tools they need to create sustainable, rewarding opportunities for themselves.
If you want to explore how WhatsApp learning can help your organisation reach users at scale, we’d love to hear from you: please e-mail xolani.sedibe@digifyafrica.com to find out more.
