The Power of Edutainment in Africa - A Conversation with Doreen Kessy

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

But these kids need these resources right now, not tomorrow, not a year from now, not a month from now. They need it right now.

It's a great pleasure to be speaking with Doreen Kessie today. Doreen is the Chief Business Officer at Ubongo, an edutainment company bringing high-quality learning resources to children across Africa. Doreen has expertise in business development and leadership in the edtech and learning design field. She has an MBA and BSc in International Business and Economics from Liberty University and has worked at the International Justice Mission in Washington, D.C., Wells Fargo, and Smile for Africa in Zimbabwe. She was named Entrepreneur of the Year in Education by Women in Africa. She's a Global Shaper at the World Economic Forum, and in 2018 was awarded an Acumen Fellowship. With the huge number of children across Africa still lacking access to high-quality learning opportunities, it was so inspiring to hear about what Doreen and Nisha and the team at Ubongo are doing. So I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

So I'm really excited to have Doreen from Ubongo joining us to talk about the amazing things that they're doing with their organization. Hi, Doreen.

Hi, Tim. Thank you for having us.

My pleasure. So if we just start with, you know, a bit of an overview of what you guys do and, you know, what are the main things that you're focused on now?

Yeah, so Bongo is a Pan-African social enterprise and we create localized edutainment content for learners in Africa. So basically what we do is we leverage mass media technologies to bring kids top quality content. That they can learn with, like, through TV, radio, and mobile phones. And so we've been doing this now since 2014 when we launched in Tanzania on TV and have grown to now over 31 countries across the continent and reaching over 16 million families every week. And the idea came about as you know, we saw the gap for localized— like there wasn't enough localized top quality content for kids in Africa. Obviously there's a lot of content being created out there, you know, in the US and in the UK and everywhere else. But, you know, a lot of times this content, first of all, is in languages these kids don't speak, and then it's also accessible technologies that they don't have. Such as tablets and computers.

Yeah.

And also, like, they actually need internet to access that content. And so, uh, it's quite difficult for these kids to access it. And so we wanted to fill that gap and make sure that we are bringing kids content that is representative of their stories, of their environment, of who they are and where they are from. But it's also, like, really educational and fun.

Yeah.

Um, because A lot of times, I think if you've been to Tanzania, you know it's not fun to learn in those public schools. I've been through the system, I know. We've managed to suck out all the fun from it. And we wanted kids to learn but to enjoy it. And why is that important? Because we want them to become lifelong learners, people who can continue learning over time, not just because they're trying to pass a test, but because they want to learn. And I think that's how we are going to create kids who grow up to become people who can solve complex challenges.

Yeah, excellent. And was there a particular kind of learning need that you saw that wasn't being met by the traditional education system, or was it, was it mostly learning in terms of literacy and numeracy, or was it more of a social aspect?

Yeah, so I mean, it's definitely both. We look at learning holistically and When you look at, first of all, the environment, right? Let's start there. The environment in the traditional setup is quite lacking and inadequate to support what, like, the learning that these kids need right now, you know? They lack access to basic learning resources such as books. Most of the schools don't even have libraries, right? Teachers are not trained, and then, you know, learning is not fun. The whole process is quite intimidating and based on rote memorization, corporal punishment, right? And so as a result, kids are barely learning. They're in school, but they're barely learning. So I have come to understand, like, there's really a big difference between school attendance and learning. And, like, you know, we kind of confuse those two things. We think, well, because my child woke up this morning and went to school, they actually learned something. No, not really.

Not necessarily. That's true.

They went to another building where, you know, in most environments on the continent, it's like they were probably locked up in the classroom while the teacher went to do his own businesses, um, and then he would come back in the afternoon and let them out. Why? Because, well, teachers are paid very low, and so what's the motivation for me to be here?

Yeah.

So you look at challenges like that, and then, well, when it's actually happening and there's a teacher in front of them, like, the learning itself is not engaging, and it's not equipping kids with critical skills which are really needed. They are unable to solve problems because the teacher is there to provide them with answers. And so the incentive for kids to keep coming back is quite low. So we wanted to make sure that, you know, Understanding that kids have access to all these technologies. You know, when they go back home, there's a radio, maybe their father is listening to. There's a TV, maybe at the neighbor's house. Mother maybe has one phone, maybe it's even a feature phone, right? Just your most basic phone. Can we make sure that we have top quality educational content that is localized, accessible on those technologies so that we are filling the gap? And as, you know, as they're playing, as they're at home, as they're visiting their friends, they can still access to sit and learn. Yeah, so we wanted to fill that gap outside of school because obviously a lot of people are still looking at how can we fix it in school. Of course, um, and that's a lot of work. It's very bureaucratic. You have to work with governments and all of that stuff, and it's gonna take a while, right? Yeah, but these kids need these resources right now, not tomorrow, not a year from now, not a month from now. They need it right now. So we really wanted to make sure we leverage accessible technologies that we can right now to bring them that quality content.

That's amazing. Yeah, and it's, of course, it's way more agile in the way that you can innovate and move quickly to do those things, as you say, rather than going through big established bureaucracies to try and make change. So that's, that's exciting. And you talk about bringing these three forces together, the entertainment and the connectivity of mobile devices and the mass media. And I mean, the reach that you're getting is, is huge now, right? I mean, 31 countries and huge numbers of people that you are managing to, to reach in terms of providing this content.

Yeah. And I think that is, it's funny you say, you know, you're reaching a lot of people, But when you really think about it and you look at the numbers, we don't feel that way because like there's 500 million kids on the continent that need top quality content, right? And they need to learn and we are only reaching 17 million. So it's like—

That's not a bad first step.

Yeah, it's like, well, well done. But you know, you just kind of poured poured a glass of water into an ocean there for you, right? Like, still a long way to go.

Sure.

And the gap is massive.

Yeah.

Um, but I think, um, you're right, you know, it's, it's really going to take us looking around and saying what is there now that we can use. Because the more we, we kind of get stuck on like, oh well, the rest of the world is on iPads right now and the rest of the world is using computers Um, like, well, that will be great if we can provide all these kids all this great advanced technology. The truth of the matter is that is not— it's not feasible right now. Like, you know, it's quite expensive. It's also quite expensive to wait until we've built all the buildings that are needed for school, of course, which is something we certainly should be working on and like really fast. Right? You should be building schools and all of that. But the reality is, this kid can't wait until you've built another classroom, and these kids can't wait until somebody has paid for an iPad somewhere so they can use it. So what can we use now? What do you have now, and how can we make the most of it? So we are constantly looking at, you know, even kids in non-electrified areas, they don't even have TV, most of them, you know, right? Like, there's one place, maybe a community center, that has a TV. But they don't actually have one in their homes. So we are looking at how can we work with those people, with hospitals, with health clinics to deliver this content. Yeah. So in whatever context they're in, we want to make sure that we are finding creative ways to get them the content that they need to learn.

Yeah, absolutely. And are you then collaborating with the, the more traditional education infrastructure to try and kind of feed back into that system? Because as you're saying, some of the ways that the teachers are working and that the pedagogy is working is not engaging, whereas you're doing something really interesting and engaging in terms of educational content. Are you thinking about ways that you can close the loop back then into the mainstream education system as well?

Yeah, so that is definitely like a next step for us, and we have already begun those conversations with the government, with the Ministry of Education in Malawi, and other parts of the continent. And basically what we are looking to do is to integrate our content into schools for blended learning, right?

Yeah.

So this is, you know, you, you, we have like maybe an episode on that is teaching fractions using songs and stories and, you know, quite engaging. The characters are there, the animal characters are dancing and all of that, right? That could be a really good tool that a teacher can use either to emphasize a topic or to introduce a topic, right, to the kids.

Absolutely.

And then it's like, you know, if a teacher goes on to teach more broadly and then more in depth, I guess, you know, kids are more engaged, they are learning more. Why? Because I even had a short video that I watched that really helped me understand this concept in a fun way.

Yeah.

So that is something we are certainly working on. And right now, I think the biggest piece of work that we have to do is to map it to the curriculum. And especially now during COVID-19, where most of kids, millions of kids are out of school. And we have all this content available, which we've made accessible out of school. So we are really well positioned to meet their needs. But we need to structure our content a little bit better because we need to map it to the national curriculums and make sure that we have created a structure and support for parents who are now essentially facilitators at home, but also for teachers who can now say, okay, I can use this video for— to go with this topic, and I'll emphasize this topic here. So that is something we are working on at the moment.

That's great. I mean, in my work in Africa, It's certainly, as you say, one of the big challenges is if you go back a step, the training of the teachers is, is very traditional and very transmissive teaching. I can see a kind of a connection where you could support training of the teachers to think, how can we use these visual or entertainment resources to think about learning in a, in a more kind of holistic way, or to understand the way that children learn more effectively.

Yeah, so we actually have a lot of teachers write to us and say, you know, I'm learning from watching your episodes how to become more creative in the classroom. And it's because, you know, we are creating this content, it's very user-centric. We are testing it with kids, we are testing it with stakeholders around the child to figure out what works and what doesn't work, right? And so we are basically modeling the best way to teach something and coming from a research base perspective. And so when teachers watch our content, they get so many ideas about what could be the best approach to teaching something. So it seems like the training piece is really a big one and definitely something to look into. How can we use this content to enhance the development of teachers?

I've seen that some of your work has been collaborating with other organizations. So you've done some work with the Jane Goodall Foundation, is that right? Looking at character strengths.

Yeah, so this is definitely something I'm also very, very passionate about, and it's because, you know, I've been through the system and I've always wondered, like, if you really wanted to fix any problem on the continent, you would start at school. Um, if you made the most of the that whole experience, right? Like corruption. What if we were taught about integrity at school? What difference would that make, you know, in the big picture of things? You know, things like budgeting. Why is it that only people who are studying maybe finance, whatever, are the ones who end up with those subjects? Isn't money something everybody deals with, right? So like, whether you're poor or rich, you will come across money at some point.

There's life skills that they need.

Right! I met one minister of education once and I said, you know, you are the most powerful person in the country. If you really look at it, if you were like invested in teaching kids values and character strengths that would be really important for them in life, like you could change the trajectory of the whole country. So in partnership with Goodwill Foundation, we realized just how important it is for kids to develop these character strengths. And Angela Duckworth, who has written this book called Grit.

Interesting.

Co-founded Character Lab, which is like this nonprofit that connects educators to create greater knowledge about social, emotional, and physical wellbeing of young people.

Yeah.

She's done quite a lot of research around, you know, character strengths, like how do you develop purpose and growth mindset and curiosity and grit in children. And so yeah, we had a quite a nice conversation a few years ago, and, and that's, that was when we were also looking to develop this character strength episodes. And we thought it would be really important for kids on the continent to grow up with these like foundational, like fundamental values and character strengths that they really need to, to thrive. And, and so we created episodes on purpose, like how do I find my purpose in life and like really figure that out over time. And then growth mindset, how do I develop that growth mindset? Curiosity and why is that a good thing to have? So we realized like we work in an environment where it's not necessarily that caregivers and parents at home are on board with some of these things, right? You know, it's not like a lot of kids live in this environment where curiosity is welcome and yes, you can ask me as many questions as possible and all of that. So we kind of have to take that into consideration, but we really sometimes, you know, teach kids things so that they can go and teach their parents.

Of course, yeah, right.

We're getting that feedback, like, you know, my child, only this nutrition thing, she told me like we need to eat this and this and this.

Yeah.

And now you have kids leading because I think that's what it takes. And so this social skills, and I don't know why somebody came up with the idea to call them soft Soft skills, they are really not soft. I think they are really, really important for, for the well-being and like to develop this great human, great individual that is going to make a difference in the world.

Yeah, and they're complex skills as well. I mean, they're hard in the sense of they're hard to develop.

Yeah.

And in terms of— that's a good segue into thinking about the impact of your work. So I mean, as a nonprofit, I guess you are constantly trying to evaluate and identify the impact that you're having. Clearly, it's a huge impact you're having across Africa and more broadly. But what, I mean, are there some examples of the impact stories that you've generated as an organization?

Yeah, so this is very important for us to learn whether the content we are creating is actually educational and leading to educational outcomes, right?

Yeah.

Because then if not, then we are just an entertainment company. We are not a learning company if we can't really say that kids are learning. So we bring in partners who work independently to measure those learning outcomes. And we've been working in partnership with the University of Maryland, and there's a professor there who is quite experienced measuring outcomes on like, on edutainment content. She's worked with Sesame over the years in different parts of Asia and to measure outcomes there. So she's working with us and she's done a study in Tanzania on our preschool show Akili and Me, which is teaching early literacy, numeracy, social-emotional learning, English as a second language, and motor skills. And she basically had kids watch our content for like a month, and then another group that didn't watch watch at all, and they watched other things. And then she measured what was the improvement, and like the numbers were quite significant. So on numeracy scores, like they improved by 24% compared to those who didn't watch.

Yeah.

And then they also, uh, had 12% higher cognitive development scores. So that was quite interesting, and, and we learned a lot from that. And we wanted to also understand What happens when we adapt this content into other languages? Because when we initially create it, we create it in English and Swahili, and then we adapt it into Kinyarwanda and other African languages.

Yeah.

And so she went and did another study in Rwanda to figure out, okay, what happened after kids watched the Kinyarwanda version of the same?

Yeah.

And there was also really significant improvement there. And now she's doing the same study in Nigeria. Brilliant. And I'd say that, you know, another thing we are really working to do is to measure this character strength kind of stuff, right? How do you measure purpose in HR? That's a challenge. Was there an improvement in curiosity after watching the episode, right?

Yeah.

So like, those are some very interesting things that we are now working on because it's It's easy to say, well, maybe kids improved in literacy or didn't improve in literacy, right? You give them an assessment and you figure that out. But then when it comes to these other, other things, it's quite interesting.

So yeah, those are big questions, long, longer-term developments as well. I think, you know, they don't change in quite the same timeframe as—

Exactly. So yeah, so many things to manage then, to think of and to consider in this kind of thing.

Great. And are those, those University of Maryland pieces of research, are they now published papers?

Yeah, they're both published.

Fantastic. Great. Well, we can share those as part of the show notes. That would be excellent. And then last year, 2019, you guys won the Next Billion EdTech Prize. Yeah.

Global Education Skills Forum.

That's right. I mean, that's certainly how I came to know about your work. Which was great for me, great for us, the podcast. But how much difference has that made to you as an organization?

So it has really been great. So you won that prize and we decided that we are going to use it to organize what we call Building Brains Conference. So it just happened last month in March. And basically we wanted to bring together key stakeholders around the child and really like promote this urgency around early childhood development and education.

Amazing.

Because we felt like, you know, it wasn't something that was being prioritized as much as it needed to be. And we talked, we did like a survey and asked parents like, when does a child begin to learn? And parents were saying that kids start learning when they go to school.

Yeah.

And so we thought, well, that's why the investment is really not happening from an early age, like from even before birth or at birth. Because, you know, that's when parents are just thinking, well, my child needs to eat, breastfeed, and that's it, like nothing else, right? And so we thought, wow, we need to get on the same page here about what is the opportunity exactly for parents, because they need to be more engaged, and there's a lot they can be teaching children at that age and like really helping them develop their cognitive skills.

Yeah.

Um, so we brought together policymakers parents, development partners in Tanzania, Dar es Salaam, and had this huge conference, a 2-day conference, and to talk about this. And it was amazing because first of all, we had kids lead the conference. So our guest of honor, the kid, and like MC was a kid. And it was like we had kids attend the conference. They had it— we had a kids corner because a lot of these conversations happen when, you know, in the absence of kids. And like, everybody's talking about kids, but where are the kids? Have you even spent time with them to know what they really, really need? You know, are we asking the kids? And, and so, yeah, it was amazing, and the feedback has been overwhelming. It's very exciting. And because we really wanted to reach as many parents and people about with these messages, but we are going to broadcast all of it on TV, uh, to reach even more people. Fantastic. So it was quite exciting.

Yeah. Amazing. That sounds, I mean, there's so much brain development happening in those early days and huge, huge impact that mothers and parents are having in those moments. So yeah, God, important work, I'm sure.

Yeah.

Amazing. And so are there any other things that you are working on in terms of development for Owongo? And just also, I'm sure people would be really interested to find out more or get involved or support your work.

Right. So like I said, we are reaching 17 million people. We— there's 500 million. So we want to reach more kids, definitely, across all countries in Africa with more content. So that means producing more content. And then we want it to be in their local languages. So adaptation, adapting into their languages and making it available on whatever technologies that they have. So that is TV, radio, and mobile, and also toolkits to kids who might not have those technologies and stuff. But we are, like I said, we are also working to map this content to national curriculums. And I think, you know, when you're doing something like this, and like this is something we've learned over time, it's like, you know, we are basically trying to reach the poorest kids in Africa with top quality content. So it's quite an expensive endeavor and it's not necessarily that we are able to sort of recover the cost, you know. And so even now we've made all our content accessible for free to anyone who would want to use it, to distribute it, to take it to the kids. So it's all for free. And so we need to find a way to cover the cost of all of this.

Of course, yeah.

So we definitely need support, financial support through, you know, we are mostly funded by grants, but also now we are looking at how can we get more support from maybe, you know, just contributions and donations. Yeah, because every cent counts and everything can help. So, um, yeah, I'll just invite people to visit our website, which is www.ubongo.org, and you will learn so much about the shows, which is Akili and Me and Ubongo Kids. There we have lots and lots of videos available on YouTube. So yeah, come and join us and let us know how you can support, even if it's not financially. We are, we are happy to hear from experts, you know, who are doing similar things in education. Try to learn from them as much as possible. We are always inviting volunteers and interns. So yeah, there's so much to do, but I have to say this work is so much fun. Like I love it.

Amazing. Oh, that's so good. And I mean, we're so happy to help in any way we can in terms of spreading the word, try to head towards that 500 million. It seems like a good target. We're on our way. Yeah. Amazing. Thank you so much. Doreen, I really appreciate your time and it's just wonderful to talk to you and hear more about what Ubongo is doing.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me here, it was a joy and yeah, thanks. Amazing.

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