Silabu Mobile App: Helping Teachers Monetize their Talents and Improve Their Lives in Africa

It is unbelievable that the Silabu mobile app is now here! It is exciting to see our passion for education taking on a sense of destiny. Silabu envisions helping every aspiring learner, teacher, and school across Africa tap into their full educational potential. We are embarking on a mission to create curious and engaged minds across Africa and beyond.

Silabu still believes that committed and talented teachers will remain significant despite the technological advances we see. Our tutors work with students aged 4 to 16 (K-12 students) for academic subjects and 17 to 30 years, focusing on skill and professional development. They teach with passion and absolute dedication, resulting in incredible experiences for students. Their ability to inspire students to achieve their educational goals and improve day by day, regardless of their learning weaknesses, is at least one reason that keeps us hopeful about the future.

Unfortunately, teachers are among the least paid professionals in most African countries, despite being responsible for shaping the future of over 700 million African youths. This low financial reward affects the quality of the job they do in teaching our children, and ultimately how effective they are in getting the best from their students. According to a report by the?Varkey Foundation, Swiss teachers are the highest paid, earning an annual salary of $77,491 (adjusted for purchasing power parity). They are followed by Germany ($65,396), Singapore ($50,249), Spain ($47,864), and the United States ($44,229). Educators in Uganda are the worst-paid, according to the report, earning an adjusted annual salary of $4,205, below Russia ($5,923), Egypt ($6,592), Ghana ($7,249), and Argentina ($10,371).

It is heartening that with the launch of the Silabu app, teachers across Africa will have the opportunity to earn a modest increase in income. On the Silabu app, teachers can generate revenue by conducting one-to-one and group tutoring sessions, both online and offline.

With one-to-one tutoring, tutors can create their teaching profiles for free in just 120 seconds and start receiving tutoring requests from students who need help. Similarly, top teachers can start their online classes in less than a minute to teach thousands of students in their online group classes, making high-quality education accessible and affordable to every aspiring learner while earning extra income.

The price of group tutoring can be up to six times cheaper than one-to-one tutoring, which holds great promise in helping students from low-income backgrounds access quality education from exceptional teachers. Silabu has made it easy for top tutors and schools to collect payments, manage attendance, share learning materials, launch quizzes, and teach online via an in-built interactive video infrastructure. Silabu’s video infrastructure also allows for audio-only options, enabling students with poor internet to attend live classes.

We have closely worked with top tutors in Tanzania and Kenya for the past few years, and we value their knowledge. We want them to be able to reach thousands of students across Africa and beyond, meaning exceptional teachers can monetize their talents and expand their revenue streams by teaching beyond their classrooms. Our goal is to enable established and aspiring teachers across Africa to pursue their passion and improve their standard of living. Our app helps top tutors grow, manage, and monetize their online classes in the best possible way. The app eliminates the hassle that the best tutors, like Maxwell Chimwedzi from Zimbabwe, encounter when trying to monetize their classes across multiple platforms like WhatsApp or Telegram. On Silabu, everything happens under one roof. We envision making it easy for top teachers to start their standalone digital schools in a few minutes. Our app does all the heavy lifting while allowing the teachers the freedom and space to focus their creative energies and efforts on teaching students.

The Silabu mobile app also provides unprecedented opportunities for teachers who are far apart to overcome their obstacles. With our mobile app, teachers can instantly start peer-to-peer classes and receive help from other top teachers in the same field. Teachers can learn different things from each other, such as collecting the best notes for mathematics from teachers in the best schools or a young biology teacher can learn how to effectively run lab experiments from an experienced teacher from a distant school. We want teachers to learn from the best no matter where they are located! Our aim is to spread the best educational practices quickly.

Silabu is more favored by timing than probably any other time. It has been relatively easier to instill the idea of remote learning and teaching into people's minds than ever before. Coupled with a well-designed mobile app, this means great success for exceptional teachers in the next few years. Additionally, we have been working closely to forge partnerships with leading telcos to offer discounted internet bundles, to support exceptional teachers in teaching remotely.

Next to our hearts is making Silabu work seamlessly at best to empower teachers across the continent and improve their living standards while helping millions of students achieve their educational goals at unprecedented affordable prices.?