Three South African edtech companies (Reflective Learning, Xhuma, and Marvel Technologies) have been named regional finalists in the Global EdTech Startup Awards (GESAwards) – the world’s largest edtech startup competition, led by a group of leading education innovation organisations. The final round will take place in January 2021.To help them grow their businesses further, the South African finalists will receive credit for Snapplify Cloud Services tools and a Snapplify advertising package that will enable the startups to reach thousands of educational institutions across Africa. Snapplify, a global edtech company from Cape Town, has facilitated the regional judging process on behalf of the UK South Africa Tech Hub who are delivering the GESAwards in South Africa. The Snapplify Cloud Services prize includes access to:
Snapplify’s robust SSO authentication technology helps businesses to centralise user management and includes additional integration features.
Snapplify Pay offers integration with major local and international payment gateways, from EFT and credit card, to mobile-phone-based financial services like M-Pesa.This year’s regional semi-finals were assessed by a panel of judges comprising Clinton Walker (Director: E-learning in the Western Cape, Western Cape Education Department), Yandiswa Xhakaza (CEO, the Nal’ibali Trust), Peter Morgan (CEO, SchoolAdvisor), Lindsay Wesner (Director and Chief Edumagineer, Teach.Learn.Innovate), and Wesley Lynch (CEO, Snapplify):
Reflective Learning
Finalist/first place‘Reflective Learning impresses with their understanding of the challenges experienced in Maths classrooms every day. Their program provides tailormade intervention based on the learner’s individual need, after identifying the underlying learning obstacles and comprehension gaps. It speaks of pragmatic innovation, addressing the educational need. Well done!’ said Clinton Walker.
Xhuma
Finalist/runner-up‘I truly believe Xhuma has an incredible opportunity to have a marked impact on education within Africa. They have created a solution to help to solve a continent-wide problem – access to funding for tertiary education. What stood out to me was that their solution was brilliantly simple: any student can now apply to over 40 bursary funding opportunities through WhatsApp in less than 10 minutes. It is low data and uses WhatsApp, which every student is familiar with,’ said Peter Morgan.
Marvel Technologies
Finalist/runner-up‘It is inspiring to see so much innovation centered around solving the dire education problem we are faced with. Marvel Technologies understands all too well that the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers. Creating a community of practice using an accessible platform such as Zibuza.net is exactly what the teacher community needs,’ said Yandiswa Xhakaza.
As part of their continued effort to build the edtech industry in South Africa and beyond, the UK South Africa Tech Hub (delivering the GESAwards) has donated to the Snapplify Foundation. Working with strategic partners, the Snapplify Foundation uses technology to increase access to education for vulnerable communities worldwide.
More and more companies are using Snapplify Cloud Services tools to grow their businesses. Email hello@snapplify.com to chat about your specific needs and how we can work together.
