By Mark Kawalya
In 2018, KAINO was taking steps to pilot its’ e-learning KAINOtab that would offer students, parents and teachers a repository for guides, assessment tools, textbooks and educational games for both online and offline use.
Following the shutdown of schools in Uganda in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the startup pivoted its activities and developed a homeschooling application that would ensure continuity of learning.
According to Lyndah Kembabazi, a co-founder and chief content development officer, KAINO is a cohesive multi-channel learning program that is designed to ensure that nursery school-going children access quality STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) lesson guides that teachers and parents can use to offer lessons using mobile applications and the web.
KAINO is a user-friendly tool that offers early childhood education lessons which can be used by parents and teachers to deliver curriculum centered lessons to children. The tool can be accessed by using the mobile applications and the web, and also has users in Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan and Tanzania.
“The ed-tech space in Africa is mainly centered around solutions for primary and secondary school students. These are the majority, leaving ECD (Early Childhood Development) lagging behind, “Alfred Opio, the founder and chief executive officer of KAINO, says.
According to the World Development Report of 2018, investing in ECD (Early Childhood Development) is one of the most important investments a country can make to break the cycle of poverty, reduce inequalities, and stimulate learning through quality education. This opens opportunities and boosts productivity later on in life.
One of the benefits of the KAINO platform is that its’ children learn how to read in only one month, yet in normal settings, many children have been found unable to read even after having completed three years in school.
“We have considered well-rounded development for young children through our learning areas of emotional and social development, healthy habits, literacy and numeracy skills,” Lyndah Kembabazi said in a previous interview.
The learning tool is also student-centered and uses play-based training such as interactive video and audio content, digital story books, workbooks, daily assessment, and functions that track progress to ensure that children are understanding the instructions that allow them to learn.
According to the communications market performance report for quarter three, nearly 50 per cent of Ugandans are connected to broadband, which translates to 20 million Internet subscriptions.
Although this is an improvement, more than half of the Ugandan population still lack access to the internet, which unfortunately locks out many students from accessing remote learning tools like KAINO at present.
