Senegalese startup Teachers du Net aims to create a new workforce of highly skilled tech professionals across Africa, through its YouTube-based video learning platform.
According to co-founder Kevin Koudji Gomis, African markets present huge opportunities for those with tech skills; however, this is not accompanied by a prioritisation of digital skills training in schools. Rather, those wishing to develop new skills must find alternative ways to learn, and this often becomes difficult and costly.
Koudji thinks he has the answer – the Teachers du Net platform aims to make digital skills education available to everyone, at no or low cost.
“With Teachers du Net we want to achieve two main things. First, to be able to give to everyone – regardless of where they are or what time it is, and as long as they have an internet connection – the ability to learn skills that are relevant to them so that they can make their projects happen,” Koudji explains.
“Second, to allow people who want to teach other, a space where they can share what they know, share their ideas, their project and their knowledge with the community.”
In particular, Koudji says the startup is motivated by the desire to help people implement digital skills across any industry, in order to help grow their businesses and opportunities.
“In our current society, ICT takes such an importance in our daily lives that having skills in that area can open a world of opportunity for a person. Developing skills in the digital domain can let you apply ICT to a lot of things, ranging from agriculture to education,” he says.
The startup currently offers over 900 tuition videos via its YouTube channel; has attracted 20,000 subscribers, and gets over 150,000 views per month – and these figures are rapidly growing.
As such, Teachers du Net is currently looking to move onto a bespoke online platform, where it hopes to house a dedicated video learning database.
While the new platform is under construction, the startup also wants to raise US$50,000 to enable it to grow its team, and increase even further the content available on the platform.
