hello and welcome to startup africa the lively show broadcasting to you every thursday on
the tuna cheeky youtube channel i'm your host pamelanga and on this show we bring to you startup
innovations that are shaking the african continent followed by an exclusive startup entrepreneur
interview you don't ever want to miss out so let's get the show started with search of updates our
first stop is in ethiopia where we discover a startup called mohabbat home-based care services
this is a nursing company established legally in january 2017 by nebiwat di meki they offer
nursing procedures that a patient would normally receive if they were ever admitted in a hospital
they also offer six weeks trainings for free for home-based care service providers their major
marketing strategy is to establish partnerships with hospitals in their communities in order to
access their clientele easier next we move to uganda where we discover a startup called numida
every small business in africa deserves access to digital banking services this
includes plenty of credit although these small businesses contribute to the economic growth and
one-third of the continent's gdp they often don't have access to credit or other financial services
due to their size and informality this is where they stopped this is where the startup steps in
founded in 2017 by mina shaheed catherine dennis and ben best this startup aims to capitalize on
the opportunity of creating east africa's first digital fine tech targeting semi-formal and micro
small businesses our last stop is in nigeria where we discover an online platform that trains public
and general health practitioners they offer online courses and various categories such as radiology
dental surgery and more artract attract is an online platform that aims to support the suit
attract is an online platform that aims to support the continuous growth of health practitioners
founded in 2017 by fareed kabir today it has over 8 000 subscribers 27 courses and 32 facilitators
that's it for this week's startup update segment i hope you enjoyed it let me know what you think in
the comments section if you haven't already tuned into the mindful entrepreneur third season the
links are in the description box don't go anywhere because we're about to start our startup interview
hello guys welcome back to the second segment of startup africa you guys always have a special
guest and every time i say special guest i mean the people we receive on this show are always
special but we have another special guest i say that all the time but we have the founder of
afritons um this is for people who want to learn their mother tongue and they're from africa or
from anywhere in the world and they're like i wish i could learn you know some lingala or something
well this guy actually has the platform that solves all that problem please welcome derek
hi derek hello thank you hi how are you i'm pretty well i'm excited for this all right so wait wait
which part of the u.s are you calling us from which state texas dallas texas houston texas
so you have the opportunity to reintroduce yourself and tell everybody that's watching
what is it that you do all right so again my name is derek i'm the founder and ceo of afrotungs
it's the first uh crowdsource mobile app for african languages uh today we currently have
lessons in seven languages uh we're hoping to add more in the near future and like she said
you know it's really an opportunity for us to all start communicating with one another in
african languages period that's the way we have to move um last week actually we had received a
guest who was on this path on this journey had this organization of promoting kiswahili all over
the african continent saying that ki swahili should be the language every african speak
and the same notion the same intention of changing the whole colonial power and
everything what the colonial powers had left as a means of communication we should adopt our own
um languages so what do you think what is what is that motivation that got you to be like you know
i want to create a platform i want to create an app where africans need to speak our own languages
that's a really long story but um in a nutshell i was in a nutshell a few years ago i worked in
uh like a pretty global environment there were people from all over the world and i
was hearing at least six languages a day sometimes upwards of a dozen and a lot of the people there
were multilingual and being in texas the only languages you really hear are english and spanish
and it made me want to learn a language and just naturally i wanted it to be an african language
uh so swahili came about the opportunity and when i started to learn i realized there's not
really any or many resources out there available and when you look at a lot of the platforms they
don't they don't value after languages and um that was a problem for me so i'm just the
type of person if i if i see something that's a problem i'll try to do something about it yeah and
the thing cool thing about you guys is you guys explain how people can learn different languages
through your website before the person gets on the app so how does that actually work how does that
person what's the procedure when the person gets the app learns the language what's that all about
what's the procedure in terms of learning the language yeah on the platform yeah
so it's um listen and repeat um we put out the spelling of the words and it's just a way of
listening um repeating the words and just through memory yeah so like yeah so listen repeat and how
fast like if someone's taking in the course what how long does it take for the person to
actually master the language um according to your platform what are the you know packages
monthly packages yearly how long do you think a person that subscribes or takes in the app can
learn the language so we don't have subscriptions and we're not at the stage yet where it's fluency
like you can master fluency we're pretty much right now um like very basic phrases because at
least here in the states it's the first time a lot of people are being introduced to these languages
um and they have their own formatting they're so so different from you know like english french
so we haven't reached that stage just yet but that is the goal is to
to provide it where there's a lot more fluency
and you know getting really into the grammar of the languages and how to structure sentences
and for you personally what has been the experience that you've
what's that thing that has made you kind of enjoy creating this platform
like say i like to create my mindset is uh making everything i want to see in the world and
you know i will say over this past week i've gotten a lot of emails from people
from like norway from jamaica on the continent and south africa ethiopia ghana and it's it's
crazy to see you know that there was clearly a void here and for people to to affirm it and you
know just let me know if nothing else that they appreciated that that really drives me encourages
me to continue with it and like say as far as i'm concerned there's nothing else out there like it
and yeah basically there really is it and so have you visited any african countries before
or had interrupted people from from african countries before now interacting yes i've
interacted with a lot of people here uh just given the the previous job i was at and just my
own personal life um i'm a i'm a global globally minded person a pan-africanist it would be honest
i have a lot of love for for you know people i see these brothers and sisters cousins that are
here in the states and i try to connect with them so um yeah i have friends from zimbabwe nigeria
um the drc ghana so i haven't had the opportunity to visit just yet but that is on the itinerary
hopefully 2022. yeah we'd love to you should come and visit cameroon it'll be very very fun for you
to come and see because we have a lot of ethnic groups we're actually called african miniature we
have a lot of acne groups lots of different food varieties so here the culture is about
um i wanted to go in and ask you you said that you wanted to whatever you think in your mind
you want to bring into realization what has been like the hardest thing um in this creation process
of putting this platform out there definitely roadblocks you know with the whole pandemic
um a lot of the plans and then just things in my own personal life that that were happening
actually about a year ago um things kind of took a back seat as far as the app was concerned
i would think that that's been the hardest thing uh just because you have you have the vision right
and you know things don't always go as planned you want to go from point a to b but on that way
there's a ditch here that you go down and then you have to go around this rock and
you know it's not happening yeah it's that kind of stuff did you always know you were gonna do this
did you always thought you were gonna do something to promote the african culture your ancestors all
of that did you always knew that this was going to be what you were going to do entrepreneurship
specifically not necessarily um it's something i've really kind of grown into like i was at
the the place i was before um i i was already starting to think a bit more african-centered
but this app i'm sorry that's i'm sorry i think my neighbors are dragging something upstairs
um what was i saying the app itself uh it wasn't it wasn't an idea just yet it's something i
began to grow into over the years and it was finally a realization from so it wasn't something
that you kind of it's something that you kind of grew into do you like being an entrepreneur
who can call you that yes i do um for me entrepreneurship entrepreneurship um
personally it's more like an expression of creativity uh so any like say any kind of
ideas that i know it's like wow you know it would be cool if uh there was this or somebody should do
abc um i kind of take kind of mindset with entrepreneurship and pursue it
yeah it's a great journey but it's not an easy journey it's like a you have to put yourself
to wake up every morning and be like i have to make this dream come true sometimes you motivate
you sometimes you're motivated sometimes you're not really motivated you're just there so how
did you get to push yourself to get to that point where you know what this you know what this could
be going on xyz could be falling off the cliff but i still want to do this how did you kind
of motivate yourself to keep on going until well you'd say you're still at the very basic level but
to get to this like to this level just the idea of legacy you know i want to leave something behind
um it's it's very deep for me um that's that's the quickest way i can put it is just
i want to provide a legacy i want to be someone that provides something that the world hasn't had
before or that'll be remembered that'll hopefully shift things you know for the future generations
and that's what gets me up that's what makes me work on it every day
uh yeah yeah i can see it you're like this is something that you're very proud of and you should
be very proud of it because it's like you said it's something that is very unique and we don't
have african teaching platforms that we don't have um platforms that promote our own languages it's
very rare to see that even on learning platforms it's mostly the spanish the english the norway
the dan like all these the norwegian the other languages but you don't see for instance i'm
a tone like i don't see a tune being taught on the internet if i tap that that's my tribe so i
won't see that being learned and i don't know my i don't personally know my language that well so
even if i wanted to learn i always thought like who is going to teach me unless it's my mom
this unless my mom was gonna teach me like who's gonna teach me but i could easily go like how
to learn english and thousands of people would teach me so it's like you're starting something
hopefully people will just join in the train okay before we leave though i want to ask you
you said you've interacted with a lot of africans and what is the one thing that you kind of love
about us that you like about africans uh just in my experience you know there's a very big can-do
spirit um and i think in a lot of ways a lot of you actually have a bit more of a global view than
us here in america just because for the longest we really didn't have the opportunity to travel or to
to immigrate to another country and i think those are changing now and i think there's a lot for us
to learn on just from you all in terms of that and you know creating a bit of our own diasporas or
just relations with one another because i see it i see it on the african side yeah yeah
any publishing because i'm there like so tell everybody how they can uh
get the app how they can subscribe how they can get on to africanus and support it
so we're available on google play as well as the app store um if you search afro songs
we have a free version and then we also have an ad free version on both platforms
and you can go there there's a signup form if you're interested in being a contributor and
you know again like it's very small right now but i i just want people to to continue with us
and stick with us because um we're going to go up from here yeah it's only out from here thank
you so much derek for tuning in for coming in for the interview i hope everybody who tuned in had
fun thank you for you know squeezing in your time for us hope you enjoyed the interview
derek i did now really quick do you know how to say thank you and it was a tune right yeah i do
how would you say that wait my mind is engaged right now um
thank you very much thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of startup africa
you can support our miniseries by subscribing to our youtube channel or becoming our patreon member
also check out jinashiki.tv for more news updates i'm your host malanga catch you
next week same time same place and remember africa is always watching