Derek Blair and Yves Niyonshuti want to help preserve culture using mobile-based technology, Jifunza. Jifunza’s app called Menya (Know in Kinyarwanda) aims to help users learn African languages, from wherever they are. “A large customer segment for us is visitors to Africa who want to learn local languages. I was once a visitor myself and I was frustrated with the lack of digital resources available for learners such as myself,” Blair said. “Back in Canada, I also noticed the lack of quality language learning content for African children in the Diaspora who are interested in learning their parent’s language. Since there are so many languages in Africa to learn, we turned to crowd-sourcing and the idea for Menya was born.” Now in beta testing, the app has received over 3,000 inquiries via its landing page. Award winning Jifunza From Rwanda, Jifunza carried Rwanda’s flag high in the entertainment category during the Pivot East Competition, as well as innovation competition in Nigeria about one week ago. It will also represent Rwanda in Silicon Valley early next year. Yves Niyonshuti, the developer of the application, says the rapid loss of culture motivated him to create this application. `”With this application, teachers and parents can share cultural values with the younger generations,” he said. How it makes money Jifunza charges $1.99 for the iPad version of Menya while other versions are free. The firm’s second revenue stream is based on advertising in the app and partnerships with African tourism boards, TBA at DEMOAfrica. There are of course lots of apps out there for learning common African languages, some of which are made locally and designed specifically for learning Kinyarwanda. How unique is Jifunza “We focus on providing very high quality content even for the most obscure African languages. We can do this because the content is user-generated and then combined with templates to create rich digital experiences. This is a unique property of Menya,” says Blair. Bootstrapped, Jifunza has been working with the linguistic challenges of designing effective language learning games which has been a ton of work and is confident that it will have something to impress at DEMOAfrica. The two, who also run Iwe Labs based in Kigali and Lusaka say they are very honoured and humbled but also extremely excited and never imagined it would make it. Jifunza is committed to the continuous improvement of Menya based on its users feedback and analytical data.
