Building a resilient business.

Afroes mission to use mobile technology to explore innovations in learning. With mobile phones already in the hands of over 70% of Africa’s youth, our dream is to find faster and more creative ways to equip them with the skills they need to access opportunities.  To date, Afroes has designed mobile game-based learning solutions with reach to over 500,000 users tackling complex life skills issues. These include the prevention of gender-based violence and introducing them to the world of freelance online work.  Afroes is based in Kenya and South Africa and has been operational since January 2010. Our business currently has a team of 11 between the two country offices, with six women and five men.

I did not deliberately set out to be a technology entrepreneur. I merely wanted to solve a problem that I found impossible to shake from my conscience. As the mother of three beautiful young children, I knew that a generation of young people were being captured by the fantasies of their games consoles. I wondered how these same children would ever be equipped with the skills they needed to live productive lives, and to give our great African continent the future leadership it will need.

After many fruitless attempts to dissuade my son from spending so much time on his Xbox, I had my ‘Aha!’ moment. I realised that if we could create games that captured the imagination of young people like him, but with the content and lessons that would shape their minds to the values, skills and knowledge that would prepare them for life and leadership, that would be amazing.

But it was a daunting challenge. I had no technical knowledge, and getting past this obstacle scared me so much that for 10 years before I started my Afroes company, I tried my best to make the idea go away. It didn’t work! So four years ago, when the time was right, I resigned from my very cushy job with the UN and set out on a precarious journey to figure out how to realise my vision.

I wanted to create games that would shape the mind-sets of millions of young Africans, helping them to be great problem solvers, driven by values of equity and with a real vision of success for themselves and for Africa.

How did I do this thing that seemed so impossible to me for so long? Well, to start with, I looked for clever people who could help me. I found people in my network and in the Games for Change community who were keen to share their wisdom and knowledge. A group of MBA students from Oxford in the UK led by a young friend from Kenya came forward to help me with my market research and business plan.

To cut a long story short, we now have a team of six women and five men based in Kenya and South Africa, all of them very smart young people who understand the technical and business development needs of Afros. We have already had two concrete successes – an anti-child abuse game to protect children during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, and MORABA, a game to teach young people how to combat gender-based violence. It already has more than 100,000 users in South Africa and is likely to be used in schools this year [2015].

Every step of the way, women have been key to our growth. Women leading businesses and women driving projects have rallied round to make sure we get the contracts, taken a chance on what we have to offer, and closed the deals.

For me and those who have joined me, Afroes has been an incredible journey of learning, growing and redefining. We have a huge vision that we are still pushing towards and though some moments can be really, really tough, resilience is what women’s businesses are about; that solid network of other women who we can build our businesses through and with. Every woman should try this out at least once in her lifetime. It is life-changing!