As a Biomedical Technology student at IPRC Kigali, 26-year-old Abdulrahman Niyonizeye took up a part-time job as private tutor.

He had been tutoring two students in 2017, teaching all subjects taught in secondary school, when he noticed how cumbersome and expensive it was for parents to hire a tutor for each subject.

That’s what inspired him to implement an idea he had harboured ever since he was a high school student—of disseminating quality learning material on a platform accessible to all students.

The platform that he envisaged would also give students equal access to "excellent teachers” and connect students across the country to exchange knowledge.

The Chief Executive and Founder of SmartClass developed www.smartclass.rw, an eLearning platform that currently serves more than 7,000 secondary students across the country.

While in secondary school, Niyonizeye had been exposed to two different modes of learning, from two separate schools – one which is tech-enabled and another purely traditional.

Upon his research, he found out that in Rwanda only 30 schools could deliver a hybrid of eLearning and physical learning.

These were also the best performing schools in the country.

How he started

Niyonizeye started working on the SmartClass project while he was a student at IPRC Kigali.

Although he had taken some lessons on programming, he was not able yet to develop a website by himself. A student at Kepler who was good at coding helped him to design the website.

Since the salary from his part-time job was not sufficient enough, he turned to his family to mobilise extra funding to kick-start the project.

They did not buy his idea. Like many people in Rwanda, they did not understand the significance of technology as an enabler of education and later on as a business proposition.

Even during these times of Covid-19 when, at times, physical classes are restricted, eLearning has not taken root in Rwanda.

From his savings, Niyonizeye managed to pay the programmers in instalments until 2018 when the website was ready. They started piloting it and it was successful.

He then approached Rwanda Education Board (REB), which was helpful in providing textbooks and other learning materials on the school curriculum.

We also reached out to different schools and teachers, he said, that provided syllabuses, papers, and exercise books.

"We scanned and uploaded them on the platform where users could access them for free because not so many students could afford to buy hard copies,” Niyonizeye said, adding, "In the beginning, we had some volunteer teachers from University of Rwanda-College of Education (UR-CE) that would provide lessons on our platform. At the time, we couldn’t afford their salary; we would provide them with internet and transport fees whenever they were to come to our workplace.”

In the first session, they received 80 students. They targeted day scholars who have access internet.

Change of business model

In 2020, in the midst of the outbreak of coronavirus, which forced the government to impose a series of lockdowns including the closure of schools, SmartClass started charging users and signing contracts with schools.

A student is charged Rwf3,500 per month, Rwf10,000 a semester and Rwf200 every 24 hours.

Today, schools that have signed up to the platform can share class notes with students and can still connect with them even after physical classes.

"SmartClass also offers live classes, which are recorded and accessed by users at any time. Unlike other virtual meeting platforms, SmartClass was specifically designed for education,” Niyonizeye says.

The initiative won Rwf1.5 million in the 2020 YouthConnekt competition. It was also rewarded for creating some 70 jobs during Covid-19 lockdowns.

The company has 24 permanent workers and managed to forge strategic partnerships with REB, and Rwanda Institute of Cooperatives, Microfinance and Entrepreneurship (RICME).

Recently, they signed a partnership with MTN where every user of MTN sim card can access SmartClass services for free.

These deals helped it make Rwf11 million in just seven months of its operations in 2020.

Despite this progress raising capital is still a challenge. It will require a significant investment outlay if it is to roll out the platforms on a large scale across the country.

Such investment would be spent on raising awareness on e-learning, training more teachers and increasing the capacity of the platform.

Future plans

Niyonizeye is aware that only 25 per cent of Rwandan schools have science labs, 85 per cent of them have computers and 70 per cent of them have access to the internet.

"If we give these computers the capacity to access science labs through SmartClass, it means that 85 per cent of students will have a chance to access quality education. They will have insights through science lab videos we will be sharing,” he said.

According to him, only 55 per cent of Rwandan schools have libraries and the availability ratio is 1:13 which means that one book is shared by 13 students.

With SmartClass, every student can be able to access books because they will be online. In 5 years we want every Rwandan to access SmartClass.”

SmartClass is also planning to upload educational games to help students learn, he continued, and we want to extend our services to East African countries because we have realised that they need this kind of platform.

Students, teachers speak out

Régine Niyorukundo, a student at Institut de Formation Apostolique de Kimihurura (IFAK) started using SmartClass in 2019.

She said that through the platform, she was able to interact with students from other schools as well as teachers, which has improved her learning experience.

"I kept on using SmartClass even during the lockdown. As a person who loves debate, the people I met there also helped me to sharpen my debating skills,” she said.

Fidèle Hagenimana, a mathematics teacher, revealed how he has benefited from the platform.

SmartClass, he said, became more popular when the country experienced the Covid-19 outbreak.

In the midst of prolonged school closures, many teachers lost jobs and their incomes. However, Hagenimana and his colleagues who deliver e-learning classes through SmartClass were not affected.

"We continued working and the few that we were earning helped us to survive,” he said. The platform has also improved their skills in ICT.