Educational technology company Mwabu has partnered with Johannesburg-based tech start-up, Onyx Connect, to locally produce the Mwabu e-learning tablet.
Mwabu focuses on improving the educational space in Africa through its ground-breaking content for teachers and pupils, while Onyx Connect is a privately backed start-up that is the first company to manufacture smartphone devices in Africa.
Onyx Connect recently raised R150 million from undisclosed investors. To date, it has produced the Nexa smartphone and the Onyx tablet by sourcing manufacturing, logistics and supply networks from China.
Mwabu creates interactive e-learning content and resources, covering national primary school curricula. Its goal is to enable children from all backgrounds to realise their right to high-quality education and to equip them to access new opportunities that will drive the development of the continent.
It notes the incorporation of e-learning in the African education space has seen a fundamental impact in transforming and improving learning outcomes among pupils in Africa.
Mwabu, which was first implemented in Zambia, has been subject to rigorous impact evaluations, comparing improvements between Mwabu and similar schools selected for control purposes. It says results have reflected Mwabu schools consistently show significantly higher improvements in learning outcomes.
Onyx Connect plans to tap into China's strengths by sourcing circuit-board designs and raw components from China, but designing the rest of the tablet and building them from the circuit board up. The plastic cases will also be produced locally, and Onyx has its own research and development capability.
"We are talking to companies to manufacture handsets, laptops and possibly Android TV boxes," says Andre Van der Merwe, sales director of Onyx Connect.
The company is licensed to load Google software, like Android and Chrome, onto devices sold under its own brand or products it makes for others. It has also raised R150 million in setting up its local plant and will begin production in the first quarter of 2017.
The partnership will allow Mwabu to locally produce e-learning tablets, which will enable easy distribution of the e-learning content and aid the companies in actively entering the e-learning space in SA.
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