FoondaMate was launched in August last year by Dacod Magagula and Tao Boyle, but its roots go back to Magagula’s time at the South African high school in Daantjie, Mbombela.
“At the time, I was the only student in the school with a computer. He would walk to his local internet café to download study resources and practical questions. However, since no one else had smartphones or computers, he struggled to share resources with other students,” Boyle said.
Magagula eventually became the first student from his school to be accepted into the University of Cape Town, where he studied computer science before leaving to pursue opportunities in South Africa’s growing e-commerce sector. When WhatsApp opened its enterprise API in 2020, he saw a way to solve the problem his peers had faced in secondary school, and that many students in Africa still face – a lack of access to resources.
“Through our WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger bots, anyone with access to a basic smartphone – most of which come with these apps pre-installed – and some data, including social data, can study online and succeed in school. We believe that talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not. And our goal is to change that,” Boyle said.
“Most of our users can only access educational resources through textbooks, which their families struggle to pay for and their schools often have a limited supply of teacher-dictated notes, a library if there is one within walking distance of their home, or study camps. Few can afford to download and run additional apps or search the web for long periods of time, even with access to smartphones. FoondaMate is an instant, low-data solution to this problem, allowing anyone to study from anywhere.”
Quite revolutionary, and so it is little surprise that FoondaMate has already been used by more than 120,000 in over 10 African countries, but also by many in Latin America and Asia. Boyle said it is growing at an average rate of 600 new users a day, with uptake boosted by the fact that it is available in several languages, including not only English, but also isiZulu, siSwati, isiNdebele, Afrikaans, chiShona, Xitsonga, Tshivenda, isiXhosa and Sepedi.
“For many of our users, we are the first technology product they have engaged with in their mother tongue, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive,” Boyle said.
FoondaMate is for now focused on growing its user base and expanding into new markets – expanding its presence in Latin America and South East Asia are key priorities.
