Spellafrica began with me improving my English – App developer

What are your interests?I’m passionate and dream to create change in my society. I’m aComputer Scientist and have also done short courses in Social Entrepreneurship in Sweden andSanta Clara University in the United States of America and currently taking Business Administration courses; hence my interest in business. Over the years, I’ve become motivated to take […]

What are your interests?
I’m passionate and dream to create change in my society. I’m aComputer Scientist and have also done short courses in Social Entrepreneurship in Sweden andSanta Clara University in the United States of America and currently taking Business Administration courses; hence my interest in business. Over the years, I’ve become motivated to take positive steps towards improving English language skills in Nigeria and Africa as a whole. Most youths can hardly express themselves or even understand simple vocabulary. This has led to many becoming shy in expressing themselves and their inability to meaningfully contribute to issues affecting society. Spellafrica is interested in helping such people learn English Language.

Were there any personal experiences that particularly motivated this move?
I had a poor background in English and challenged myself by studying a word daily from the dictionary. In a short while I discovered that my English skill improved.I thought others could benefit from this which brought the idea of SMS as an affordable and efficient solution that would work. Then one Saturday, I researched my pocket sized dictionary and drew a list of words/meaning/usages; practical everydaywords that I had issues spelling and using in sentences. I then bought some bulk SMS credit and scheduled it to deliver the sorted words to my phone on a daily basis.  In about a period of two weeks, I was getting the messages constantly on my phone.  Right them I knew it was time to let other people benefit from it, so I added a few numbers of family and friends to the list of recipients. Before long the idea went viral. Everyone wanted to be a part of it and that is how the service became known as vocabulary with over 50,000 registered users. Since the whole idea is about helping people to learn how to spell well, I choose,‘Spellafrica Initiative’as the name of the organization with a vision to help millions of people handicapped in English in Africa to learn better English skills.  However, in recent years there has been a drastic change in the mobile space across Africa. Nigeria for example is witnessing a huge growth in the number of people using smart phones; hence the use of smart phones as a vehicle for Spellafrica.
It was all about personal development, and the need to share my knowledge with people through images.Theysay ‘apicture is worth a thousand words’; that is why I came up with the ‘fotobulary app’ which will educate as well as entertain. The human brain has the capability to store images for years.  It’s possible to reminisce images more than texts.  Since images stay longer in our hearts and minds, I thought it will be nice to marry words with images while being used by all ages and strata.
How has upped your followership?
I’ve made tremendous progress in my personal development and also that of Spellafrica. ButI cannot confidently say I’ve achieved my set goals. Spellafrica is a startup with big visions for the future to help millions of Nigerians and Africans to better their use of English. Just as the name implies, the app is about using images to inculcate English words in the hearts and minds of the players by way of ‘gamification’.
The concept is to use eye catching images, not just any image that tell a story and describe a scene.  The idea is to marry such images with practical everyday words that are used in the workplace, business, school, etc.
The game has five stages each stage has 10 eye catching images; from simple to hard. A player will have to select the right word that best describes the image. In each step, a player will have to carefully study the images and match it with a set of four word options.
The initiative for development started four years ago which gave birth to the app which is about four months now.  Developing an app is not something for the fainthearted, it requires a lot of work to get it right. Team work is the key.  We are still improving by the day and taking into cognizance people to work with us and those that could contribute to the app development.
There were challenges like assembling the team, and limited coding skills, which we surmounted and are working to getting strategic technology partners to collaborate with me.

As a beginner, what were the difficulties?
Funding! If you don’t have the money, your many dreams, brainstorming, endless research work go to sleep.  Nigeria’s ecosystem is not currently tech friendly. Fundraising for agricultural or any related project is far easier to come by than any tech related.
There were several things I could do before funding comes like instead of waiting for seed capital, mitigate some areas, such as using freelance in place of professionals, and solicit pro bono instead of paid services.

What’s your driving force?
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s founders.Just about 16 years ago they started Google with little or no funding. Today it is the number one search engine in the world.

What setbacks did you encounter?
When the idea of using SMS became clearer to me, I started to envisage a leading nonprofit organization and was faced with the task of choosing a name from several. I settled for ‘Spellafrica initiative’. But the whole dream almost died when I discovered that i would need about 200,000 naira to register a charity in Nigeria. At that time, I only had N10,000. After weeks of deep frustrations, I figured out a solution:  researching online on what it takes to register a charity in some major countries in the world.
After weeks of endless search, the charity commission of New Zealand seemed to be the solution. But one of their major requirements was to have the backing of a New Zealander before the application can be approved. I went back to the internet to seek for friends from NewZealand. 60days after I met and convinced a New Zealander who joined me to register ‘Spellafrica Initiative’.
 
What did these experiences teach you?
Never say never, don’t be so quick to say it is impossible. Everything is possible in life once you have the determination.Make positive use of the internet. I have got a lot of help from people across the world using social media. Make your project a big thing for everyone wants to be a part of the next big thing.

What other products have you created?
This happened to be our first app but the third product of Spellafrica Initiative.
Our first product is the ‘mvocabulary’, an SMS-based feature that empowers subscribers to learn a word daily from the English dictionary. Then we came up with the second product. Alive phone in program called ‘Spell101’, the program was actually designed to test the spelling accuracy of teenagers on radio. But we discovered that adults were also interested in it. So the program is currently being restructured.
Lastly, the fotobulary app launching soon at the DEMO Africa in Lagos.

When you are not working, what are you doing?
Sleeping I would say. I am more of an introvert; even when it comes to having fun it’s with close family and friends.