Picture this: COVID-19 hits. Schools close; millions of African students are suddenly learning from home. Investors see an opportunity. Entrepreneurs launch startups, and everyone assumes edtech is the answer.
But a few years later, many of those promising companies are gone.
Startups such as Edukoya (Nigeria), Tutor.ng (Nigeria), and Kytabu (Kenya) raised millions, attracted thousands of users, and then quietly shut down.
Their failures weren't necessarily because their ideas were bad. Instead, they exposed a bigger problem: building an edtech product is one thing; building one that can survive and scale within Africa's realities is another.
The EdTech Boom
The 2020–2021 period saw an explosion of edtech startups across countries including Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Egypt.
These companies offered solutions such as online tutoring, digital textbooks, exam preparation, and affordable learning platforms and offline learning tools
On paper, the opportunity seemed obvious. Africa has a growing young population, increasing smartphone adoption and millions of students who need better access to education.
But technology couldn't solve the structural problems surrounding education.
What Went Wrong?
1. Infrastructure Makes Digital Learning Difficult
Reliable internet and electricity remain major barriers to online education.
A student in a major city may be able to join an online class without much difficulty, while another student in a rural community may struggle with poor connectivity, expensive data or unreliable electricity.
Devices are another challenge. Even when an education platform is affordable, students still need smartphones, tablets or computers to access it.
For an edtech company, this creates a difficult question: How do you scale a digital product when a significant part of your target audience struggles to access the infrastructure it depends on?
2. Affordability Is a Major Problem
A subscription that looks inexpensive from a global perspective can still be unaffordable for many African families.
This creates a difficult business model. Startups need paying customers to cover the cost of technology, content, tutors and support, but their target users may already have access to free alternatives.
A student might choose YouTube, a WhatsApp study group or a local tutor instead of paying for an education platform.
The result is a familiar problem: large numbers of users don't necessarily translate into sustainable revenue.
3. Africa Isn't One Market
One of the biggest mistakes an edtech startup can make is treating Africa as a single market.
Different countries have different:
Curricula
Examination systems
Languages
School structures
Cultural attitudes toward education
Levels of digital adoption
A product built around Nigeria's education system may not automatically work in Kenya or Ghana.
Localisation requires time, money and local expertise. For an early-stage startup, expanding too quickly can become expensive before the business has established a sustainable model in its first market.
4. Education Doesn't Scale Like Other Tech Products
Investors often expect startups to grow quickly. Education, however, can be much slower.
Schools, teachers and parents need time to adopt new technology. Governments and institutions often have long decision-making processes, while changing how people learn requires more than simply getting them to download an app.
This can create pressure on startups to prioritise user growth over sustainability, spending heavily on marketing, expanding too early and burning through funding before finding a viable business model.
5. Global Platforms Have an Advantage
African edtech startups also compete with established global platforms such as Coursera, Udemy and Khan Academy.
These companies operate at a much larger scale and often have access to users with greater purchasing power and more reliable infrastructure.
For an African startup, competing purely on price can be difficult. Competing on local relevance, however, can create a stronger opportunity, if the company understands its market deeply enough.
So, Is EdTech the Problem?
Not necessarily. The bigger problem is treating technology as a solution to problems that aren't technological.
Africa's education challenges are also infrastructure, affordability, systemic and policy problems.
You can build an excellent learning platform, but if students cannot reliably access the internet, afford the subscription or use the necessary devices, the product will struggle regardless of how good the technology is.
Technology can improve education, but it cannot replace the infrastructure and systems that make education possible.
What Can African EdTech Startups Do Differently?
For edtech to scale sustainably across Africa, startups need to design for the realities of the markets they serve.
That could mean:
Build for limited connectivity: Offline functionality, lightweight platforms and low-data experiences can make digital education more accessible.
Prioritise affordability: Pricing models need to reflect what users can realistically pay rather than simply copying models from higher-income markets.
Localise properly: Understanding local curricula, examination systems and cultural expectations should be part of the product strategy, not an afterthought.
Build partnerships: Startups don't have to solve education alone. Partnerships with schools, teachers, governments and other organisations can make adoption easier and extend their reach.
Measure learning, not just growth: A million registered users mean little if students aren't actually learning. Sustainable edtech companies need to pay attention to educational outcomes alongside business metrics.
The Lesson for African Startups
The failures of companies like Edukoya, Tutor.ng and Kytabu don't mean that edtech cannot work in Africa. They show how difficult it is to build technology around complex, deeply rooted problems.
For founders, don't just build what works elsewhere and expect it to work here.
Understand how people live. Understand what they can afford. Understand the infrastructure available to them. And most importantly, understand the systems you're trying to change.
Africa needs better education, and technology can play an important role in delivering it. But the startups that succeed will likely be those that recognise that solving the education problem requires more than building an app.
