Career
#BellaNaijaMCM Nosa Oghafua of Learnira is Providing Quality STEM Education Tools for the African Child
#BellaNaijaMCM this week Nosa Oghafua was studying Chemical Engineering at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), and throughout his time in the school, he always though of continuing in that field.
Until he graduated and he was deployed to serve Nigeria in the compulsory one-year National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme.
Nosa was working as a Mathematics teacher in a remote community secondary school in Zamfara state, northern Nigeria and his experience changed his story. He came in contact with students who had no maths teacher for over six years.
He decided to do something about this. In 2017, Nosa founded Learnira, a social enterprise providing access to engaging, quality education for the African child.
Learnira is working to make the world’s best STEM educational tools and programs accessible to schools in Nigeria.
At the core of Learnira’s work is teacher training, and it has partnered with PhET at the University of Colorado Boulder to train 10,000 teachers and provide a million students access to the offline PhET by 2021.
Its PhET Interactive Simulations “is a virtual lab which consists of over 150 interactive Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Earth Science and Math simulations to help students build a deep understanding of scientific concepts.”
It also has a Learnira Study Lab app which “is a repository of engaging math tutorial videos and exercises for students in Senior Secondary School 1-3.” The offline app consists of past questions and video solutions to the IGCSE, WASSCE & JAMB examinations.
Apart from building Learnira, Nosa works with international organisations in building strategy to help them spread their educational technology to schools in Nigeria.
Nosa is a 2019 Obama Foundation: Leaders Africa fellow, and a 2019 American Express Emerging Innovator (Ashoka).
He also received a Peabody Distinguished Scholar Scholarship to pursue Master’s in Leadership and Organizational Performance (LOP) at Vanderbilt University.
Nosa is helping children in underserved communities learn and compete with their counterparts in other parts of the world, and we’re rooting for him!
