A Nigerian education technology company, Gradely is partnering with a Japanese technology company, Sprix Inc to introduce its ‘Education App Qureo’ for the teaching of coding through the use of gaming to Nigerian children between eight and 13 years.
The co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Gradely, Mr Boye Oshinaga, who announced the partnership and introduced the company’s representative at a media briefing in its office, said the agreement on introduction of Qureo Coding System into the Nigerian education system was a way to help the Nigerian children master the modern technique in the computer world.
He said the introduction of the Qureo games based computer coding into their teaching would go a long way in helping children in their over 1,000-member schools and other private members take hold of modern systems in computer study, as well as enhance their performance in other key areas of study.
He said: “Gradely came about because we realised that it was not only obvious that Nigeria and Africa are behind in terms of the economic outcomes that we have today, but that if we do not take care the outcome of future, economic situation will be the same or worse than it is, because, as at 2019, the United Nations gave a report that said nine out of 10 children in Africa are in school, but are not really learning.
“They have not met minimum proficiency standards in Mathematics, English and Sciences, and so we realised that we could solve this with the power of technology. Interestingly, our journey with the Japanese Government dates back before this partnership, as organisations such as Jethro, Jaica, had worked with us and told us that things are possible between Nigeria and Japan.
We saw that in action when Sprix, the company that owns Qureo reached out to us. “We looked at their programmes; we know what coding schools are and we know how coding works.
We have done it before and we see people do it, but we saw a huge differentiator in Qureo, specifically as a game based learning environment, where you are literally playing a game, but you are learning a lot of skills along the way.
We realised that it is something that has worked in Japan and worked in a lot of other countries and we want to be the purveyor of that in Nigeria.
“So, why we did it is because that immersive environment is very engaging for kids, they love it, they want it, they want to create their own games and Qureo gives them such an opportunity for that.”
Also speaking on their relationship with Gradely, a representative of the Japanese company, and Manager, Global Division, Sprix Inc, Mr Hiroki Watanabe, stated that “to us, Nigeria is a gateway for Africa; we have been running the collaboration with different African countries including Kenya and Uganda.”
He added: “In Uganda, we are running a countrywide assessment, we are going to assess over one million students in their mathematical ability, and in Kenya we are going to have collaboration with a telecommunication company to run a countrywide education system over the next year and we aim at providing 1.5million devices for schools in Kenya.”