Global Alliance Africa ‘More than a Woman’ Showcase 2023 Award Winner: Lungile Maile
In Sandton, South Africa on 8 March 2023, Global Alliance Africa celebrated International Women’s Day and hosted the ‘More than a Woman’ Showcase with an exciting project pitch session where women innovators would share their ideas with a gathering of investors, ecosystem enablers, and support organisations from across the UK and Africa, to help them scale their solutions to the world.
Congratulations to Lungile Maile, Founder, Nubian Smarts who was an Award Winner for Best Pitch and received £4000 in investment funding for continuing her business venture!
Background
Nubian Smarts is a 100% black female owned technology and innovation business based in South Africa. It specialises in interactive educational solutions for African children aged four to thirteen years old using an inspiring, accessible, fun and engaging mobile gaming application with holistic learning. They ensure alignment with the Curriculum and cater to the social economic needs of township areas.
Problem
Lungile’s experience in manufacturing led to her starting Nubian Smarts. Automation in manufacturing has increased to improve efficiency, productivity, and reduce the likelihood for errors and mistakes and so there has been a decline in human workers as we move towards this era of smart manufacturing and inevitable replacement of manual jobs. It is a complex issue with both challenges and benefits as it creates high-skilled jobs in some areas in computing, programming and management. Manual workers would not qualify to operate new machinery as there were educational requirements with a focus in maths and science as well as advanced training to move them into these technical fields. School was where maths and science ended for some, they would not pursue these subjects afterwards as they didn’t think they were critical or much needed following their education. According to recent studies by a report published in 2020 by The Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SEACMEQ), approx 25% of adults in South Africa have low numeracy skills which can impact on their ability to participate fully in the workplace and society.
When I started Nubian Smarts, I wanted my then three year old child fall in love with mathematics and problem solving, to understand no matter how big a problem is, there is always a solution. At Nubian Smarts, we believe creativity unlocks a child’s potential. We hope to empower children to see problems as opportunities.
Solution
Two application products were born out of the need to help and support with fun, accessible education resources. NuMaths Kids app is an educational mobile game which helps with the understanding of maths for foundation based learners to prepare them for Grade 1, and Culinary Coding which unlocks children’s potential through creativity – cooking, coding, robotics and painting! Additionally, children who used maths apps made significant improvements to their maths skills and were a helpful tool when used in conjunction with other educational resources.
On behalf of Global Alliance Africa – We wish Lungile and her team continued success in the future.
For more information on Lungile, visit:
Related programmes
Global Alliance Africa
This Innovate UK Global Alliance Africa 6-year (2019-2025) project funded by UK International Development aims to build new and stronger UK-African partnerships to maximise the creation of inclusive market access, funding and investment opportunities through innovation knowledge transfer between the UK, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.
Women in Innovation
Innovate UK’s Women in Innovation programme was launched in 2016 to address underrepresentation of women in business innovation and to encourage more of them to apply to Innovate UK’s funding opportunities.