BuniTek “giving generations the power to bring ideas to life”

I was very privileged to interview the founders of BuniTek and talk about their experience in entrepreneurship, how far they have come and hope to go and most of all, lessons they could share with other scholars on social entrepreneurship.

Daniel and Billy, the cofounders of BuniTek, were among the 13 social enterprises who received the Scholars Enterprise Fund last year (2019) and they were more than thrilled to share the amazing journey of learning that they have gone through.

Why BuniTek?

“Our generation is so good at reading Tech but not as good at writing it. What if we demystified the tech behind the tech we use and empowered as many African children to use technology to innovate and solve the challenges around them?”

For BuniTek, programming languages are a universal language that can be taught as any other language that children learn. From personal experiences, the founders have experienced first-hand, how writing tech is designated for the western world due to late introduction to the tech world of young people in Africa to tech. This has led to great dependency to other continents for tech solutions. Tech can be demystified, simplified and accessed by everyone. Tech will also be pivotal in the achievement of many strategic plans of African countries in the near future.

Inspirations?

“The world is moving fast into industrial digitization. Africa needs to have a chance to take part in this revolution and create tech by Africans for Africa.”

Currently, tech literacy is very low in Africa. The most popular and sad example was of a video that went viral last year of a teacher teaching about Microsoft Windows while drawing the images on a board because he did not have equipment to teach it. By teaching and making tech available in Africa, it is possible for everyone on the continent to be inspired through tech. I mean, I may be biased, but there is a tech solution for every problem in the world.

How do you measure impact? How do you know you are on the right track?

“We have a team of 10 volunteers who are real inspiration and joy to work with. They keep up on our toes. We have more and more students engaging with our courses each day and very enthusiastic tutors. We can’t be getting it so wrong if more people are willing to join our course.”

The team really values continuous learning. The feedback we receive is great and actionable and we keep evolving our courses to suit the needs of our main goal. Impact is measured over time and our main goals are reaching the “unreachable” students in the rural areas, even those areas without internet. We aim to see more students who engage with our courses take up STEM courses. Most of all, we look to inspiring creativity and innovation just to mention one, things like automated irrigation or milking schemes.

Lessons from being student entrepreneurs?

“Courage. Stepping out of comfort zone. There is no manual of how to run a social enterprise. Most of the things you learn by doing it. Having to work with so many people definitely improves communication skills and project management skills. No degree course teaches you these things”

Self-responsibility and drive is one of the defining traits of entrepreneurship. Not forgetting decision making. As an entrepreneur, you have to make a lot of decisions regarding the path of the business and also personal wellbeing. Talking to people and having other likeminded ambitious minds to toss your ideas with is very thrilling and mostly gives us the courage to take the first step.

Any advice for others wishing to be entrepreneurs/work in start-ups?

“Just do it! Feel the fear but do it anyways!”

You can have your friends as your teammates. It is impossible to sit and analyse every scenario and have all the answers. Make a plan, get a team and just start. There is so much expertise among the people you study with that you can tap into for help.

You can also book business advisor meeting from Edinburgh Innovations for professional opinion.

Future aspirations?

“EdTech sector is much bigger than just teaching tech. We hope to create platforms other organisations can use too and teach with”.

We are currently in a few countries, but we hope to expand to all countries in Africa. We are very keen on adding more content on our courses and reaching as many people as possible.

Parting shot?

“We are creating simplified, hands-on tech courses to inspire young people to use technology to create solutions.”

There are so many applications of technology. We aspire for tech to be incorporated in everyday life be it controlling traffic, small scale and large-scale agriculture, in schools etc. By doing this, we hope to have Africa with the power to bring ideas to life.

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