We hope your summer is unfolding exactly as you’d like, whether that means relaxation, productivity, or a bit of both. We’re excited to share some highlights from our July with you. 😉

Our July musical highlight? Rediscovering Nahawa Doumbia’s debut album. Timeless music, if you ask us.

Can you sense the similarities with Kulu by N’Gou Bagayoko that we shared in our newsletter 04/2023? We can discuss that in the comment section. Yes, our newsletter now has a comment section!

What are we building?

Kabakoo is a community-driven upskilling platform designed to allow young people in West Africa to develop the mindset and the skills needed to improve their life in a context of missing formal jobs.

☀️ July 2024 Highlights 🌧️

We’re humbled to share that Kabakoo has advanced to the second round of both the Elevate Prize and The Roddenberry Prize, two prestigious global competitions celebrating innovative solutions for social impact. This highlights the growing recognition of our efforts to make learning work for young people in West Africa through our community-driven and AI-enabled upskilling platform. While the final outcomes are yet to be determined, we’re honored to have our work acknowledged at this stage. As we continue this journey, we extend our heartfelt thanks to everyone who has been part of our story so far.

Onboarding efficiency and learner engagement remains high

As you might recall from our last newsletter, we introduced a new version of the Kabakoo app last June, featuring an improved onboarding process, a unified interface, and enhanced personalization. Consistent with the results presented last month, the chart below shows that the update is still related to a strong onboarding efficiency and an improved learner engagement. As per our last newsletter, before the update, we had about 15% of new learners interacting with the AI mentor upon account creation. We can’t wait to see how this will unfold when we launch our next cohorts.

Showcasing opportunities, making digital skills work !

We had the opportunity to showcase our team and the benefits of digital upskilling at the most important national event dedicated to education and training. Kabakoo was invited by the Malian Ministry of National Entrepreneurship, Vocational Training, and Employment to attend the biennial event Salon de l’Ingénierie, de la Transformation, et de l’Apprentissage (SITA) as a representative of the digital sector. During the event, we showcased 16 different expertise areas within our team.

From software developers and content producers to our instructional engineer, UX/UI designer, XR designer, and AI & LLM specialists, we demonstrated the wide range of possibilities in the digital sector. It was a great moment of celebration, as most of the staff whose stories were featured started their journey with Kabakoo as learners.

The following video we produced to showcase the job of a front-end developer, starring our junior front-end developer Aïssa, went viral on TikTok, gaining more than 70k views within a week. 😲

People seem to value a Kabakoo training more.

The perceived value of a Kabakoo training has almost doubled (93% increase) in the last two years. How do we know that?

We ran a price sensitivity analysis using the van Westerndorp method. In May 2022, we conducted a similar survey when we decided to move from a closed beta to opening up access to the Kabakoo app via the Google Play Store. A comparison shows that the perceived optimal price point for a monthly payment to join Kabakoo has increased from 7500 XOF (12.59 USD) in May 2022 to 14,500 XOF (24.34 USD) in July 2024. While the interval for acceptable monthly fees was [5000 XOF, 12500 XOF] in May 2022, it is now [9500 XOF, 19500 XOF]. Even though the van Westerndorp price sensitivity meter is widely used in market research and pricing studies (let us know if you want our reference list), we acknowledge that filling out a survey and actually spending money are not the same thing.

We are still unsure what to do with these results. Of course, we risk losing financial resources from those willing to pay a fee for the training. At the same time, we know it’s tricky to introduce any kind of payment when more than 90% of the learners have received the training for free up to now.

Anyway, either our work has improved, so people see more value in it, or we are better at communicating the value of our work. Either way, it’s good news for us. A quick anecdote: our data and research nerds were not okay with us sharing the survey about willingness to pay in a newsletter. They (very rightly) argued that intention is not behavior, and that we didn’t ask enough additional questions to correlate willingness to pay to other variables. However, they still wouldn’t be satisfied without a comprehensive conjoint analysis with thousands of respondents. So, we won’t let them spoil the party today. 😃 People are seeing more value in our work. And we want to celebrate it with all our friends, partners, supporters, and allies. 🎉 🥳

Kabakoo Faces

(With over 33 400 registered learners, each month we spotlight a member of our vibrant community.)

A bit lost before starting his journey with Kabakoo, Aziz embraced the full Kabakoo experience. The core modules ‘Apprendre à Apprendre’ (Learning to Learn) and ‘Visualiser pour Réussir’ (Visualize to Succeed) unlocked things for him. To say it in his own words, “at Kabakoo, you learn to know yourself, to question yourself, to envision your future. Kabakoo puts you in the right conditions, shows you the doors, and then it’s up to you to open them, you have the keys in your hands.” Watch his video testimonial on LinkedIn to hear his perspective firsthand (link).

Ask ✋🏿

Following the results of our willingness to pay survey, we are wondering how to best make sense or use the findings. We would appreciate any hints or introductions to non-profits that have attempted (regardless of the outcome) to introduce some sort of price or fees for the people they serve. 🙏🏿

Thanks for reading to the end 💜🧡

The Kabakoo Team

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