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Meet Derek Blair; The Co-Founder of Jifunza.io

by Anie Akpe

Meet Derek Blair; The Co-Founder of Jifunza.io

Derek Blair is a participant in the 2014 DEMO Africa event taking place September 22-26 in Lagos, Nigeria   

Often many people misunderstand the African culture, but this is largely due to lack of enough African contents available in the mainstream media in the form of digital media and entertainment.  Jifunza is a first product to act as a platform for creating and sharing fun African educational contents among friends and the rest of the world.

It is not a clone of an already existing foreign game, but it is uniquely developed for Africa, and showcases Africa’s diverse languages. Today Innov8tiv bring you an exclusive interview with the Co-Founder of Jifunza, to shade some light on what motivated them to come up with Jifunza.

Meet Derek Blair; The Co-Founder of Jifunza.io

Derek Blair; The Co-Founder of Jifunza.io

Tell us about yourself

My name is Derek Blair, and I am the Co-Founder and CEO of Jifunza. I am currently working on our language-learning app, Menya. I am also working with several talented artists on iweconic.com; a Pan-African flat icon set.

Tell us more about Jifunza

The app is free and will be available for iOS, Android, and as a HTML5 web app. The interface and design is minimalist, fun and easy enough to use for a 5-year-old. At its core, Menya is all about having fun and playing games, with the administrative interface following this design philosophy and style.

Menya Pitch from Jifunza on Vimeo.

What inspired you to create this platform plus how many languages does the platform offer?

I travel a lot in Africa, and I was frustrated with the lack of apps for learning the vast majority of African languages. As an example,  in northern Zambia, I was looking for a good app for studying Bemba.  We are trying to launch with 30 languages, but this will grow as our users submit more languages over time.

What are your goals for Jifunza?

Our goal is to bring African languages online for the world’s benefit. Currently, of the some 3000 languages in Africa, very few are represented in digital media and online.

Innov8tiv Exclusive Interview W/ Derek Blair; The Co-Founder of Jifunza.io

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