Ribara Analytica Secures $100,000 Mastercard Foundation EdTech Fellowship

Funmi Ogundare's Ribara Analytica has been chosen as one of twelve pioneering Nigerian startups to join the fourth cohort of the Mastercard Foundation's Education Technology (EdTech) fellowship. This 18-month program offers up to $100,000 in non-equity funding, technical assistance, and opportunities for scaling the startups' impact.

The fellowship, running through Co-Creation Hub (CcHUB), aims to support innovation in education technology with funding, guidance, and connections to sector stakeholders. Co-Creation Hub's Managing Partner, Nissi Madu, highlighted that the 12 selected founders were chosen based on both the strength of their solutions and their understanding of the communities they serve.

Madu emphasized that the fellowship was designed to promote inclusion from the earliest stages of innovation, with CcHUB supporting the startups to test and refine their solutions, generate effectiveness evidence, and build scalable businesses. Ribara Analytica, a startup under the fourth thematic area, is developing tools to strengthen the connection between education and employment through enhanced labor market and higher education data.

The organization, founded by a team from Covenant University and Harvard University, is led by Prof. Ada Peter, a Harvard graduate who chairs the African Higher Education Curriculum Conference (AHECC). The fellowship will enable Ribara Analytica to further develop its technology and strengthen its evidence base as it seeks to help higher education institutions align curricula with changing labor market needs.