We wanted to create something authentically African and make it accessible within the African context. I put together a 74-page business plan and then started looking for an incubator and the Branson Center saw potential in our programme.

You have to take the social impact while accounting for the entrepreneur aspect, and make sure that you bring those two together to sustain the whole ship.

As an entrepreneur, you have to constantly be thinking about what imprint you are having in the whole ecosystem. Any space that you go into needs to grow and develop and come up with new ways of doing things that then allows everybody within the ecosystem to grow with you.

Your ability as an entrepreneur or as a leader to cultivate, manage and respect relationships is ultimately what will either open doors for you or not. By engaging and respecting people and respecting myself and putting in the work ethic, I got a lot of people supporting me and wanting to be part of what I do in one way or another. 

It all boils down to the relationship and the kind of people you're dealing with. An alignment of values and objectives is critical. Funding from the wrong partner can end up frustrating and limiting you.

One of the biggest lessons we've had to learn is that there's so much that you need to align in order for an implementation of a solution to work. The key to that, I guess, is building the right relationships within the school, but also diversifying those relationships.

We want to make sure that even after we leave, the school has created a culture around the system where every year the prefects are its custodians. There must also be a champion - and when that teacher leaves, another champion is selected - and processes are put in place to make sure that this thing continues to run and sustain itself.

There're always changes and moving parts that you're not quite aware of in the background, and so it becomes very hard to navigate that space. 

The best thing you can do before you work with government is to build partnerships outside of government. If the private sector can validate our solution and promote and scale it, while sustaining our business, that means that if in future we want to start working with the government, we have de-risked the process in a way.

For us, it's been a lot about just managing and respecting relationships and respecting that the people we partner with put their lives or their jobs on the line to partner with us. Our job is to make sure that we help them achieve their goals as much as we are achieving our own goals.