Learners are not performing poorly in schools today due to them not being smart, “they are failing today because they are not challenged enough,” says game designer Tutaleni Ilonga.
“The biggest problem we have in Namibia and Africa is that our education system is too traditional and not modern, and we need to merge the two so that we can create a teaching method that stimulates learners to pass,” he substantiated.
This sentiment forms the basis of Ilonga’s Edu-Game Namibia project that aims to gamify the education system – a project he pitched during the Forbes 30 Under 30 Top 3 Pitch Battle Final in the USA recently.
Edu-Game Namibia competed against 60 start-ups from all over the world and although they didn’t win, they managed to make it into the top 3 battle, where they got the opportunity to pitch on the main stage.
“For gaming in general, it was a huge win for me and my team, because this brought awareness around game development and the benefits around it. Hopefully after this Forbes Africa stint, I will look into organisations making huge impacts in gaming in Africa,” he stated.
Edu-Game Namibia offers gamification tutorials to students and learners, teaching them how to create games that solve issues around them. These academies aim to provide comprehensive and focused instruction on various aspects of game creation, including programming, design, art, audio, production and project management.
Ilonga indicated that being endorsed by institutions like MTC and the Namibia University of Science and Technology is reassuring, with such industry giants having faith and confidence in such concepts.
“With Nust, we are working on a curriculum to gamify the education system so that we can introduce gaming to universities and already, me being here is a big achievement for gaming. Gaming makes a lot of money around the world, yet it is underrated in Africa. Why are we not in it?” he pondered.
“We need to sort of introduce game development into schools so that it makes education fun,” stated the energetic creative.
Ilonga said he has been in gaming for six years, but has never made money because he was not taught how to monetise the craft.
“I teach my students how not to make the mistakes I made, and that includes teaching them financial literacy. We have trained about 45 people. We also operate in Johannesburg as well and we want to scale up in countries like Botswana,. We need funds to build out an innovation hub in Katutura,” he highlighted.
-psiririka@nepc.com.na