On my Harvard experience: The Masters of Education program at Harvard GSE is a one year program, so I curated my own journey of education courses with a focus on Africa. One of the most impactful courses I took was an education entrepreneurship course, which was a collaboration between the Graduate School of Education and Harvard Business School. A key takeaway was the importance of building sustainable education models, especially for the African context, where many initiatives rely heavily on donor funding. We focused on long-term impact while ensuring that enterprises could be self-sustaining.
At the organization I founded, UpStudio Africa, we offer after-school programs in science exploration, robotics and coding, entrepreneurship and creative design. We’ve focused on prioritizing sustainability in our current model before expanding. We’ve avoided donor funding and aim to generate revenue to eventually drive our work in public schools in the long-term.
The second important lesson was learning to adapt, not just apply global solutions. During my time at Harvard, I explored global education best practices, like edtech solutions in the U.S., but it became clear that we can't directly apply those models to Africa. Adapting them to fit our context has been essential, especially in educating the market about new approaches and shifting mindsets on the importance of having hands-on, project-based, exploratory learning experiences.
These two lessons—building sustainability and adapting models for local needs—have guided our approach at UpStudio Africa as we work towards long-term impact.
On making a difference post-Harvard: When I left Harvard, I didn’t jump directly into the education space. I joined Dalberg in Tanzania, a strategy consulting firm focused on international development. I started as an analyst and later became a project manager, working across sectors like agriculture, healthcare, financial services, and education, not just in Tanzania but also in Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, and beyond. This experience gave me valuable exposure and insight into different sectors and how things work across the continent.
While at Harvard, I had started shaping the vision for UpStudio Africa, but my time at Dalberg provided the context, content knowledge and connections, I needed to bring that vision to life. In late 2019, I founded UpStudio Africa Africa with the goal of nurturing the next generation of Tanzanian and African innovators, entrepreneurs, and creative thinkers. We focus on creating innovative learning experiences that encourage students to explore diverse fields such as science, robotics, entrepreneurship, and creative design.
At UpStudio Africa, we don’t prescribe a specific pathway for students. Instead, we offer over 70 different courses across age groups and allow each student to carve their own unique path. For example, a student interested in robotics might explore creative fields like augmented reality or even stand-up comedy. We invite experts from various fields to lead sessions, shaping how both students and parents think about learning. Those are the kinds of experiences we're creating.
On Impact: At the student level, one of our UpStudio Africa students went on to represent his school in a robotics and STEM competition across sub-Saharan Africa. He was the youngest participant at such a high level and even attended an entrepreneurship summer camp at Oxford. He joined UpStudio Africa early on, and that exposure shaped his journey. Additionally, three of our students were placed in one-month internships at Air Tanzania, working on tasks that engineers are responsible for like hydraulic fluid checks—an incredible experience for 16- to 18-year-olds aspiring to be future pilots or aviation engineers.
At the school level, we've indirectly influenced schools to improve their teaching and learning by investing more in practical science and technology experiences. We have influenced schools and school systems from the outside in.
On Failure: I struggled to get work in the U.S. that would expose me more to education best practices within or outside school systems. Just because you’ve gone to Harvard doesn’t mean doors open automatically. But this failure was a blessing in disguise because it brought me back to Tanzania sooner than expected.
As an entrepreneur, COVID was a huge challenge. We launched UpStudio Africa in February 2020 and had to close by March. That was a massive hit because we had invested so much. We had to find ways to pivot like many businesses had to during that time. Similar to many education programs, we went virtual. However, virtual lessons didn’t work well. Many of the families we work with only had access to one device to share among all their kids, or poor connectivity. It was a big challenge to adapt to that context. We did not wait for the end of COVID to begin planning how the business will evolve in the future - we started investing in curriculum development efforts to prepare ourselves for when business resumed.
On Advice to African Students: First, return to the continent as entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs invest your time and knowledge here—there’s so much opportunity. It’s going to be hard work as the systems and processes are still being set up, unlike countries in the West. But if we don’t do it, who will? Second, your career path might not be linear. When I worked at Dalberg, it was a bit of a detour, but it exposed me to different sectors—agriculture, finance, economy. This shaped me as a strategic thinker and as an all-rounded educator. Today, I can teach my students more about agriculture and new technologies because of my exposure working across multiple different sectors. Be flexible, be agile, be versatile in your approach.
