 All right, thanks for staying with us down. The e-learning market is predicted to reach $375 billion by 2026. And like with most businesses, digital education is prospering and developing at an unprecedented rate as technology develops in Nigeria, opening the door for industry innovations and endless growth opportunities. Now, with the increase in demand for flexible and accessible learning solutions, digital education is set to play an integral role in shaping the future of education across the globe. So today we're asking, how can the business of digital education thrive in Nigeria? Now, please, let's hear what you have to say. Remember, if you can join the conversation, send us an SMS or WhatsApp to 08-1803-4663. So I want to bring our guest in a minute. I mean, you've explored a bit of digital learning. If you were to propose what would be an easy way to make it more receptive and a lot more enjoyable and all of that, what would be your things to consider? One of the major factors that I believe hinders e-learning or digital education in Nigeria, especially, is stable internet connection. Although now, with the advent of private network providers, the ETL, MTN, GLO, whatever, it's a lot easier because if you just pay for your own personal internet service, you can get this. But then if we were able to create a network that standardizes your amount of internet reception and whatever, it would be a lot easier for a lot of people. You don't have to have enough money to buy data before you can access e-learning platforms or websites. So that internet connection, I think, that's what's key, right? Yeah, that's what I would go for. All right, so let me bring in our guest, Fadal Al-Tazi, founded Nexford University in 2018 with a vision to enable greater social and economic mobility through high-quality affordable education. His vision is deemed from having built four startups employing over 500 people across 10 emerging markets. Fadal became an entrepreneur at 18 and has accumulated 20 years' experience founding digital marketing and SaaS startups, lean award-winning digital engagement and digital transformation projects. Cumulatively, his startups have raised over $35 million in growth capital and employ more than 500 people globally. Under New Group International, he launched and grew the social eyes from two to more than 120 people globally. He has worked with Fortune 500 global consumer brands such as Starbucks and government in the US, Europe and many regions. Fadal has lived in Cairo, Paris, Washington, D.C., Dubai and London. He holds a BB, rather, from the American University in Cairo and management degrees from George Washington and Middlesex University. And he's joined us live in studio. Hi, Fadal. I'm very impressive resume, I must say. So my son looked at you and when I said you had a startup at 18, do you want to walk us through that journey before we now delve into the business of digital education? What are you thinking at 18? It's questionable today in hindsight. I was in last year of high school. In hindsight, I think I was maybe lacking engagement. I was a bit bored in high school. The dot-com era was starting and I lived in Egypt at the time. Tourism is a big sector in Egypt. And I was thinking to myself, how come there's no website where you can go and check out what to do when you go to Egypt, which hotels to stay at, where to visit. It must be very difficult for a German guy or an American guy thinking of visiting Egypt, getting haggled on the roads. So I thought to myself, it would make sense to build a website that tourists can use to plan their trip before coming to Egypt. Awesome. And that was the business. That was the first business, yes. So how much did you earn from that business? Oh, zero. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Yeah, I thought back maybe about half of what we invested in it, but that's it. Oh, wow, oh, wow. But that was the start of our journey. Yes, yes. I mean, so we're having a conversation around digital education. Again, first of all, I want to say well done on NextFord. I know so many people that have gone through the program. And I mean, everybody says this is truly a breath of fresh air because up until NextFord, it seemed like most people that wanted to go abroad, I mean, that wanted to have a second degree would have to either travel abroad or they are stuck with some kind of unverified university certifications that they would do online and all of that. But I mean, this university came into Nigeria and it just showed that they were ready to be here. The presence, they came with food. I mean, I know since we started this partnership with NextFord, I've had like five people call me. So did they offer, what's it called, a PhD business? Did they offer the essays? Please just go on their website. I'm sure you'll be able to find a few things. And a lot of people have said, oh, I have, I've seen so many ads, but I was not sure. I mean, but when I saw them when they all said, I said, okay, yes, I think there's a credit. I mean, the brand was really, really aggressive. I mean, a lot of people actually brought into that vision. I mean, why did you choose digital education, first of all, and what truly was the end goal for you starting up, what's it called, NextFord? Yeah. So why I chose education in the first place is a desire to build a business that delivers social impact. So being an entrepreneur for a number of years, I just found myself a lot more interested in building companies that actually deliver positive impact in addition to financial rewards. So when my co-founder and I were thinking about education a few years ago, it was stemmed on this belief that lack of education is the root cause of most, if not all, world challenges. So we thought to ourselves, how can we start to address some of the challenges that exist in the sector? Of course, our initial thinking wasn't to build a university, to be clear, right? When people are thinking about building a startup, you don't really think of building a startup university. It's a concept that sort of doesn't exist. Is it a startup or is it a university? The two together is a bit unusual. But one thing led to another. We kept on researching and analyzing the industry more and more, and it became clear to us that disruption has to come from within in the sense that it's not enough to build technology and try to sell that technology to universities in order for them to address their core challenges. We would actually have to go direct the consumer and deliver an entire experience from A to Z. Because traditional universities are just, I hate to say it, but most of them are extremely bureaucratic and such deep-rooted, with such deep-rooted history and policies and resistance, administrative resistance. So to get them to change is extremely difficult. So it would have been easier for us to sell them technology to address the problems they have, but unfortunately that became clear to us that route would be very, very difficult. So ultimately, the desire was positive impact. And that stems from, like I said, the personal belief that lack of education is the root cause of most of all challenges. And personally, I think one's duty in life is to leave the world a slightly better place than you found it in whatever capacity. So that's what I'm doing. Absolutely. For, you said something about administrative policies being hindrances to students that plan to get a higher education of whatever form for themselves. I think I'm actually a personal, let's say, victim to this because when I was applying to universities, was it last year or early this year, it was so rough because I know that academically, extracurricularly, I'm capable of getting into the best universities in the world if I actually put my mind towards it. But then because of their own priorities that have sort of shifted from the fundamental thing, which is to provide education to other things, like giving people who have legacies and missions or giving scholarships to people because they come from disadvantaged backgrounds. It's like their priorities have shifted. So when I see an organization like Nextword, I am actually pushed to believe in the concept of education again because it's like all hope isn't lost with the world and all that. I appreciate that. I think hope isn't lost for sure. But to your point, I mean, when we were thinking about how to address the challenge, this was back in 2018. To your point, we surveyed students around the world, from India to China to America and Nigeria, Philippines all over the world. And we asked them one question. So we said, what is the primary reason you go to university? And then we took that same question and we asked it to administrators across universities. So we asked them, what is the primary reason you exist as a university? And so the vast majority of students told us is to get a job. But then the vast majority of administrators told us a very different answer. They said, you have to help people in life to shape the future of the world, to find research. So there are a whole range of reasons that we realize none of which are aligned to actual student interests. So if you accomplish all these things, still you're not better off as a graduate. So it showed us what we then end up as this disconnect between the buyer and the seller. The buyer is buying a service expecting it to deliver something, but the seller actually has no intent to deliver that. They intend to deliver something that they have your personal agendas. Yeah. That's interesting. So I mean, there's a business in this market, right? First of all, I don't know how much of the, the, what's it called? The business model was, you know, because I mean with next one, it's quite simple. Anybody can afford it. As long as you're able to plan, if you have a monthly income, you can just set something aside and just pay for your costs and all of that, right? Was that intentional? You know, was that the structure of the business that you wanted to be able to reach everyone, you know, with next? Yeah, 100%. There was a core pillar. So we have two pillars at next, but everything we do must adhere to these two pillars. You know, one is affordability and the second is a focus on business and technology related disciplines. So the idea was to deliver impact to the largest number of people possible. We could charge double the tuition and have half the number of people afford next third, but the business model is designed from scratch for the maximum affordability to the largest number of people in the world. And that's where the impact angle comes in. And again, it's one of our fundamental differences or disagreements with some of the traditional providers who have to say historically have been limited by size of classrooms. So, you know, they just had limited capacity so they had to adhere to that. In an online environment, it's a bit different so the pricing structure can be different as well. But yeah, 100%. I mean, we want to essentially render things like physical location, gender, race, ethnicity, all to be no longer really inhibit one's ability to move forward in life. So these should no longer be barriers for your ability to move forward in your career. And this was not specific to emerging markets. Is this the general standard across anywhere next what is able to play? Our pricing is globally affordable. So we are, I would say, the first American university designed from scratch for a global audience. So in the US, our pricing will be extremely affordable as well, but it's designed for a global audience. The pricing changes by market. So what an ideal will pay is different from what a Chinese will pay or someone in the US. But in each market, pricing is localized in order to be locally affordable to that market. Awesome, awesome. All right, so we'll take a very short break now. When we come back from that break, we'll continue the conversation. Stay with us, we'll be right back. All right, thanks for staying with us now. If you're just tuned in, we're discussing the business of digital education with Fadel Altazi. I forgot the name correctly. Now please let us hear what you have to say. Remember, you can join the conversation, send us an SMS or what's up this week. 1-803-4663. I mean, this conversation is getting really interesting. So there's a business part of education, right? And what I hear you say is you literally can, you actually have the capacity to take on the entire market because you don't have any limitations like maybe structural limitations and all of that. All you just need to do is continue to expand the capacity of the number of students that your platform can accommodate. So what's the plan for next forward? So we have no physical restrictions as you indicated, but we still need to restore this appropriately because we maintain sort of a ratio between advisors and faculty and the students or the learners that we enroll. That way we ensure that learners get the support that they need and they get it rapidly, right? So we want to make sure that the experience that they have is an optimized experience. Having said that, yeah, we intend to enroll the tens of thousands of learners over the years. So I would say a much larger scale than any traditional or any physical university in Nigeria or even in other countries. So I would say over the coming five years, I would say we aim to enroll in at least 100,000 learners. So the business is designed for scale. For us, we achieve that scale through a combination of product expansion and geographic expansion. So as we start attracting a larger audience from a larger number of markets, as well as launching additional programs, be that undergraduate degrees or graduate or shorter programs, like we recently launched a number of shorter certificates, ranging from three to six month programs. So when you see geography now, how many locations are we looking at that we are currently operating from? Today I would say, let's not operate it from really because we're hungry for it. Yeah, you can do only the book. In terms of, like, you're a community. I would say today I believe we're at over 90 countries. There might be over 100, so many countries, yeah. Awesome, awesome. Alpha, you had a question. This is all quite crazy. The thing that you said at the beginning about you starting, this is at 18, it has been ringing in my head since you first said it. And I'm like, so it can't just be border magus For people that take those kinds of bold decisions, there has to be something literally inside you that drives that. It means that now, literally next year, I could say I want to become an entrepreneur and I'll begin to do everything that I need to to get to that stage. So I'd like to ask what exactly was your frame of mind? Like if you could inspire someone who was in a similar position as you to take that bold step to try to build something for themselves, how would you? Are you 17? I'm 17, yeah. I'll give you the answer you're probably not expecting. It might not be so inspirational. Honestly, if I were to look back, I don't think I would redo it the same way. Okay. I think for me at least I was really in a rush to start working. Frankly, I didn't need to necessarily, but I wouldn't rush to be more independent, to be intellectually stimulated. Starts your life in a real world. Yeah, I just really start applying. Like I remember I would go to college in a suit at one point the security guard would think I was a professor so they'd call me like doctor. And I remember one of our clients once called our office and then they told him that he's at university. So then the guy called me the next day. He said, I'm so sorry, I've sort of been calling you doctor father all this time. I didn't realize you were a professor. I was actually in class, but having said that, like I missed out obviously on college life. But maybe to help if folks insist on going down that journey or determined on going down the journey. I think the part that most founders miss is actually the self reflection part. So that would be the part that I would really advise to begin with. Self reflection in the sense of thinking about the why, like why do I wanna start this business? And really trying to understand what it entails to actually build a business from scratch. Cause unfortunately people spend too much time on Instagram and Twitter and so forth. And therefore they're inspired by the glamorous life that we see on Instagram of this company became a billion dollar company. This other company raised 100 million and so forth. But the reality is 99.9% of other companies are failing, right? Of startups in general. So we're not seeing these stories. And I think a large part of why many of them fail is that lack of thoughtful approach from the beginning. Self reflection part. Exactly. So self reflection thing, why do I wanna do this? And really making sure that I might prepare to go on this very, very tough journey. It's not a journey that's gonna be glamorous, at least not for the first few years. Yeah. Awesome. So I want to take you back to what Alpha talked about when we started the conversation on the hindrances, right? When it comes to detailed education. It's a huge problem, right? Data affordability, then also even the rich, right? Some people can't even, they don't even have access. It's not even now. It's not this question of affordability. There are some places that you go to, it's not even available, right? So I mean, for someone that is in the business of making sure that people are online and are able to learn online, what are you doing in the regard of ensuring that some of these emerging markets have access to not just data, but at least affordable data that can ensure that they continue to learn without having to stop their education. Yeah. So a few years ago here in Nigeria, we did a partnership with MTN specifically for this purpose to subsidize data costs for learners while they're enrolled at Nexford. It's not live right now, but it's something that we're looking to revive with a number of telcos. We did a similar one in other markets like in Indonesia with a telecom company called Indosat. So we try to work on these partnerships with telecom companies to subsidize data costs for learners throughout their enrollment periods. But from a design perspective, more importantly, we try to design the product itself in a way that's quote unquote data friendly. So it doesn't consume. Not heavy. Yes, exactly. So I remember in the beginning, especially in the US when we were building our team and people were talking about virtual reality and augmented reality and all these bells and whistles. In reality, these are very data heavy applications. So we decided not to go down that route and build a product that's more data friendly. But the good news is we don't need to worry about it too much because the world's biggest companies are solving this problem. Yeah, they're catching up. Yeah, they're catching up and we're fortunate enough that- To just align. I can't believe you're like, we can ride the wave and we'll be fine. Just ride the wave. Yeah, from Google to Apple or to Amazon. If people aren't connected, these companies can survive. So thankfully, billions of dollars are being invested in connectivity. And this is only a matter of time that everyone's gonna be connected. Awesome, awesome. Also, you're in Nigeria, right? I hear there's a graduation happening this weekend. You wanna tell us a little bit about that? There is, there's a graduation happening tomorrow at Landmark. We hold a graduation here every year. It's predominantly focused on Nigerian graduates who aren't able to travel to the US either for economic reasons or visas are too difficult to get. So we're expecting, I'd say about a thousand people there. We have basically three events happening tomorrow. We have the graduation ceremony with a number of great speakers followed by a career fair where we have a number of employers who are actively hiring. We're gonna be there meeting our graduates. And then we have a number of masterclasses happening as well in the spirit of continuous education. So right after they graduate, they have to come back to masterclasses. Number of industry speakers are gonna be there. We actually also have a startup competition happening tomorrow with a number of our founder graduates who are gonna be pitching to VCEs and getting live feedback at the event. Awesome, awesome. I mean, because I was just gonna ask about, you know, outside of the learning because the traditional learning is you go to school and you're done, right? What was the added advantage? So what is the unique proposition that, you know, you're offering that would make someone say, you know, I think I'll go with this people. I mean, you've just answered it because the biggest, one of the biggest challenge that we have, I mean, I hear that the unemployment rate right now is really huge, right? I mean, if you have 70% of our population, our youthful population and a good number of that population, they are on, some of them are unemployed, some of them are unemployable, right? I mean, so if you are saying, okay, outside of the training that has happened, we're putting together, you know, yeah, first of all, we've trained you to make you have the capacity to be employable. So then we're also putting together, you know, a team of people that would come and say, you know, I am looking and I'm trying to hire, that's a complete value chain, you know, that's adding value to, you know, the learner. Why did you do that? Well, like you said, it's about adding value. Ultimately, we don't measure our success by enrollment, right, or by growth. We measure our success through the success of our graduates. So that is by far the number one priority and expert. We think of a metric called basic as ROI. So we target for our graduates to get a three to five X return on their own education investment within three to five years of graduation. So you're investing in this education to get a better job, to build your business, to get a promotion, to switch jobs. Millions of jobs are gonna disappear over the coming years as a result of technology and AI and so forth. So we wanna be the folks who are preparing people for the skills that they need and events like tomorrow are an example of how we built community and how we add value to that community. And beyond graduation, it's important that we continue linking people with employers. It's important that we put people in front of, you know, coaches and mentors who can continue because, you know, education is lifelong today. So it's not about going to college for a year or two or three or four, you know, it's about learning how to learn. So we intentionally designed the master classes to happen tomorrow right after graduation as sort of a demonstration of that. You graduated, but that doesn't mean learning is finished, right? You need to continue learning for the rest of your life. Awesome, you're only coming, because I just wanted to touch on something. So for the startups, right, I put them in front of VCs. So how do you ensure that, you know, that that startup is sustained, you know? Are there like more things that you do with the startups outside of just putting them in front of VCs? Do you have like maybe structures that sets up a kind of what's it called monitoring process for the startups to continue to grow? Yeah, we don't right now. So I will pretty much ends when they graduate and when we have events like the one we're putting together tomorrow. However, in early next year, we're going to be launching a dedicated entrepreneurship program specifically. And that's going to have, I would say, an extension beyond graduation along the lines of like an accelerator slash incubator in partnership with a number of VCs. And we don't want to cross the line to pretend to be experts in all industries. So we're not well-equipped as an organization to incubate a startup. But we are well-equipped to prepare them with the skills that they need and put them on the path that then connects them with the next supporter throughout the startup journey. Awesome, awesome. Yeah. I thought you had a question. No, I don't know. You are just learning, all right. So I mean, if you have something to say to anyone listening now today, what would you say to that person? I mean, the person is thinking, should I, should I not, you know, and all of that. What would you say to that person? You know, I would say, unfortunately, Japan's sort of top of mind when I'm here, right? We hear of this issue every day and it's draining the country. Operators, did you just call Japan as Japan? Yes. Is Japan? Japan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I would say, you know, an investment in education is the best investment one can make in life. In investment in your own education. So whether it's next to anyone else, that's not the point. But the point is you need to forge your own future and by thinking, should I or should I not, as in like, should I, you know, invest in education? The answer is always yes. The form can differ and the time can differ and the program can differ. The second part of that I would say is, don't invest in education to be what I call a credential hoarder, where you just gather credentials to hang on your wall. What really matters is what have you actually learned and how you're gonna apply that. So that's what I would say, I mean, you must invest, it's not a question that one can ask, you must invest in educating yourself. But really think about why am I doing this again to my earlier point and how am I going to apply it? And to someone that is thinking of starting something in the line of educated people as well, what would you say to those people? APEC is a very, very challenging industry. If you're trying to sell two universities, it's a very, very long sales process. If you're trying to sell direct to consumer, you know, it has its advantages and its challenges. But I would say like, there's still tons and tons of opportunities to be addressed. I suppose if I had to choose one, I would say, you know, do really good research to make sure that what you're building solves a real problem. This is a challenge I see with a lot of founders. They build a product that they think people want, but doesn't actually solve a problem. So it's sort of nice to have. And very few people are willing to pay for things that are nice to have in an economic climate like Nigeria. So make sure that you're solving a real problem that people recognize they have, not that you think they have. I was actually, I'm taking this online course right now from Coursera, it's Google's UX design, user experience. And then literally what you just said now about you not projecting your own imaginations of what users experience as challenges to them. You actually have to gather their own problems, gather data to see whether they're actually going through the problems that you think they are going through before you try to solve them. Okay, so should I say one more final? No, I have a question. So yesterday we talked about the challenges in Nigeria, right? How, I mean, one of our uncles said that education is no longer relevant. And I'm sure you're going to strongly disagree with that. But she said education is no longer relevant that as far as she's concerned, let's fill up the skill gap and find a way to solve the problem. So we have a lot of problems in Nigeria, infrastructure problems, so many problems, right? And I strongly agree with you that education can be one of the biggest drivers to kind of solve this problem. So I mean, if you really look at the landscape of Nigeria, it's quite unique, right? We have a lot of things that are available, but at the same time we have a lot of challenges that do not make those things accessible, right? So if you were to look at the challenge that we're having, especially in the skill gap, right? How do we tailor? Because the educational structure around skills, it's a bit tricky, right? We don't have like proper, yeah. It's not standard. It's not standardized and all of that. And that way, when these graduates come out or when these people are in the workforce or in the market, they are not able to earn a decent living, you know? So I mean, we're talking about how someone was imported to come and tell, like put into locking stones on the ground. Yeah, I mean, when they're building in this country, for instance, I mean, we have a lot of infrastructural challenges. Why do we have to import? So there's a huge skill gap, right? And I believe that if we have an educational body that understands the skill gap and is able to close it. So imagine you're coming out as a graduate in plumbing, for instance, right? You come out as a graduate in plumbing. You will immediately, first of all, find something to do, immediate earning, and at the same time, your level of entry, market entry, in terms of earnings and all of that would definitely not be what somebody on the roadside is doing. So do you see what's called the edgy tech able to solve this major skill gap in Nigeria? I think 100% ed tech is gonna help address this challenge, which as you indicated, is a huge challenge. And ironically, despite unemployment being so high, you know, every executive of every large organization we work with in Nigeria, sites hire and qualify people as one of their top two challenges. Absolutely. So it sounds counterintuitive, but anyway, I tell this, outside of Africa, it's of course not, there's so much high unemployment, there's tons of people. But no, there is no unemployment, yes. So it's a huge, huge challenge. Honestly, I think the solution, it could take us a very long time to talk about, but it stems really in two things. I think one is cultural, there needs to be a cultural shift from looking at education as a transactional sort of document that I wanna hang on my wall. Because so long as you're looking at it as just a credential, I wanna hang on my wall, you're not really thinking about the value of that. What am I actually learning from this? What you can do with it. What am I gonna do with it? So therefore that impacts your choice. Like when you're buying a car, you're looking at, okay, is this car gonna take me from point A to point B? Absolutely. The car looks amazing, but it's not gonna take you to point B and you're not gonna buy it. Because you're buying it to go from point A to point B. So I think people need to think about what am I gonna learn here and choose based on that. And the second is unfortunately regulation. I think regulation is choking the sector here and in many other countries. So we need I think a massive amount of deregulation and letting a market economy sort of create supply and demand and therefore the high quality places will survive. The poor quality will not survive, right? If you know that by going to institution X, you will fail, why would you go there? Ultimately becomes redundant and it's canceled. But there are artificial factors in the regulatory system here in other markets that point people in specific directions where they need to go to one of maybe 10 institutions. Even though these institutions have no record of actually positive graduate outcomes. Oh, look, you have a comment. Quite interesting. Yeah. Go ahead. My comment says, OJNZ, you're partially welcome. When are you all coming back on the show? You were to advertise for just about a week then disappear. Why now? We really miss you all. Mr. Dimiji from Aja. We miss you guys too. Today was actually, today was a very interesting day because I think one of two of the Kauankas are supposed to be here. Unfortunately, it couldn't make it. Yes, so he bailed me out. I mean, it literally just happened to be in the studio. So that's the only reason why I'm here. All of my friends, they have gone to different places. But anyway, we're coming back, right? We'll definitely come back. But thank you so much for the help. For the help. For the help. I will go to Cairo because of you. I'll go and learn the language. But thank you so much. I think we had an amazing conversation. And in all honesty, I really, really am routine that we're able to solve a huge gap, and which is the fact that we start to change the numbers of unemployable young people. Yes, it's one thing for you to shout that there are no jobs or whatever. But people actually have jobs, but there are no skilled people to be able to take on those jobs. So it would really be nice to take the conversation further. I have some ideas for education in the media space. So we'll have the conversation behind this scene. But thank you so much. I think we had an amazing conversation. Alpha, thank you so much for taking our time to be with me. Now, before we go, I'll show you followers across all social media handers that wish you Africa. You can interact with us further, drop a comment, or more importantly, follow all our engagements on social media, like share and invite your families and friends to watch and follow the conversation. Now, if you missed our quote for today, here it is again. It says, where is my quote? Where is my quote? It's the second quote. It says, we can close the gap and improve what happens in the classroom by using educational technology that is the same high quality everywhere. We'll see you guys at 8 PM on Monday as we bring another great conversation to your screeners, Independence Month and Celebration Day. We'll see you guys on Monday. Enjoy.