We didn’t want to publish anything until everything was home and dry, but now the time has come: this weekend we started construction of the new Mekaela Online Academy (MOA).

On the premises of the new shoe factory we are building a media centre with about 400 square meters of floor space. In addition to offices and storage space, it will house 16 studios from which teachers will teach up to 1,000 students per class online, i.e. MOA has a maximum capacity of 16,000 students. As the curriculum and exams in Kenya are uniform, students from all over the country can attend classes.

Quite a number of students of Mekaela Academies will also switch to MOA, as many parents will no longer be able to afford the traditional face-to-face classes due to the new regulations. MOA costs only about 8.00 Euros per month for the primary level, and even though parents still have to spend about 100 Euros for a tablet and, if they do homeschooling, about 4 Euros per month for an internet connection, they save that on transport and school books.

The project has a total volume of 400,000 Euros. Half is funded by a DEG programme, the other half by Carl Seibel, who has already immortalised himself with the shoe factory in Kenya. As we know him, this will not be his last we have heard of him.