Faraja Kotta Nyalandu

In 2013, she established Shule Direct, a thriving organisation providing comprehensive web and mobile educational platforms offering national curriculum based learning content across multiple subjects to millions in and out of school youth. The enterprise now hosts, Ndoto Hub, Tanzania’s first start up innovation hub exclusively for women entrepreneurs’ personal and professional development.

Faraja is an elected Chairperson for the Tanzania Education Network, the official national education CSOs network. She is also a member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network after serving on the Global Future Council for Education, Gender and Work. Faraja is a Teaching and Learning Thematic Lead for the Regional Educational Learning Initiative (RELI) where she focuses on teachers’ pre and in service professional development. An education enthusiast, she has also served on the Board of Ubongo Learning, READ and a technical adviser for Institutions for Inclusive Development that helps Tanzanian institutions innovate and scale systemic solutions to big development problems.

Recognized globally, World Economic Forum appointed her as a Young Global Leader Class of 2020, a tenure for 5 years. Prior to that she has been awarded the Leading Woman in Technology in Africa award for her work with Shule Direct, Tanzania Leadership Awards’ Hall of Fame Woman of the Year Award and a System Innovator award by Segal Family Foundation for systemic change in digital learning in Secondary School education in Tanzania. Africa Youth Awards has named Faraja among 100 Most Influential Young Africans.

Faraja is a qualified Lawyer with an LLB and LLM (Master of Laws) in Human Rights and Migration.