While the average teacher-to-student ratio in most countries is 1:20, Nigeria told a different story. Sim Shagaya's venture into education was born out of a failing system – schools were largely unaffordable, leaving millions of children out of school. “There's huge demand for education. It's really the very rare, odd parent that doesn't want education for their kids. When we dug into the data, some schools had 1:90, and in some parts of Nigeria, it was as high as 1:500”, Shagaya recalls. This gap drove the inception of uLesson Group, a leading online learning platform designed to make education more affordable and accessible across Africa.
At the crux of Sim Shagaya’s career journey ultimately remains being an entrepreneur. As an ambitious young adult, Shagaya achieved a BSc in Electrical Engineering from The George Washington University in 1997, an M.E.M. from Dartmouth in 1999 and an MBA from Harvard in 2003. Rather than pursue a traditional career, he founded E-motion Advertising, an outdoor advertising company.
“I would have never thought I would do something like that, but it was purely a commercial kind of venture. I ran the numbers, realised its viability and went with it. The business is still thriving till now, even after I sold it”, he recalls. That calculated leap paved the way for bigger ventures, including DealDey, which was part of Nigeria’s first wave of e-commerce and Konga, which he grew into one of Nigeria’s leading online retailers. These experiences cemented his reputation as one of the continent’s pioneering tech entrepreneurs and set the stage for his current focus on edtech through uLesson.
Fast forward to 2019, after a year of beta testing, Shagaya launched uLesson. The goal was clear: to deliver curriculum-based lessons through smartphones in a way that works even with limited internet access, using rich video modules, quizzes and tests.
From a studio in the North-Central region of Nigeria, Jos, the team produced over 3,000 animated lessons, personalised video learning modules, quizzes, and tests, compressing them for offline use. Investors took notice. TLCOM led the $3.1 million seed round, backing the plan to scale access to affordable learning across Africa.
When the global pandemic closed schools in 2020, uLesson’s relevance became obvious. “COVID was hard for the world, but it was a good tailwind for our business”, Shagaya shares. Families turned to uLesson to keep children learning, and the company’s growth surged. More surprising were the economics. “It has turned out to be greater than anything I've ever worked on before”. While many sectors stalled, including retail, tourism and entertainment services, the momentum gave uLesson the confidence and data to think beyond K-12.
By 2023, those tailwinds had faded. As COVID eased, growth slowed, and Nigeria’s economic reforms reduced households’ disposable income, shrinking U-Lesson’s K-12 market. “It became clear this was a life-and-death moment for the company,” says Shagaya. The alternative came from years of dialogue with Nigeria’s regulators: a license for an online university. With support from his team and investors such as TLCOM, uLesson pivoted– Miva Open University was born.
“We've gone from 1,000 students in year one to 5,000 in year two, and are closing in on 20,000 in year three”, says Shagaya. “In terms of sheer enrollment, we're approaching some of Nigeria’s largest universities”.
Collaboration has been central to that success. TLCOM not only backed the pivot but also doubled down in 2021 with a $7.5 million Series A. “They showed a lot of trust in management, and we were transparent about the opportunities and the challenges,” says Shagaya. Just as valuable was the perspective TLCOM shared across its portfolio. “They’d connect us with founders who’d face similar situations. It makes you feel you’re not building alone”.
Omobola Johnson, Partner at TLCOM – “When we first met Sim and the uLesson team in 2019, their vision matched our ethos — an entrepreneur-led team tackling one of Africa’s toughest problems with a mass-market, mobile-first solution. Sim’s unrivalled track record in building technology for Africa gave us conviction they could reshape education at scale”.
Across K-12, uLesson serves over 100,000 active learners, and Miva University continues to accelerate. In Dec 2025, the university surpassed 20,000 students and is on track to reach 50,000 by December 2026. The team also cut enrolment time dramatically from 128 days to admit 1,000 students down to just 19. Miva’s programs have expanded from 8 at launch to 18 today (14 undergraduate and 4 postgraduate), with plans to grow to 25 by 2026. Its MBA students clinched first place at the BOSS Global Business Competition, triumphing over 88 teams from 32 countries, while TIME and Statista recognised the university as one of the world’s top edtech rising stars of 2025.
“At this stage in my career, I needed to fuse technical expertise with strategic leadership—and Miva’s MBA has given me exactly that. The lessons I’ve learned are shaping how I draft policies and guidelines for decarbonising Nigeria’s upstream petroleum sector. Beyond theory, I’m building practical skills in negotiations, communication, and strategic planning. Most importantly, Miva’s flexibility makes it possible to keep growing my career while earning my degree.” — Dr Mohammed Malah, Upstream Energy Professional and MBA student.
Scaling also reshaped Shagaya’s leadership. “You get stretched; your ability to directly supervise drops. Even if you’re skilled, trying to do everything makes you less effective,” he says. “So you surround yourself with great people, and nurture them.” He also leans on culture to keep the company grounded. Every team meeting begins with uLesson’s values: empathy, innovation, truthfulness, as well as its mission: to prepare people for opportunity and improve society through education.
“We want to reach a million students, while maintaining the highest quality in academics, curriculum or the technology stack that advances the human experiences between students, professors and advisors”, says Shagaya.
For him, the goal is not just scale but legacy. Earlier in his career, he optimised for commercial outcomes; now he focuses on impact, convinced that the two can reinforce each other.
What does he hope uLesson’s story will show in years to come?
“That we improved Africa’s human capital - and that without us, the future wouldn’t have been as bright, or come as quickly,” he says. “That we pioneered new models - VR classrooms, AI-powered tutors - and inspired others to imitate. This was never meant to be monopolistic. Inspiring many to build is part of the legacy.”
And for those following in his footsteps in entrepreneurship? “The thing we fight every day is fear - fear of failure, of starting again. But fear is overrated. The act of building neutralises it. The journey is the prize.”