Earlier, Facebook announced it's decision to open an office in Lagos, Nigeria, which will provide the company with a center in Africa - that will become its first office with a team of engineers on the African continent. This new center has launched a mobile application dedicated to education called Sabee, which means “know” in Nigeria’s Pidgin language. The app is designed to connect students and educators in online communities and make educational opportunities more accessible.
This application was briefly released on Google Play by Facebook's internal Research & Development team "NPE Team", which usually focuses on new social experiences in the fields of audio, video, messaging, music, etc.
Although the NPE team’s learning application sometimes informs Facebook’s broader efforts, the team has not yet developed an application that has been upgraded to become a standalone Facebook product. Many of their early apps have been shut down as well. For example: online magazine maker, Hobbi video app, friendfinder Bump, CatchUp caller app, Venue podcast community app, etc. However, Sabee represents a new direction for the NPE team because it is not about building another social experiment.
Rather, Sabee is related to Facebook's broader strategy, which is to start with Nigeria and focus more on serving the African continent. This is a strategic move, and data indicates that by 2030 the majority of the world's population will live in urban centers, most of which will be on the African continent and throughout the Middle East. By 2100, Africa's population is expected to triple and Nigeria will become the second most populous country in the world after China.
In order to meet the need to connect these areas to the Internet, Facebook partnered with telecommunications companies to launch 2Africa, an undersea cable project designed to serve more than 1 billion people in Africa and the Middle East who are still disconnected. Of course, this investments are not a misadventure: Facebook knows that its future growth will come from these demographics. Facebook confirmed their plan and noted that it is still a under test for now.
We should note that according to the "City Dictionary", "sabee" have other meanings in different languages. But the team currently has no plans to change the name because it makes sense in the Nigerian market targeted by the application.
"Nigeria has 50 million students, but only 2 million educators," said Emeka Okafor, Facebook's product leader. "Through this small initial test, we hope to understand how we can help educators build communities so that everyone can receive an education. We look forward to learning with our first batch of evaluators and decided to start there. "
The gap between Nigerian students and educators has a significant impact on women and girls. This is another focus of Sabee, as well as the NPE's hard work team. Throughout the region. The company also wants to explore how to better serve the Group services with backward technology. In this regard, Sabee is working hard to create an experience that is suitable for low connectivity, such as 2G.
We understand that the application is currently in the early alpha testing stage, and the testers who signed a confidentiality agreement with Facebook are not To 100. Currently, no one outside the team can use the app, but the company hopes to expand Sabee to the next stage before the end of the year.
Unable to register on the Sabee waiting list, the application is no longer public on Google Play. Sensor Tower, an app store intelligence company, confirmed to us that its release time was so short that it never ranked on any leaderboard.
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