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For many pupils in rural communities, access to quality educational resources can depend on where they live and what their families can afford.
For Malungelo Mathonsi, 27, and Marvel Shibambu, 23, two young men from Gumbani village near Malamulele, in Limpopo, that reality became the motivation to create something that could put learning resources within reach of more children.
So they built Novar, a free educational app aimed at helping pupils and teachers bridge some of the gaps created by unequal access to educational resources.
But the idea did not begin in a technology hub or a well-resourced laboratory. Rather, it began with the experiences of two young men who had grown up seeing the limitations of the education system in their own community.
They remember five pupils sharing a single maths textbook at their school.
“Our experience of education was one of both determination and limitation,” said the pair, who saw their teachers work hard despite the pressure of overcrowded classrooms.
Mathonsi said he remembered his maths teacher, Mr Chingwane, arriving early at school and teaching multiple classes. “But with so many learners, individual support was almost impossible.”
Shibambu wanted to study medicine at the University of Cape Town, meaning he needed strong marks in maths, physical science, life sciences and his other subjects.
Mathonsi attended Vaal University of Technology to study for a diploma in IT, but during his first year could not afford to continue.
Shibambu told TimesLIVE that his father would drive him and his friends for two hours to attend extra classes because their school was overcrowded and they needed additional support. “That sacrifice demonstrated how far families were prepared to go to give their children an opportunity,” he said.
One day, another pupil and her mother heard about the extra classes and wanted to join. The pair gave them the details and the educator’s contact information. But the pupil could not attend because the classes were too far away and the transport costs were unaffordable.
“That’s when it really hit us. It wasn’t that learners didn’t want to learn, and it wasn’t that parents didn’t care. They cared deeply, but they simply couldn’t afford access,” said Shibambu.
That experience became part of the thinking that eventually led to Novar.
Shibambu had always been comfortable with maths and had started teaching his classmates by the time he reached grade 10. When he went to university, he began questioning what would happen to the pupils he had left behind.
“I knew how to teach maths, and I kept asking myself, ‘What’s the point of knowing how to do this if I’m not going to use it to help someone?”
He and Mathonsi decided to combine their strengths. While Shibambu was passionate about teaching, Mathonsi had been interested in computers from a young age and wanted to learn programming.
Their idea was simple: create an education platform where Shibambu could teach maths and pupils back home could access those lessons even while he was at university.
There was, however, one problem. They did not know how to code and did not even have a computer.
The pair eventually scraped together R700 and bought a second-hand computer from a local musician. They then taught themselves how to code.
But the journey was far from glamorous. The computer was so slow that Mathonsi sometimes had to switch it on at about 6am because it could take almost three hours to start.
At the height of load-shedding, a power cut during coding meant the pair could lose hours of work and then have to wait for the computer to start again.
“Something that could have taken a few hours could end up taking an entire day,” Mathonsi said.
Despite the frustrations, they continued. “We understood the people and communities we were serving because we are them. These are our sisters, our friends and the young people we grew up with.”
The pair started teaching themselves to code around 2022 before beginning work on the first version of Novar in May 2024.
A beta version was released in September that year, followed by Novar 1.0 on December 16, 2024.
With support from partners including Liberty, IBM, Prime Stars and Flame Station, the platform was later rebuilt from the ground up, resulting in Novar 2.0 being released in August 2026.
The pair describes Novar as “social media for learning”.
The idea was to take something young people already understand — social media — and use that familiar environment for education. “We didn’t want education to feel boring or foreign,” Mathonsi said.
Currently, the platform provides maths and physical science content for grades 10 to 12.
It also includes an extensive library of past exam papers, from 2008 to 2015 for maths and the physical sciences, with worked solutions.
The platform’s Orbit feature allows educators to take pupils on board, organise classes and set study roadmaps.
The pair say the intention is not to replace teachers, but to give them additional tools. “For us, Novar is about giving educators superpowers. We’re not trying to replace teachers. We’re giving them tools that allow them to do more.”
The platform has reached more than 200,000 pupils across SA, according to Shibambu, with close to 30,000 now using Novar daily after the launch of version 2.0.
It is currently being used at Alexandra Secondary School in Gauteng, while the team is in discussions with schools in Limpopo, the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
The founders want at least 100 schools to be using Novar by the end of 2027.
For Shibambu, however, the numbers are only part of the story.
One of the most personal examples is that of his younger sister, Nhlamulo.
At the end of the first term in 2026, his mother called him concerned after Nhlamulo scored 16% in maths and 21% in physical science.
They encouraged her to use Novar as part of the platform’s pilot programme. By the end of the second term, her maths mark had risen to 68%, while her physical sciences mark had risen to 79%.
“For me, that wasn’t just about the marks. It was about seeing her confidence change and seeing her realise that she could actually do these subjects,” he said.
The team has also seen encouraging results at Alexandra Secondary School, where Shibambu says the school recorded a 92.7% maths pass rate after Novar was introduced.
They acknowledge that academic performance is influenced by many factors, including the work of teachers and pupils, but believe access to resources can make a large difference.
The founders have deliberately kept Novar free because they do not want the cost of education resources to become another barrier for learners from disadvantaged communities. “Talent is universal. Access is not. That’s the gap we’re trying to address,” Shibambu adds.
The team is now working with CSI teams, NGOs and other organisations to expand access to the platform in under-resourced schools.
For the team, the mission is bigger than building an app. They want a pupil in rural Gumbani to have access to the same quality of educational resources as a pupil in one of Joburg’s wealthier suburbs. “A learner’s future should never be determined by the school they attend or the community they come from.”
They believe technology can help achieve that, provided it is used to empower rather than replace people. “Technology doesn’t replace great teachers; it amplifies their impact.”
The founders now hope to expand Novar to more schools across all nine provinces and eventually beyond SA.
In five years, the pair says, the dream is to have Novar become part of the educational infrastructure of the continent, reaching millions of pupils and partnering with thousands of schools.
But despite the ambition, they say their definition of success remains simple. “If a learner from a rural village can have the same opportunity as a learner from a well-resourced school because of something we built, that’s success.
“Our mission isn’t simply to build one of Africa’s biggest education platforms. It’s to help make sure that where you’re born doesn’t determine where you can go.”
TimesLIVE
Natasha Valoyi Valoyi
www.timeslive.co.za
