Venture: Ubongo
Ubongo delivers top quality, localized learning in 18 countries across Africa.
Expert: Kathy Rock
Board Member, Community Reinvestment Fund, USA
Ubongo partnered with Rippleworks to optimize financial functions to support more efficient operations.
Ubongo leverages the accessible technologies African families already use—like radio, TV, and mobile phones—to deliver top quality, localized education through the universal childhood languages of cartoons, music, and fun. They have created the largest “classroom” in Africa: 17 million kids learning monthly through TV, radio, and web with distribution in 18 countries.
One of Ubongo’s top priorities going into the project was establishing a strong finance function to accelerate growth.
Ubongo partnered with Kathy Rock, a senior executive with experience in finance, risk, operations and compliance. Together, they:
• Created and evaluated finance competencies, and identified areas of growth in management.
• Reviewed finance processes and identified opportunities for efficiency, accuracy, and better collaboration with other teams and budget owners.
• Built a financial model to raise 6x annual budget and massively scale their impact.
