According to UNICEF, approximately 18.3 million Nigerian children are currently out of school — one in every five out-of-school children on the planet. Behind that figure sit a further 50 million children who are technically enrolled but learning almost nothing, seated four or five to a bench in classrooms of 55 students to a single teacher.
The system itself is under-resourced. Nigeria needs 3.58 million teachers to serve its student population at UNESCO’s ideal ratio of 30 students to one teacher, but currently has only 2.3 million registered teachers. National education spending remains at approximately 3% of GDP, below UNESCO’s recommended 4–6% benchmark. And the pipeline narrows dramatically: out of about 30 million pupils who enrol in primary school, only 6 million progress to secondary school.
Breni, a Nigerian-founded education technology startup, is building its technology around that problem.
Co-founded by CEO Abubakar Sadiq Umar and Bilal Abdullahi, Breni describes itself as an artificial intelligence-powered personalised learning application that applies cognitive science and motivational psychology to address the limitations of traditional education.
TechPolyp spoke with Abubakar Sadiq Umar about the problem that inspired the company, how its learning system works, its growth across more than 20 countries, and the founders’ ambitions for the years ahead.
Why the Traditional Classroom Struggles to Personalise Learning
The core problem Breni set out to solve is structural. Umar describes the traditional classroom as a one-size-fits-all environment, where a single teacher is responsible for up to 30 students whose brain capacities and comprehension levels differ significantly.
Teaching at a single pace means some students are bored while others are lost, and the system rarely adjusts to either group.
There is also the question of traditional learning’s inefficacy. Umar argues that traditional schooling relies heavily on a memorisation model — what he describes as “garbage in, garbage out” — rather than cultivating genuine understanding. He says more than 90% of students attend school primarily to secure grades rather than to master practical knowledge. Citing an example, Umar says co-founder Bilal excelled in practical computer science but ranked much lower academically because the rigid structure of examinations did not reflect his actual ability. These structural gaps in learning are what Umar and Bilal set out to resolve.
For the founders, that gap between demonstrated capability and measured performance pointed to a deeper flaw in how learning is assessed and delivered.
The Experience That Inspired Breni
Asked what convinced them that students needed a different kind of learning tool, Umar points to two influences: the shortcomings of formal education and the engagement mechanics of consumer technology.
They observed that platforms such as Duolingo had made language learning habitual for millions of users, while TikTok had captured enormous attention despite widespread concerns about shortening attention spans.
The founders concluded that the same psychological principles driving engagement on those platforms could be redirected toward learning.
The ambition, as Umar frames it, was to build something that made learning effective, addictive and fun — deliberately borrowing the language of consumer apps rather than the language of the classroom.
What Exactly Does Breni Do?
At its core, Breni is an AI-powered personalised learning application built on principles drawn from cognitive science and motivational psychology.
The system incorporates established learning techniques including spaced repetition, the Feynman technique and Anki-style review. Rather than delivering a fixed sequence of lessons, Breni tests learners continuously and then personalises subsequent lessons to reinforce the specific gaps it identifies.
Umar explains the approach with a travel analogy: two travellers can take different routes from Kano to Lagos and still arrive at the same destination. In the same way, learners using Breni may follow different paths through the material, but the objective remains the same.
The platform breaks lessons down into short, micro modules for easier understanding and adapts content based on age, level of experience, location and preferred learning styles. It supports learning in over 100 languages, including Hausa, Spanish and French, and is not limited to traditional subjects — users can learn anything from how to cook rice to coding.
The company’s stated goal is to move away from uniform instruction and toward a system that adapts to the individual learner’s strengths and weaknesses in real time.
More Than a Study App
Breni, according to Umar, is more than a study app. He is particularly keen to distinguish Breni from conventional educational content platforms.
Many digital learning products, he argues, rely on pre-recorded lessons that become outdated quickly. Breni instead integrates real-time developments directly into its learning modules, pulling in current events and emerging topics as they happen.
That includes geopolitical developments and shifts in how social media and technology are evolving. Umar points out that computer science curricula in many institutions have remained largely unchanged since the 1990s, ignoring more recent advances such as blockchain and artificial intelligence.
He also framed the broader problem bluntly: “Twenty-first-century students are being taught by twentieth-century teachers using nineteenth-century curricula on eighteenth-century calendars.”
Breni’s approach is intended to close that gap by keeping content and teaching methods current rather than static.
Making Learning Habitual and Improving Retention
A second differentiator is engagement. Traditional learning often suffers from low retention because it lacks daily habit-forming structures. Breni incorporates mechanics modelled on platforms such as Snapchat and Duolingo, including daily learning streaks, tiered leaderboards spanning silver, gold and platinum leagues, and social sharing options.
Umar notes his own personal streaks — 60 days on a step-tracking app and 30 days on Breni — as evidence of how these mechanics shape behaviour.
Upcoming updates will introduce direct user following and competitive learning challenges, extending the social layer of the product.
The principle behind these features is to make learning more habitual and significantly improve retention — the essence of education.
Phenomenal Cross-Border and Local Reach Without a Marketing Budget
Breni was built out of Kano State, Nigeria, though the company is incorporated in the United Kingdom and operates with a team spanning Nigeria, Riyadh and Spain.
According to Umar, the platform has reached more than 20,000 active users across more than 20 countries, including Nepal, Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Mexico.
That growth, the company says, has come entirely through organic channels — word of mouth, user-generated content and media features — with zero marketing spend. These figures are reported by the company and have not been independently audited.
The distribution of those users is striking. Nepal accounts for more than 40% of Breni’s total users, followed by Russia and Nigeria. The app has also gained users in countries including Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, South Africa, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Umar has publicly noted that the company’s market may not be in its home locale, even though it planned to localise its solution. The problem it addresses — the need for personalised, engaging learning — is not confined to Nigeria.
A freemium model underpins that reach. The free version contains ads, providing the company with an income stream, while the subscription model offers unlimited access to courses. Current monthly pricing ranges from $3 to $8, depending on location.
The Nigerian Market Tells Two Different Stories
Despite its global footprint, Breni’s Nigerian user base is concentrated in specific regions.
Umar says 95% of the company’s Nigerian paying users come from Lagos and Abuja. Northern Nigerian users, by contrast, show lower engagement and subscription rates than their southern counterparts.
Nigeria currently ranks second on Breni’s country leaderboard, even though non-Nigerian users make up a significantly higher percentage of the overall base.
The company has responded on two fronts. It has launched campus ambassadorship programmes to expand local reach, and it has partnered with organisations including a northern Nigerian women-in-tech group to support educational development in the region.
Umar also says Breni uses specialised testing to identify high-converting user segments, such as learners in southern Nigeria, and to refine its distribution strategy accordingly.
Keeping Content Accurate Across Borders
Operating a global education platform introduces a challenge that few consumer apps face: content accuracy in a world of conflicting information.
Umar notes that geopolitical questions — such as differing national positions on global conflicts, or even varying representations of maps — can produce contradictory data depending on where a learner is located.
Breni addresses this through an internal mechanism the company calls an “agentic council” — a backend set of approximately 10 rules that check generated content against strict quality and reputational benchmarks before it reaches learners.
Every bite-sized lesson also incorporates real-time internet scraping and provides clickable source references, allowing learners to verify the information presented to them.
For Umar, this layer of governance is essential. A platform that teaches across borders cannot afford to present contested information as settled fact.
The concern is not hypothetical. A January 2026 World Bank blog noted that only 0.2% of the data used to train AI-powered edtech tools comes from Africa and South America combined — a statistic that underscores the importance of building systems calibrated for local contexts rather than importing models designed elsewhere.
Read Also: Afrilearn is Closing Africa’s Education Access Gap with its App
Breni for Schools
Alongside its consumer app, Breni has developed a separate product for institutions called Breni for Schools, which allows educational institutions to upload their own curricula. The platform then translates them into personalised student lessons supported by audio, text, video and Breni Labs interactive simulations. The product includes a 30-day free trial.
The logic is that schools want personalisation without abandoning their own academic frameworks. By allowing institutions to bring their curricula into the system, Breni positions itself as a layer on top of existing education rather than a replacement for it.
Bootstrapping and Assembling an A-List Team
Building a global technology company out of northern Nigeria comes with distinct macroeconomic and operational challenges. To retain autonomy and validate product-market fit, Breni’s founders chose to completely bootstrap the early stages through external side projects. The company has completed an accelerator programme and has now joined the Antler Accelerator, which started recently. It has also begun assembling what Umar describes as an A-list team.
Breni’s immediate priority is not revenue. Umar says Breni is currently focused on retention over immediate monetisation, and the company is targeting 100,000 users by December through strategic user acquisition rather than short-lived signups.
What Umar Thinks Early-Stage African Founders Need to Understand
Umar’s advice to other founders is simple. He urges early-stage African founders to maintain an unrelenting focus on execution, distribution and unit economics.
He argues that founders should start with zero funding rather than obsessively chasing external investment, and should avoid spending capital on impressive offices before the market has validated the product. Product-market fit, he says, comes before everything else.
Team selection matters just as much. Umar likens team members to spouses, describing them as people who can either make or break a company. He also cautions against founders hoarding 100% equity, and argues that 80% of a founder’s focus should go toward distribution rather than product engineering alone.
Finally, he emphasises adaptability. Founders must remain responsive to market feedback rather than hanging on to ideas that the market has already rejected.
What Makes Breni Stand Out
What makes Breni stand out is an approach that reflects a broader shift in African technology: prioritising products built around the actual behaviour and constraints of African users rather than importing models designed elsewhere. It combines AI personalisation, cognitive science, engagement mechanics and real-time content integration across both consumer and institutional products.
Developed in Kano rather than Lagos, and sustained through bootstrapping rather than venture capital, Breni is an unusual case study in an ecosystem where capital and attention are heavily concentrated in a few cities, especially Lagos. Nigerian startups account for 34% of the top 50 edtech companies across Africa, and African startups as a whole raised a record $3.42 billion in 2025. However, nearly all Nigerian startups operate centrally in cities such as Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt — not Kano.
Breni’s Five-Year Vision
Umar frames Breni’s long-term ambition in terms of both scale and geography. Building a technology unicorn out of northern Nigeria presents unusual hurdles, but he articulates a five-to-seven-year vision to establish a blueprint and change regional narratives about what is possible.
He pointed out that Duolingo achieved a valuation exceeding $10 billion by focusing solely on language learning. Breni, by contrast, aims to cover all subjects — a scope that, if executed, would place it in a considerably larger category.
For Abubakar Sadiq Umar and his team, the larger goal is to prove that a company built from northern Nigeria can compete globally — and that personalised learning, delivered well, can reach students regardless of where they start.
The company’s stated objective, however, is to scale significantly while remaining grounded in the realities of the market it was built to serve.
Prospects of AI-Powered Learning in Nigeria
AI is beginning to reshape education globally, and African markets are part of that shift. For example, Nigeria’s edtech market is expected to surpass $400 million in revenue in 2026, with platforms like AltSchool Africa and uLesson already scaling across West Africa. Globally, the AI in education market is forecast to expand from $7.52 billion in 2025 to $10.6 billion by 2026, with a compound annual growth rate of 40.9%.
These statistics highlight significant opportunities, but the challenges are equally large: infrastructure constraints, uneven access, regional disparities in adoption, and the difficulty of building sustainable revenue in markets with tight margins and low disposable income.
Additionally, a recent research review across dozens of low- and middle-income countries confirmed that the evidence on whether edtech actually improves learning outcomes remains thin, highly variable and in many cases absent entirely.
Breni, however, is poised to change that narrative. Its ambition is not to build another study app, but a system that adapts to each learner, keeps content current and makes learning habitual enough to change outcomes.
Read Also: SoftAI Africa: Building Technology That Works for Africans
About Breni
Breni is an AI-powered personalised learning platform that applies cognitive science and motivational psychology to education. According to the company, its technology personalises lessons based on continuous assessment, integrates real-time content, and offers gamified engagement features. Breni operates a consumer app and a separate product for schools, with a freemium model designed to keep learning accessible.
About Abubakar Sadiq Umar
Abubakar Sadiq Umar is the CEO and co-founder of Breni, a Nigerian-founded education technology startup focused on AI-powered personalised learning. The company was built out of Kano State, Nigeria, and is incorporated in the United Kingdom.
About TechPolyp
TechPolyp, a subset of Cloudmesh Global Limited, is a startup discovery and intelligence platform focused on the African technology ecosystem.
TechPolyp’s goal is to make African startups easier to discover, provide founders with exposure, offer investors insights and supply reliable information to the wider startup ecosystem.
