Gamifying a developers journey with Mvelo Hlope
Co-founder of ZAIO, a platform which gamifies a developers journey to help them gain real-world experience, Mvelo Hlope is the youngest of four children and grew up in Port Shepstone, KwaZulu-Natal with parents who were both school principals and emphasised learning in the home. Moving to Cape Town to initially study Finance and Accounting at the University of Cape Town, he switched to a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics.
Mvelo has always been a problem-solver, looking at issues in a creative way. He furthered this by reading around the subject and following trends. His spark for entrepreneurship was ignited in university when he met mentors that encouraged him to pursue the entrepreneurial journey. He has worked on a number of entrepreneurial projects throughout his university career starting when he arrived in his first year with a formed business plan.
Photo by Mpumelelo Macu
The idea for ZAIO was formed when Mvelo was talking with a friend who didn’t get a job because he had not coded any projects outside of university projects and Mvelo needed someone to code an app for him on a different project but couldn’t afford it. They realised this was a problem that existed around the country and decided to create a platform which connects software developers looking to gain experience building projects with people that need an idea built but do not necessarily have the funds to do so in order to make software developers more employable. This evolved into its present form which teaches anyone how to code in a gamified way, with learning place via different levels in which skills are built on top of each other, with completion giving one access to the market place in which one builds actual projects for clients.
Photo by Mpumelelo Macu
Mvelo has faced a number of challenges during the development of the project such as finding people willing to pay for the product, developers pulling out of building the platform mid-project, gaining users to trust the platform and ensuring that client projects reach completion. Interacting with the developers on the platform and seeing how it impacts their lives gives Mvelo the greatest joy. He is looking to cultivate young leaders that are able to shape the future of African tech innovation. In the short term, he is looking to expand the learning journeys on the platform to cover a greater scope of skills. The goal is to increase the pool of talent in South Africa and Africa to meet the demands of rapidly changing industries and so that entrepreneurs are able to afford tech. The project is currently scaling out to other universities including Stellenbosch, UWC, Johannesburg and KwaZulu-Natal.
Photo by Mpumelelo Macu
At the Amaphiko academy, Mvelo is hoping to learn how to increase brand awareness and expand, as well as to network with fellow social entrepreneurs and to grow holistically as a social entrepreneur. He is also looking forward to seeing how his team can leverage from the knowledge he gains from the academy.
This article first appeared on Red Bull.