Some partnerships begin with a cold email. Ours began with a programme built to open doors for Zambian businesses.
What AGS Zambia is
AGS Zambia, the Accelerated Growth for SMEs programme, is a bilateral programme of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and Zambia’s Ministry of Commerce, Trade and Industry. It ran from September 2018 to December 2023 and was implemented by NIRAS. Its purpose was practical: help ambitious Zambian companies grow, professionalise and reach international markets.
For MEM, that support included attendance at Slush, the Finnish startup and tech event in Helsinki. Slush gathers founders, investors and technology companies from around the world. For a Zambian edtech team, it was a rare chance to meet people building in the same space, and to show them what we had built.
Meetings that became partnerships
The programme team did not simply send us to Helsinki and wish us luck. They prearranged meetings with companies they judged to be working on problems close to ours.
Professor Muuka, MEM’s founder, described it in the AGS programme video: “[They made] sure to prearrange meetings for us with companies they felt were in the same space as we are. Through those meetings, we’re able to form partnerships with three Finnish companies.”
Those three partnerships matter because they connect two very different education landscapes. Finland’s education system is famous the world over. Zambia’s classrooms face different realities: unreliable power, thin connectivity and teachers stretched across large classes. A good partnership does not copy one system into the other. It takes tools and ideas from both and shapes them for the classroom in front of the learner.
What we took home
Three lessons stay with us. Growth needs doors opened, and programmes like AGS opened doors that cold outreach never would. Preparation matters, because a prearranged meeting gives every conversation a purpose. And Zambian solutions belong in global rooms, as long as someone from Zambia is in the room.
We are grateful to the AGS Zambia programme, to NIRAS as implementer, and to both governments behind the programme for the support given to our internationalisation. The journey from Lusaka to Helsinki was long. It changed the direction of this company, and the partnerships it produced are still bearing fruit today.
To see what those partnerships are producing, visit theteachersvillage.icu.
