I visited Antananarivo to understand SAYNA, a young edworktech company, and meet its young team, to feel its vibrancy and values, in order to explore a few exciting possibilities.

SAYNA is an endeavour by a young Malagasy, Matina and her mother Nirina who initiated it, to facilitate digital literacy of children and youth with a purpose to impart digital skills to help them earn livelihood. SAYNA is now a vibrant Learn-Earn-company with quite a few able youth, tech experts from across many Francophone countries – France, Reunion Island, Senegal, Ivory coast, Malaysia – spearheading the passionate purpose across 16 Francophone countries. They reach out to children and youth by signing up licensees, that any computer centre can grab, across the countries which is willing to help students access the internet to study and learn. They call such places SAYNA HUBs. Maison DU Numerique (MDN) is one such hub in the city of Antananarivo (TANA in short), capital of Madagascar. Interestingly, Maison DU Numerique is a philanthropic endeavour of Mr Finch, a Googler from Madagascar, to help children and youth gain digital literacy. MDN allows any youth from grade 7 – University level students is their digital infra, two-hours a day free of cost. About 5000 students have been using MDN over the last 7 months of its operations.

After the visit to MDN, I had a good circle time with the SAYNAites who are working in Tana, SAYNA’s main office on ground – marketing, business development, finance, operations – all function from this office in Antananarivo, Madagascar.

One of the impediments to free communication, for a person like me, is the incapability to communicate in French. Though I got acquainted with French good 30 years ago, I never put any effort to learn. Now that I am travelling across Francophone countries, I am keen to start learning.

Here is the circle time that I had with SAYNAites at their TANA Office.

Also had multiple sessions with the leadership of SAYNA – the founders, the CEO, COO, Heads of technology, pedagogy and academics, the marketing etc. over the net. They work from many different countries across Europe, Africa and Asia.

Matina, the CEO of SAYNA, has been very kind enough to take care of my travel needs during the stay, with David, her right hand man in TANA, pick me up from airport in the middle of the night, to coordinating the visits to the SAYNA Hubs, the office interactions etc.

Along with Matina, I also made a courtesy call upon His excellency Mr Bandaru Wilsonbabu, the ambassador of India to Madagascar and Kosuvo, to apprise him of the initiative CL Educate is undertaking in Africa and especially the possibilities we are exploring in Madagascar. I also introduced Matina and SAYNA to his excellency.

With H.E. Sri Bandaru Wilson babu, along with Matina of SAYNA.

I was too busy with the official visits, interactions and meetings, I hardly got any time to go for any sight seeing. For most of the meetings, except the initial couple where I was not aware of the distances and I was chaperoned in a car, I would walk down those 3-4 kms, from one meeting to the other, to acquaint myself with the city. And I tried to record with my mobile as much as I can, and here is the view of the city of Tana, through my eyes…

Matina, along with a few members of SAYNA, took me to the Queen’s palace for a visit one of the evenings….

As fate would have it, my flight to Nairobi scheduled for Sunday afternoon from Tana got cancelled, the next one was 12 hours later. So, quickly, I planned to go to the Lemurs Park, about 28Kms out of Tana. The park has 6 of the 34 diurnal species of Lemurs, all rescued from domestic homes, and brought to natural habitat. There are enough numbers. My guide Hery, at the park, is really good and we had a great interaction. I am sure you will enjoy the following film.

All in all, it has been a great visit to know and learn about SAYNA, and also understand the people, the city and markets of Tana and Madagascar.

I am looking forward to the next visit to Madagascar, that has nature bountiful, due to its isolation, as an island, from the mainland Africa. This makes Madagascar an amazing island of rich biodiversity, with many species of flora and fauna, unique to the island, one cannot see anywhere else in the world.

See you soon SAYNA and TANA.