Two leading Nigerian digital start-ups, Izesan Limited and Dumena, have independently challenged the Mastercard Foundation EdTech Fellowship administered by Co-Creation Hub (CcHUB), citing a persistent lack of transparency and exclusion from the program despite verifiable local impact.

The pressure began mounting after Izesan Limited published a widely circulated open letter titled “What Innovation Are We Really Enabling?” The letter details the startup’s repeated rejection from the Fellowship—three years in a row—without a single instance of constructive feedback or justification. The company describes being met with “radio silence, vague platitudes, or rejections without explanation.”

“We still believe in the vision of the Mastercard Foundation and CcHUB. But we can no longer stay silent about a process that, from our experience, has shown a concerning lack of transparency,” the letter states.

Since 2019, Izesan Limited has quietly emerged as a national leader in culturally responsive EdTech, building platforms that teach indigenous Nigerian languages to children and adults across digital, mobile, and community-based channels. Its tools are being used in classrooms, homes, and informal learning centres—particularly in underserved regions where linguistic preservation is deeply needed but chronically unsupported.

In parallel, Dumena, a fast-growing education company teaching foundational coding and robotics skills to children, released its own public statement decrying the same issues. Their call reinforced a broader concern: that programs intended to empower African innovators are instead favouring polished aesthetics, international affiliations, or superficial metrics over grassroots impact.

Despite this public criticism, CcHUB’s recent blog post—titled “Upholding Transparency and Fairness in the EdTech Fellowship Selection Process”—claimed that “feedback and updates are shared with applicants throughout the selection process.”

The founders of Izesan and Dumena dispute this characterisation. “Claiming that feedback was provided, when so many applicants can prove otherwise, only deepens mistrust. Offering feedback to a few finalists after multiple opaque rounds is not reform, it’s damage control,” said Anthony Otaigbe, founder of Izesan Limited.

The core of the frustration lies not in rejection, but in the complete lack of transparency that undermines the credibility of a program that positions itself as a champion of African innovation.

Both companies have called for three urgent actions:
Full disclosure of selection criteria for all cohorts to date, Impact reports on selected startups detailing funding received, partnerships formed, and communities served and an independent review to investigate patterns of exclusion, particularly for high-impact, community-rooted startups like Izesan and Dumena.

“This is not a call for charity,” the Izesan letter read. “It is a principled demand for fairness… When access to funding and visibility is decided behind closed doors, the entire ecosystem suffers.”

With the Mastercard Foundation’s global reputation and CcHUB’s national influence at stake, the pressure continues to mount for them to take meaningful steps toward restoring trust.

As more stakeholders—startups, educators, funders, and the public—begin asking who gets to build the future of African education, one thing is clear: the call for transparency can no longer be ignored.