Peter Adeyemi still remembers the phone call that sparked everything. A decade after graduating from university, one of his former classmates reached out with surprising news: students were still passing around his handwritten notes from years ago.
Peter Adeyemi still remembers the phone call that sparked everything. A decade after graduating from university, one of his former classmates reached out with surprising news: students were still passing around his handwritten notes from years ago.
“I had to sign all those notes,” Peter recalls. The notes had become something of a legend at his university. He had been the top student in his class, and his meticulous organization and detailed study materials helped not just him but generations of students who came after.
That legacy might have ended there, a pleasant memory of academic excellence. But in 2022, a conversation with a University of Lagos student changed everything.
Peter asked her how she prepared for exams. Her answer: she would go source for past questions. “I said, this is 2022, we should not still be sourcing past questions,” Peter explains. “You guys don’t have a central repository of all of this. She said no.”
That moment crystallized a problem Peter had witnessed throughout his academic career. African university students waste countless hours hunting for study materials, scrambling through WhatsApp groups, sifting through disorganized Google Drives, and begging seniors for old notes. The inefficiency struck him as absurd in a time when technology had transformed nearly every other aspect of life.
Peter Adeyemi, now CEO of Cubbes, took an unusual path to founding an EdTech platform. He studied electrical engineering, spent three years at PwC working in finance, then launched his first startup.
In 2019, he joined Curacel, a YC-backed insurtech company, as one of the early employees and rose to Chief Operating Officer. He helped drive traction in Nigeria and East Africa before eventually leaving to build Cubbes.
His co-founder, Emmanuel Akinyele, who serves as CTO, followed a similar trajectory. Emmanuel also studied engineering and practised civil engineering for two years at a gas servicing firm.
But his real passion lay in automation. He spent his time building tools in Excel spreadsheets and Visual Basic, finding ways to automate repetitive tasks.
“My background has always been automating things,” Emmanuel says. “After about two years of practising, I had a bit of downtime working, and I decided to start learning how to write code.”
The two founders share more than just engineering backgrounds. They attended the same secondary school and have known each other for 25 years. That long history of friendship made it natural for them to start talking about building something together.
“Initially, it was just Peter and me talking over the phone,” Emmanuel recalls. “The discussion was mostly around wanting to do things for students.”
Those casual conversations over three years ago started as Unimate, but the idea eventually led to Cubbes, a digital learning platform that has now reached more than 50,000 students across over 100 institutions in Nigeria and Uganda.
The issue Cubbes tackles runs deeper than simple inconvenience. African universities have largely failed to digitize their learning materials in any meaningful, organized way. Students face several interconnected problems:
Fragmented Resources: Course materials are scattered across multiple platforms. A student might find lecture notes in one WhatsApp group, past questions in another, textbooks in a Google Drive somewhere, and additional resources shared via email or physical handouts.
Peter experienced this firsthand during his university years. What set him apart wasn’t just his intelligence but his organization.
He wrote comprehensive class notes, solved past questions systematically, and created structured study materials. That organization became his competitive advantage.
“What I think really helped me to become a scholar was the fact that I was really organized,” Peter says. “So writing all those notes, solving past questions, and passing them down.”
The question that drove Cubbes’ creation: Why should every student have to reinvent this organizational wheel? Why couldn’t there be a system that provided this structure for everyone?
Cubbes functions as a personal academic assistant for university students. The platform combines several features into one integrated system:
Students using Cubbes report over 50% improvement in academic performance. The co-founders also claimed that many students in classes where Cubbes launched graduated with first-class honors specifically because the platform helped them organize their studies better.
“The AI buzz is here. Everyone has access to things that can improve their learning,” Peter says. “So if we can get that closer to students in schools without them having to struggle, that’s essentially what Cubbes is about.”
“The platform has digitized more than 400,000 materials since launch. Students have logged at least 4 million minutes on the application, studying their coursework through the organized system Cubbes provides.”
Cubbes operates on a freemium model with affordable pricing. The digital library for undergraduate students costs N1,500 (roughly $1 at current rates).
For postgraduate students pursuing master’s degrees or MBAs, the cost is N2,500. Students who pay annually receive a 20% discount.
These prices make Cubbes accessible to the vast majority of African university students. The value proposition: pay a small fee to eliminate hours of material hunting and gain access to AI-powered learning tools that demonstrably improve grades.
“They are happy to pay all of this because it makes their life easier,” Peter explains. “They don’t need to sift through Google Drive or WhatsApp channel just to find the material.”
Beyond student subscriptions, Cubbes has processed more than $30,000 in dues payments for students across the University of Lagos, Bowen University, Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Lagos State University (LASU), and Nile University. The platform is currently working with other institutions in the pipeline for this service.
The founders also work directly with universities, which represents a better long-term business model. They’ve built tools for lecturers, including a geolocation-based attendance system that solves a pain point of tracking attendance as a mandatory requirement from Nigeria’s National Universities Commission (NUC).
Cubbes sources materials through a hybrid approach. The platform works with class representatives in each institution, who function as ambassadors.
These reps have access to materials from lecturers and upload them to the platform with proper consent. This user-generated content (UGC) model ensures the platform stays current with what lecturers actually teach.
“Historically, what we have done is the material that students find from the lecturer,” Emmanuel explains. “We get their consent to use those.”
But Cubbes also offers platform-created content. Because the founders have digitized the entire university curriculum in Nigeria through the Core Curriculum and Minimum Academic Standards (CCMAS), they can generate practice questions and supplementary materials that align with course outlines even when lecturer-provided materials are limited.
The team performs quality assurance on all uploaded materials, ensuring everything meets standards and that Cubbes has permission to host it. Sometimes they reformat materials to maintain consistent quality across the platform.
“Our team does a bit of Quality Assurance by looking at the material to ensure it is appropriate for the course while also confirming that we have the permission to upload it,” Emmanuel says.
Many students already use ChatGPT, Gemini, and similar AI tools for studying. So what makes Cubbes different?
The answer lies in context and curation, as explained by Emmanuel. While students can absolutely copy their course outline into ChatGPT and ask questions, this approach requires more effort.
They must organize their thoughts, phrase questions effectively, manage conversation history, and verify that responses align with their specific coursework.
Cubbes removes this friction. The platform already has the student’s course outline, materials, and relevant context baked into every interaction.
When a student asks a question, they’re not starting from scratch. The AI draws on course-specific information to provide answers that directly relate to what they’re studying.
“You don’t still have to dabble in, is this statement from ChatGPT in line with what I have asked?” Emmanuel explains. “On the platform, you just type a question, your course outline, your course material, every relevant context, already baked into that question.”
The platform also reduces hallucinations, the tendency of AI models to generate plausible-sounding but incorrect information.
By grounding responses in verified course materials, Cubbes provides more reliable answers than general-purpose AI tools.
Perhaps most importantly, Cubbes incorporates learning beyond simple Q&A. The flashcard system, for instance, uses spaced repetition techniques proven to enhance memory retention.
These tools require zero setup from students, who would otherwise need to manually create flashcards or learn complex memory systems.
“Every student can spend 24 hours of their day trying to do what we’re doing,” Emmanuel says. “But like we said in the beginning, we want to make it easier for you. Should you spend countless hours in the middle of the night trying to use ChatGPT to read your textbook, or should you use Cubbes to read it in about three, four hours to still get the same result?”
Cubbes launched in 2024 and has already reached over 50,000 students across more than 100 institutions in Nigeria. The platform recently expanded to Uganda, where nearly 100 students have started using it.
The timing aligns with significant growth in Africa’s EdTech market. The continent has over 2500 universities and millions of students who face similar challenges in accessing quality learning materials.
With smartphone penetration increasing and a slight improvement in internet connectivity, digital learning solutions appear to be a must for the continent.
The founders see an enormous opportunity ahead. They’ve already expanded beyond undergraduate students to serve postgraduate students pursuing advanced degrees.
They’re building additional tools for lecturers, including systems to help them create course notes with minimal input by leveraging the digitized CCMAS curriculum.
“The ultimate goal for us is that learning in school shouldn’t be as tedious as it was 10 years ago,” Peter says. “Can we improve learning outcomes? Can we make studying easier for kids? Can we make it more interesting? Can we get the first-year students in school just from secondary school, not wondering where do I start? Or is this going to be harder? Can we make that easier?”
Cubbes participated in Antler’s eight-week residency program in Lagos and secured investment from the global early-stage VC. The experience provided more than just funding.
“Just being in this ecosystem where we are working with institutionalized investors who have almost seen it all, who can help us do introductions to people and help us open doors that we can work into has been very beneficial,” Peter says.
The residency brought together ambitious founders working on different problems. The energy and peer learning from that cohort helped Cubbes gain momentum and grow faster.
But perhaps the most valuable aspect was the structured validation process. The eight-week program includes masterclasses on critical topics like business fundamentals, scaling strategies, and idea validation.
These aren’t abstract concepts because the participants must work through the process of validating their ideas and business models.
“You have this idea, you have this brand design, things you want to do, but do you know how to build your business, do you know what it means to scale, do you know how to validate your idea, actually doing it,” Emmanuel explains. “There are things you probably miss. You probably build a product without actually validating if somebody needs it.”
The program forces founders to tick off essential checkboxes before raising significant capital. Does the market actually need this product?
How many people need it? Will it generate revenue? These are the questions investors will ask, and Antler’s residency ensures founders have solid answers.
“Those checkboxes you did not tick in the first place are things you start to learn,” Emmanuel says. “And say, OK, no, I need to go verify this box, that box.”
The platform has proven product-market fit with over 50,000 active users and strong academic performance improvements.
The business model works, with students happily paying for premium features and universities showing interest in institutional partnerships.
The next phase involves expansion across Africa as it is set to execute the SDG 4 goal of ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all. Uganda represents just the first step beyond Nigeria.
The problem Cubbes solves exists in every African country with universities. Students everywhere waste time hunting for materials, struggle with disorganized resources, and lack access to quality learning tools.
The founders also plan to deepen their offering for lecturers. By making it easier for professors to create and distribute materials, Cubbes can become embedded in the teaching process itself rather than just serving as a student tool.
This institutional integration could accelerate adoption and make Cubbes indispensable to how African universities function.
The technical infrastructure appears impressive. Cubbes has digitized more than 400,000 materials and built AI systems that provide contextually relevant tutoring at scale.
These systems will only improve, learning from millions of student interactions to provide even better support.
Perhaps most importantly, the platform demonstrates that African EdTech can compete globally. While students in developed markets benefit from sophisticated learning management systems and digital resources, African students have largely been left behind. Cubbes can largely equalise that equation.
With the right support and execution, African EdTech companies can lead globally, not just serve local markets.
For now, Peter and Emmanuel focus on execution. They respond to student feedback, add new institutions, refine their AI tools, and build relationships with universities.
Every student who uses Cubbes gains hours back in their day, performs better academically, and experiences less stress.
That impact starts with one student at a time, one course at a time, one institution at a time. But it adds up to something larger: a fundamental reimagining of how learning works in Africa.
Not learning as a luxury for the privileged few, but learning as an organized, accessible, technology-enabled experience for every student who wants to succeed.
The same organizational skills that made Peter the top student in his class, that led classmates to pass his notes down for a decade, now scale through technology to reach tens of thousands of students. That’s the promise of EdTech done right and that’s what Cubbes delivers.
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