Twitter has been abuzz this past week as Maxwell Chimedza is breaking new ground in the education sector, the 27-year-old Zimbabwean “unqualified teacher” developed a Whatsapp tutoring platform to help students achieve A-grades.

Chimedza operates from Mbare, the oldest township in the capital Harare, and one of the country’s poorest. He captured local attention when his class consisting of 64 WhatsApp students achieved a collective 41 A-grade marks, which placed them in the same league with students from Zimbabwe’s elite boarding schools.

Radio Islam had the opportunity to talk to Chimedza who shed some light on his inspiring idea that simply took a school system and adapted to Whatsapp. Chimedza, who is fondly known by his students as Dr Maxx, says it’s the conventional way of teaching that he is now using to teach students on Whatsapp.

“If there are lessons that are done at school with the teachers and staff, that’s what I do, if there are exams that have been written in schools I also do that on Whatsapp, if there are assignments I also do that on Whatsapp,” says Chimedza.

Chimedza is not computer literate and he doesn’t make use of any special Whatsapp functions other than the ordinary text, audio, photo and video options and he says he is able to teach students as per the syllabus.

“I mainly use audio lessons, I record a lesson being guided by the syllabus, I also use text books in PDF format and send to them,” explains Chimedza.

“One has deeper knowledge of a topic because I will be supplying various teaching sources for one topic, so I make an audio lesson for one topic, I give you notes for that topic, I give you a text book for that topic.”

In 2019, as unemployment ravaged the country, Chimedza endeavoured to start a “student-polishing” service for those who wanted to prepare for upcoming exams. He would take them on around three months before they were to write exams and would train them on past and mock up papers as well as do lessons they would normally learn at school. His idea kicked off and he began earning a living from it – and by 2020 it began to gain traction, especially due to the move to online learning.

“The covid situation taught me also to be innovative and come up with such ideas…it’s a painful process but being persistent and working hard is the secret.”

In 2012, when Chimedza was a student himself, he nabbed himself 14 A-level distinctions but going to university was just not possible financially.

In an Interview with Rest of World, Chimedza said he’d like Zimbabwe’s government to incorporate WhatsApp school curriculums to broaden the legacy education framework. By considering registering these as cheap WhatsApp schools as WhatsApp schools mean no expensive uniforms or desks.