Furaha (www.FurahaFinancial.com) has today announced that it has supported parents keep 100,000 Ugandan children in school through purpose-driven financing, marking a significant milestone for the technology platform and its approach to expanding access to education financing.
That milestone reflects a broader challenge: UNESCO estimates that sub-Saharan Africa accounts for nearly 40% of the world's out-of-school children (https://apo-opa.co/3U7k4Wg). A significant driver remains the cost of education being compounded by a mismatch between school fees deadline and family household income cycles. Furthermore, parents without conventional credit histories, collateral or formal payslips may also struggle to access formal credit to plug this gap.
Furaha is supporting these parents to keep their children in school. Incubated by SC Ventures, Furaha provides an advanced lending platform and expertise to its partner banks - Diamond Trust Bank Uganda, Cairo Bank Uganda, Opportunity Bank and FINCA Uganda - to support end-to-end customer onboarding and KYC, credit scoring using alternative data, loan disbursal and collections. This enables parents to access short-term credit at affordable interest rates. Furaha is the first lending fintech in Africa to channel affordable financing from commercial banks towards addressing the large need for education financing.
“Millions of parents have never been seen by traditional credit systems, not necessarily because they can't repay, but because the data needed to assess them has not existed in one place,” said Yustus Aribariho, Co-founder, Furaha. “By bringing together mobile-money, school-payment and other alternative data, we can give financial institutions a broader view of customers and create more opportunities to serve parents whose financial lives are not always captured by traditional credit systems.”
Since launching in Uganda in 2024, Furaha has brought together banks, telecommunications companies and school-fee payment platforms, including FINCA Uganda, Diamond Trust Bank Uganda, Cairo Bank Uganda, Opportunity Bank, MTN, Airtel, SchoolPay, SurePay and PegPay.
“Our conviction was that no single institution could independently keep children in school every term, but an ecosystem could,” said Ian Fernandes, co-founder of Furaha. “Our role was to connect all these players in one place, making it easier for parents to meet school-fee obligations and keep their children in school, regardless of how they earn.”
Progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 4 remains uneven. UNESCO's 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report (https://apo-opa.co/3TIhZQl) notes that while enrolment across sub-Saharan Africa has expanded substantially, the number of children out of school continues to rise, and that no single reform is sufficient on its own. Financing addresses one barrier to school attendance; it is not a solution to every cause of exclusion.
“Our ambition is to support 10 million children to access quality education across Africa by 2030,” said Dennis Musinguzi, CEO at Furaha. “The 100,000-child milestone is an important proof point, but it is not the destination. It shows us that there is an opportunity to build a model around real needs and take what works to more families and more African countries.”
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Furaha.
For more information, please contact:
hello@furahafinancial.com
+256 (0) 326 220 200
1 Kololo Hill Drive, Kampala, Uganda
About Furaha:
Furaha Financial is a Ugandan company that provides technology for purpose-based financing. It connects parents, financial institutions, schools and payment partners to make education financing more accessible. For more information, visit www.FurahaFinancial.com.
