Meet the founders digitizing Nigeria’s lecture notes
…Helping 50,000 Nigerian students study smarter, not harder
In an era where technology is redefining how we live and learn, two Nigerian engineers are leading a quiet revolution in higher education.
Through their fast-growing edtech startup, Cubbes, co-founders Peter Adeyemi and Emmanuel Akinyele are transforming how African students access, manage, and interact with academic materials.
What started as a simple idea — to make lecture notes and past questions easier to find — has evolved into a continent-spanning digital learning platform that is reshaping the study habits of students across Nigeria and beyond.
From chalkboards to code
For Adeyemi, the seeds of Cubbes were planted long before the platform existed. “While I was still in secondary school, I loved mathematics and used to tutor my neighbors’ children. They would pay me N10 each, and I would teach them using the walls of our compound as a chalkboard,” he told BusinessDay.
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That early love for teaching continued into university, where he became known for rewriting lecture notes and solving past questions for classmates. “A decade later. A former classmate called to tell me that my notes were still being circulated because I used to sign them!” he said.
Years later, while mentoring a student preparing for exams, Peter realized many still struggled to find proper study materials in Nigeria’s universities. “It struck me, in this digital age, why are students still sourcing for past questions?” he said.
That question became the catalyst for what would eventually become Cubbes, a platform designed to centralize academic content, digitize course materials, and empower students to study smarter.
Inside the Cubbes platform
Launched in 2024, Cubbes has become one of Africa’s most promising education technology startups. It is a digital learning platform that integrates AI tutors, flashcards, and smart planners to centralize study materials and streamline academic organization.
The platform offers a personalized academic assistant where students can find all their lecture notes, past questions, and course outlines in one place. By simply selecting their institution, faculty, department, and level, Cubbes automatically curates all the relevant content for the semester.
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Since its launch, Cubbes has empowered over 50,000 students across 100+ institutions in Nigeria and Uganda. Students have reported a 50 percent improvement in academic performance and a reduction in study stress, thanks to its AI-driven summaries, personalized recommendations, and organized dashboards.
“Cubbes is designed to make learning efficient, not exhausting. We want students to spend more time understanding concepts and less time searching for materials,” Adeyemi explained.
Smarter Learning Through AI
Cubbes’ innovation lies in how it seamlessly integrates Artificial Intelligence into students’ daily study routines. Powered by OpenAI models, the platform generates contextualized responses and summaries tailored to each course.
“Many students already use tools like ChatGPT. But Cubbes embeds AI directly into their study workflow. Because the system understands the course context, the answers and explanations are far more accurate,” Akinyele said.
The platform also uses flashcards, spaced repetition prompts, and progress trackers to help students retain knowledge better — applying proven learning science principles to boost performance.
Beyond learning: A digital ecosystem for students
As the founders dug deeper into students’ needs, they discovered another problem: the manual process of paying departmental and faculty dues. Cubbes digitized this too, allowing student associations to collect payments via Paystack and issue digital receipts instantly.
“We now process thousands of dollars in student payments each semester. It is part of our vision to create a complete digital ecosystem for students — not just a study tool,” Adeyemi revealed.
Collaboration, scale, and the future
Rather than compete with lecturers, Cubbes works collaboratively. Through its User-Generated Content (UGC) system, class representatives and lecturers can upload verified course materials. The startup also produces Platform-Created Content (PCC), including practice questions aligned with institutional syllabi.
A Lecturer Portal is under development, which will enable lecturers to manage classes, distribute notes, and take attendance using geolocation-based tracking.
Cubbes’ success has also been boosted by its participation in the Antler Accelerator Programme, a global venture builder for early-stage startups. The program helped the founders refine their business model, validate scalability, and strengthen investor readiness.
“Before Antler, we were testing several ideas. The mentorship helped us focus on what truly drives values like access, efficiency, and impact,” Adeyemi said.
