Evaluating only Zara Labs Cameroon’s profile at its peak — without knowing the outcome — the model ranked Competition as the #1 likely cause. Documented cause: Unit economics.
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Documented cause
Zara Labs built adaptive learning software for Cameroonian secondary schools, partnering with government and NGOs to digitize classrooms. The product received strong pilot results but hit a fundamental infrastructure wall: 60% of target schools had unreliable electricity and under 20% had internet access adequate for the platform. Attempts to build offline-first features required a complete rebuild that exhausted the team's engineering capacity. Without reliable connectivity, the platform's adaptive algorithms could not function, and the business case collapsed.
Lesson
“Adaptive learning requires persistent connectivity — selling to connectivity-poor markets requires a different product architecture entirely.”