LocationsLearning Rockets: Built in Upper Egypt, Building an Inclusive Future for Every Child
September 20, 2026
Mariam Refaat delivers her pitch at the Green Growth and Jobs Accelerator Project (GGJAP) Cohort 4 Demo Day.
Based in Assiut, Upper Egypt, Learning Rockets is an education technology (EdTech) company founded by Mariam Refaat, Egyptian entrepreneur, around a simple idea: every child should have access to quality learning opportunities, regardless of where they live.
One of the SMEs supported by the Green Growth and Jobs Accelerator Project (GGJAP), Learning Rockets is working to turn that idea into reality. Through Bee Degree, its gamified learning application, the company combines accessible digital learning with tools such as an AI-powered pronunciation coach that gives children instant feedback on their reading and pronunciation.
But the idea behind Learning Rockets began much closer to home.
Mariam spent more than ten years working in business and finance before deciding to start her own EdTech company after seeing first-hand the educational gap in Upper Egypt.
“The real story starts at home, not in a classroom. My husband, George, had been teaching our daughter English, and she started speaking to us fluently, something unusual in Assiut at the time.”
Mariam saw how the quality of education her daughter received at home helped her stand out from an early age. It left her with a question that would eventually become the foundation of her company:
“Why can’t other children have the same experience?”
That question became more urgent during a visit to a school in Dar El Salam, Sohag Governorate, Upper Egypt. Mariam saw a bright and curious student copying a worksheet from the board rather than working through it himself. The teacher was managing a full classroom with limited time and resources, while the parents had little experience with digital tools.
For Mariam, it crystallized the challenge: talent was everywhere, but opportunity was not. If she wanted to build a solution, it had to respond to the realities of the children, teachers, and families it was designed to serve.
Being based in Assiut became an advantage. It helped her understand first-hand how limited infrastructure, access to devices, and digital literacy could shape a child’s learning experience.
“I have seen real passion in the eyes of children, teachers, and school leaders in those communities, and that isn't something you can design for from a Cairo office, you have to be from these places to build for them properly.”
Designing for the realities of Upper Egypt
Learning Rockets designed Bee Degree around these realities. The platform works offline and on older, affordable devices, while its content is designed to accommodate different learning needs and learning difficulties. Parents can also activate their child’s account using a simple physical token, making it easier for families with limited digital experience to participate in their children’s education.
Introducing digital learning in communities where schools and families had limited experience with these tools was not straightforward. The team worked directly with schools, trained teachers, and adapted the product based on what they learned.
Students use Learning Rockets’ Bee Degree books as part of their learning experience in Upper Egypt.
Building the company from Assiut also came up with another set of challenges. Being nearly 400 kilometers from Cairo made it difficult for Mariam to access many of the networks and opportunities concentrated in the capital—all while building a business and raising a family.
“The hardest part of being a woman entrepreneur outside Cairo isn't really about talent, or even the idea, it's about whether you're willing to keep showing up anyway.”
Women from Upper Egypt make up 70 percent of Learning Rockets’ full-time team, creating local opportunities as the company grows.
Today, that determination is creating opportunities for other women in the region: 70 percent of Learning Rockets’ full-time team are Upper Egyptian women, and the company plans to use part of its current funding to hire more local female talent as it grows.
“I lead a team of young women who remind me of myself ten years ago, the same ambition, the same determination.”Mariam Refaat
Mariam with the Learning Rockets team
From creating impact to measuring it
As the Learning Rockets grew, Mariam faced a new question: how could the company rigorously measure the impact it was already trying to create?
“What actually pushed me to apply was a gap I was very aware of in how we ran Learning Rockets: I needed to learn how to properly measure our impact, not just measure it, but genuinely improve it, and know how to present it in a way that did justice to what we were actually achieving.”Mariam Refaat
Through GGJAP’s Impact Measurement and Management (IMM) training, which strengthened SMEs’ capacity to measure, manage and use evidence on their social and environmental impacts for decision making and reporting, Learning Rockets developed a more rigorous approach to measuring its environmental impact, including its carbon footprint. Using the impact measurement approach developed through the programme, Learning Rockets estimates that its model avoids approximately 268 metric tons of CO₂ emissions annually: 182 metric tons through reduced paper use and 86 metric tons through the reuse and refurbishment of 343 devices.
“That's not a number I could have put together with confidence before the programme.”
But for Learning Rockets, sustainability goes beyond the footprint of its operations. It is also about what children learn.
Its Alpha Explorers series includes 12 graded readers for Grades 1–6, digitally linked to Bee Degree. Through the stories, children explore themes ranging from protecting the environment to respecting their communities and understanding their place in the wider world.
Mariam had already incorporated sustainability themes into the series, but they were not initially mapped to specific Sustainable Development Goals. Through GGJAP’s work on green growth and impact measurement, Learning Rockets began deliberately mapping the Readers to specific SDGs.
The result is a more structured learning resource linked to goals including SDG 4 on Quality Education and SDG 13 on Climate Action, allowing the company to pursue sustainability both through how it operates and through what children learn.
“Kids absorb how the world works long before they're old enough to change it. If we want the next generation to build more sustainable, more equal economies, that has to be part of what they're taught.”
Learning Rockets’ books during the GGJAP team’s visit to Learning Rockets in Assiut
From Assiut to 45,000 learners
Since launching its first Bee Degree prototype in 2023, Learning Rockets has grown to reach more than 50 schools and over 45,000 active students across 12 governorates.
Along the way, the company has received recognition through the Orange Social Venture Prize, Women in Tech Egypt and the Innovation for Humanity Award. It was also the only company from Upper Egypt among nine startups nationwide selected to participate in She’s Next × Shark Tank by Visa.
But for Mariam, one milestone stands above the awards: the Egyptian Ministry of Education and Technical Education’s approval of Learning Rockets’ curriculum for teaching reading, writing and speaking in Egyptian schools.
The approval opens the door for Learning Rockets to bring its educational content into schools at a greater scale. Mariam describes it as:
“The real gateway to everything else.”
Mariam Refaat during the GGJAP team’s visit to Learning Rockets in Assiut
For Mariam, the vision remains both ambitious and deeply personal: to make quality education accessible regardless of where a child grows up.
“I want to see the day when the quality of education, and the quality of the teacher standing in front of a classroom, is equal from Marsa Matrouh to Aswan, where a child's governorate has nothing to do with the kind of education they get. Opportunity should always be available to everyone, everywhere in this country.”Mariam Refaat
Looking ahead, Mariam hopes to expand Learning Rockets into North and East Africa, while developing content in more languages. Her ambition is not simply to translate educational content developed elsewhere, but to build learning experiences that reflect local cultures and realities while meeting global standards.
Learning Rockets began with a question: why should children in one part of Egypt have fewer opportunities than children elsewhere? Today, the answer Mariam built in Assiut is growing, a business creating local jobs and a learning platform reaching tens of thousands of students across Egypt.
Through GGJAP’s support, the company is strengthening its business model, measuring its impact more rigorously and embedding sustainability more deliberately into both its operations and educational content.
About GGJAP
Learning Rockets is one of the SMEs supported through the Green Growth and Jobs Accelerator Project (GGJAP), implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in partnership with Flat6Labs and New Silk Roads, and funded by the Danish Arab Partnership Programme of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark.
GGJAP supports SMEs to strengthen their business models, improve access to finance and relevant ecosystem opportunities, measure and manage their impact, and adopt more sustainable practices aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. Through this support, locally rooted businesses like Learning Rockets can strengthen their models, scale their impact, and take solutions designed around local realities further.
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