The One Young World Summit 2026 host city announcement officially named Cape Town, South Africa as the host for the 2026 event during the 2025 Summit in Munich, Germany with Kagisho 'KG' Masae alongside South African delegates.
When Kagisho Masae entered a new school on a bursary in Grade 6, he encountered a world that was unfamiliar to him: computers, a library and educational resources he had never had access to before.
“It was a proper system shock,” he says. “I had never been in a school that had a library or computers. Everything was different.”
That experience now informs his work as chief executive of Matric Live, the South African edtech platform he founded to support Grade 10 to 12 learners beyond the classroom.
“A lot of learning is lost between the classroom and home because not everyone can afford a private tutor, and not everyone has parents who can help with homework,” Masae says.
“Matric Live basically plays that bridging role.”
From banking to education
Masae’s commitment to youth development took clearer shape in 2016, when Investec sent him as a delegate to the One Young World Summit in Canada.
“I had always wanted to solve for the youth, but at that point, I was still in banking,” he says.
The summit helped him develop a clearer sense of what he wanted to do.
“When I attended the breakout sessions and engaged with people, I had a clearer picture of what I could do when I came back,” he says.
Reflecting on the decade from 2016 to 2026, Masae says:
“Without the One Young World Summit in 2016, I’m not saying I wouldn’t have started the business, but I would have been slower. It definitely was a catalyst.”
Masae opens up about a teacher who encouraged him to write aptitude tests at the age of 12 also played an important role in shaping his future.
“I am where I am because I had a teacher who was invested in me,” he says. “It’s not because I was smarter than everyone. The only way we can change things is to give more children those kinds of opportunities.”
How the platform works
Matric Live is built around four functions: Learn, Play, Exam and Ask AI.
The learning section uses short modules, quizzes and video lessons. Learners must pass a quiz before moving on to the next section. The platform also offers video content through selected teacher and content partnerships.
The Play function turns revision into a competitive game. Learners can compete in subject-based, best-of-five quizzes, either one-on-one or in teams.
Winners gain points, while leaderboard rankings are tracked nationally, monthly, weekly and by school.
“They play one-on-one or two versus two,” Masae says. “The winner gets points, the losers lose points, and it contributes to a national leaderboard.”
The Exam function draws on a database of more than 10,000 examination questions, according to Masae. Learners can generate random mock examinations using questions from different papers.
“With the exam simulator, they can take random mock exams with questions from different papers,” he says. “That allows them to cover a broader range of content rather than working through one static paper.”
Ask AI allows learners to type questions, use an in-built calculator, draw a problem with their fingers or upload a photograph. A feature called Super Lesson creates tailored explanations from a learner’s prompt.
“If you are stuck with something, you can ask, ‘Can you show me Euclidean geometry using a Tetris game?’” Masae says. “It will set that up for you.”
The platform is also designed to reduce data costs. Once learners have created and bookmarked content while connected to Wi-Fi, they can return to it offline.
“You can go to a Wi-Fi hotspot, set everything up and then work through the journey offline,” he says.
A partnership during Covid-19
Matric Live’s relationship with the education system expanded during the Covid-19 pandemic, when learners were studying from home.
The Department of Basic Education’s Woza Matrics programme provided learning material and exam support through broadcast and digital platforms.
The department’s information identifies Matric Live as one of the digital platforms associated with the programme.
Masae says Matric Live had already built an audience of about half a million learners at the time.
“We needed each other,” he says. “It ended up being a match made by necessity.”
He says the company provided the department with regional insights based on anonymised data.
The data can identify weaker performance in particular subjects and provinces, such as mathematics in Mpumalanga or the Free State.
Masae says this can help officials plan more targeted interventions. “We give them an indication of what’s happening.”
Beyond the matric certificate
Matric Live says more than 3.5 million people have used the platform since 2020. This figure should be clarified to distinguish between downloads, registered users and active learners.
Masae says he is sometimes surprised by the platform’s reach.
“For me, I sometimes pause and look at my business partner and say, ‘Dude, what have we done?’” he says. “Two township boys can set something up and then it reaches three-and-a-half million lives.”
He recalls learning that two high-performing pupils from Independent Examinations Board schools had used Matric Live to prepare for their final examinations, even though the platform was not developed specifically for IEB schools.
“That showed us the impact is on both sides,” he says. “The other 40% are in well-off schools that use our app.”
Masae also recalls receiving a message from a learner in a village where pupils shared textbooks and had limited access to computers and Wi-Fi.
“She said, ‘I come from a poor village. We don’t have computers or Wi-Fi. We share textbooks. It has been difficult. Since I’ve been using Matric Live, I no longer need the textbooks. My grades have changed, and even the teachers are shocked.’”
For Masae, the company’s purpose extends beyond helping learners obtain matric certificates.
He sees Matric Live as a way to support South Africa’s so-called missing middle: Households that earn too much to qualify for National Student Financial Aid Scheme funding but too little to afford tertiary education comfortably.
“If you come from a household that earns more than X a year and you’re a B student, you won’t get a scholarship with a B,” he says.
“At the same time, you are disqualified from NSFAS because you are technically too rich for that, which does not make sense.”
The long-term ambition
Masae wants Matric Live to use long-term learner data to connect pupils with post-school opportunities and possible sources of financial support.
“We want to not just help you pass matric, but actually give you alternative pathways to becoming an economically active citizen rather than sitting unemployed,” he says.
His measure of impact is deliberately long-term. He wants to show that a learner who enters Grade 10 with an average of 40% can leave Grade 12 with an average of 70% and build a stable future.
“I’d love to be able to definitively point out that Matric Live had somebody in Grade 10 who was averaging 40%, who finished Grade 12 averaging 70%, and is now a successful entrepreneur or an employed, responsible citizen who pays tax and takes care of their family,” he says.
For Masae, the ambition is broader than an app, an award or a download count.
“Basically, my vision is for us to re-engineer the South African middle class,” he says.