In June 2019, Mike Mankenda and a group of friends were inspired to found an organisation called Phainky, driven by a shared belief that technology could be used to genuinely serve people and communities.

Mike’s path to that belief was anything but conventional. A tech enthusiast from early on, he started out as a local developer, building software that solved real, practical problems for schools and organisations around him. For eight years, Mike lived in a refugee camp, where he worked alongside major international organisations including Plan International, UNHCR, the Jesuit Refugee Service, Konexio, Microsoft for Africa, and Imagine Worldwide  supporting community development and humanitarian work. It was through this experience that Mike developed a deep, lasting passion for solving real educational challenges through the power of technology.

Phainky began as a grassroots organisation with a clear purpose: equipping young people with digital inclusion, technology awareness, computer programming skills and entrepreneurship training. In its early years, Phainky worked directly with hundreds of young people in Malawi, helping them build practical, transferable skills for a digital future.

Driven by a growing conviction that this mission deserved a global stage, Mike later migrated to Australia, determined to build something bigger. He continued his own education, studying cybersecurity at Box Hill, while working in the technology sector with Australian Private Network, an Australian internet service provider. That experience  combined with the dream that had carried him from a refugee camp in Malawi to the tech sector in Australia  led Mike to found Phainky Pty Ltd, carrying the same founding mission into a new chapter, and a new market.

We chose to build from Victoria, Australia, because we wanted to create something genuinely suited to the realities of Australian education not an overseas platform retrofitted for the local market. As EduConnect matured and proved itself with Australian schools, Mike and the team recognised a larger opportunity: the same fundamental problem  communities underserved by the technology available to them exists at even greater scale across Africa’s fast-growing education sector, the very region where Phainky’s mission first began. That recognition is now shaping the next chapter of our company, bringing Phainky’s story full circle.

To build technology that serves humanity, designing, developing, and deploying purpose-built software and AI solutions that solve real, documented problems in education, healthcare, and social impact, across Australia and Africa, guided by faith, driven by excellence, and measured by human outcomes.

A world where every person, regardless of geography, income, or circumstance, has access to technology that sees them, supports them, and helps them grow.

Phainky operates under a deliberate two-entity structure:

• Holding Company: owns all intellectual property associated with EduConnect and our broader technology assets, kept structurally separate from day-to-day operations.
• Operational Company: runs the day-to-day business: sales, delivery, customer support and platform operations.

Why this matters to the people who rely on us:

• IP protection: the technology schools and partners depend on is safeguarded within a dedicated entity, insulated from operational and commercial risk.
• Stability: this structure supports long-term planning and sustained investment in the platform, rather than short-term decision-making.
• A foundation built for growth: the same structure that protects our Australian business gives us a clean, consistent framework to extend into new markets, including Africa, without fragmenting the technology at the centre of everything we do.
• Company details: Phainky Pty Ltd Victoria, Australia          ABN: 17 694 559 576