Learning That Builds Africa’s Thinkers and Innovators

Across Africa, immense educational challenges are narrowing the next generation’s scope of opportunity. However, early signs show that AI is daring to widen it. 

According to a 2022 United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) article, 87% of children in sub-Saharan Africa could not read and understand a simple text by the age of 10.  

Furthermore, many schools operate large classrooms with skeleton workforces, experiencing a world-high 55.7 pupils per trained teacher—higher than the global average of 15—shows a 2024 Global Report on Teachers by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).  

Offering a further glimpse into Africa’s educational ‘epidemic’, UNESCO believes an additional 15 million teachers are needed by 2030 to achieve SDG 4 targets, a United Nations (UN) led universal commitment, agreed to by every member state.  

It’s centered on inclusive, equitable, and quality learning for all before the end of this decade.  

While teacher shortages are a global dilemma, with the world needing 44 million more to be SDG 4-compliant, Africa requires the majority. The same UNESCO report reveals an annual projection cost of $120 billion to reach staff sufficiency worldwide, of which Africa requires almost a third at $39 billion annually.   

The current fast-paced modern era necessitates immediate remedies.  

‘The Real Burden’ 

For Sylvia Osewe, a Kenyan teacher once on the verge of quitting her calling, feeling the weight of handling upwards of 70 students per class, AI offered the antidote to continue.  

Arduous years of handwriting lesson plans, marking books, recording work, taking notes, and preparing tests pushed her to her breaking point.  

“It was draining, my job became a prison,” Osewe reminisces to FORBES AFRICA. 

In fact, her threshold had already been reached, when she took a two-year sabbatical in 2008, before finding herself back in the classroom at Oloosirkon Primary School, nestled within the dusty semi-arid savanna, south of Nairobi.  

What started as a “low population” institution soon teemed with youth; but while grades expanded, “the number of teachers went down… the burden became real,” she explains.  

Eventually overloaded with students, imposing a strenuous workload, she remembers being overwhelmed by the work in 2022, amid recurring health challenges. Osewe had heard of AI by then but assumed nothing of it: “I thought it was for the younger generation.”   

A year later, a visit to the school by local non-profit, Kalasik Education, revealed the realm of possibilities, introducing an AI lobby with a variety of chatbots designed to assist with numerous tasks, along with an AI teacher who could help “learners understand complex topics while learning on their own, and answer questions they weren’t able to ask in class”, using their parents’ phone.  

It was only in 2024 that the primary school received its first batch of IT equipment—five desktops, two printers, and one laptop—meaning Osewe’s AI journey, too, began, using a phone.  

Despite piloting with a small screen, hours-long tasks suddenly took minutes, while some vanished overnight. 

“I felt like someone who had won the lottery,” a jubilant Osewe recalls, before explaining the list of instant benefits, from AI offering students study tips and assisting with lesson plans and tests, to generating rubrics for projects and analyzing common errors from learners. 

Doubling as a guidance counseling teacher, it helped draft behavior contracts for learners with maladaptive traits, prepare counseling session guides and forms for tracking learner discipline, as well as letters to parents. 

“AI can help restore time for what matters most: teaching, mentoring, and listening to learners… An overwhelmed teacher cannot do these things effectively,” she insists. 

Not only did it alleviate the daily pressures of racing against the clock, but being less burdened by intense administration work shifted the focus back to the students.  

Learning environments supposedly improve when learners gain the teacher’s undivided attention, which encourages student involvement. 

The pediatric brain responds positively when learning is fun and the teacher is present. It’s a combination that can retain attention for longer, deepen retention, and spark genuine excitement, sustaining focus while fostering a lasting enthusiasm for learning. 

A study by Harvard discovered that students using AI learned more than twice as much in less time compared to active learning classrooms, while a World Bank report focused on AI in higher education highlighted a recent study showing that AI-powered assignment platforms increased student placement efficiency by 20% and improved options for under-assigned students by 38%. 

Osewe confirms that she too noticed an uptick in class performances, linking it to the fact that AI enabled students to learn ahead and gain more confidence, while being exposed to wider knowledge, thus enhancing their critical and creative thinking. 

Though this is the ideal outcome—attentiveness from teachers and greater student engagement—the proof isn’t always in the marks. Accelerating productivity is one of AI’s gifts but, in turn, it offers an easy, rapid route to completing work without digesting the information.  

“There’s also the challenge of misinformation. AI can present inaccurate information confidently… many learners may struggle to distinguish between what’s correct and what’s not,” relays Shibambu Mikhongelo Marvel, co-founder of NOVAR, an interactive e-learning app, to FORBES AFRICA. 

“I believe the role of educators is becoming even more important in the AI era. Rather than competing with AI, teachers can help learners ask better questions, think critically about the answers they receive, and use AI to deepen their understanding, instead of replacing the learning process.”  

Surveying over 95,000 students, Igor Chirikov, a senior researcher at the University of California in Berkeley, published one of the largest studies of generative AI use by undergraduates in May, within which 26% of daily AI users admitted to cheating with AI, compared to 7% amongst monthly users.   

This can become cognitively damaging as a continuous lack of problem-solving diminishes the core skills—researching, writing, and thinking—tasks essential for all stages of life. 

Opportunities For Innovation  

The puzzle of AI is far from complete, and that is both scary and exciting. 

Unguided AI is, arguably, testing student-teacher trust like never before–a bridge Nkosinathi Temba, founder of Thuto.io, is striving to reinforce in Ga-Rankuwa, a township bordering South Africa’s administrative capital, Pretoria.    

An education management platform concentrated on positive reinforcement, it was Temba’s brother who sparked the lightbulb moment.  

“He was giving up on math,” the self-taught programmer tells FORBES AFRICA, explaining that, despite achievements in his particular class, as he wasn’t a top 10 student, he rarely received praise. 

“I realized many schools have an exclusive recognition and reward structure,” he says. “For my brother, there was no one telling him ‘well done’, and that demotivated him. That’s when I started seeing a decrease in his performance.” 

Then came another discerning observation. Temba couldn’t find a learning platform that aligned with his brother’s school curriculum. It exposed an under-catered-to market.  

The serendipitous nature of Thuto.io showcases an application motivated by real-life problems; one that wasn’t forced but, evidently, necessary. A mobile-first, but web browser-available platform, its uniqueness derives from ‘Thuto coins’, digital coins that translate to real money: one coin = R1 ($0.06).  

Temba calls it an academic allowance, whereby parents buy coins that their children can earn. A small monthly subscription fee of R50 ($3), and no minimum top-up limit, makes it an inclusive system that almost anyone with a device can utilize. 

Learners engage through ‘Thuto stories’ and daily quizzes based on what they’re being taught at school, whilst the opportunity for acquiring deeper knowledge comes from the AI tutors, assessments, and stories available.  

Marks alone don’t unlock coins; AI algorithms assess effort and improvement–both aspects considered equally as deserving of rewards. To counter guessing, models analyze behaviors related to the difficulty of the task, such as the time spent answering each question and whether it was right or wrong. 

“If it’s a hard question, and someone responds correctly within a few seconds, then we know they’re probably guessing. But, if they take a considerable amount of time, even if they get it wrong, we know that they might be applying their mind to try and figure this out,” Temba explains.  

That data then influences the AI tutor’s next steps, be it revisiting a topic that posed problems before or asking another series of questions based on how they performed, which, Temba notes, “is where we now introduce the second layer of AI”. 

Each additional round, tailored to closing identified learning gaps, is then broken down into concepts, allowing students to recognize their areas of expertise and where mistakes occurred—then hashed out through personalized tuition. 

A struggle to grasp a subject often discourages pupils from wanting to deepen their understanding but when a system rewards commitment, a mental shift potentially unfolds. Mistakes are no longer perceived as dead ends, but an objective to overcome. 

While it offers independent learning round the clock, teachers are also integrating this tool, made necessary as attention spans have gotten shorter in this social media era of instant gratification. 

Temba recalls a teacher enjoying how the platform “provides students tangible rewards as soon as they are done”. 

The first pilot took place at Temba’s old school, Amandasig Secondary School, in early 2025. After two terms, according to the founder, they identified a 14.5% improvement in student performance, and 70% of the students opted to save rather than spend. 

Another behavioral trend encouraged by AI gimmicks: a machine learning algorithm tracks student earnings, identifying the flow of income versus how much they typically spend or save, to establish a financial acquaintance (FQ) score out of 500. 

Three tiers exist within this threshold. Firstly, the ‘mouse’ represents students who don’t perform well and withdraw whatever is earned, followed by the ‘lion’, those who perform well but also consistently spend. Lastly, there’s the ‘camel’; these students both excel and save, which, in turn, increases their likelihood of rewards.   

Challenges To Overcome 

There are, however, flaws with gamified education. Not only does it encourage a constant need for rewards, which can potentially limit good deeds when ‘the carrot of remuneration’ isn’t dangled, but the grey area of unguided AI remains just as ambiguous as those using Large Language Models (LLMs), regardless of the mitigating metrics.   

That being said, Africa’s educational landscape is in desperate need of a reset, and AI offers a route to transformation.  

According to UNICEF, over 30 million young Africans are not in education, training, or employment. 

For many, this exclusion relates to low-quality education–youth, who, through no fault of their own, grow up in rural regions where resources, such as books, stationery, and teachers, are scarce. For others, it could be a matter of cost, access, or health. AI’s disregard for geography and human profile allows for universal participation. 

Further to this, a renewable energy boom, engaging micro solar grids to connect remote areas, as well as hydro, wind, and thermal power to stabilize grids, promises to reduce the electricity access deficit, and as Africa’s teachers orchestrate overcrowded classrooms, AI can act as a companion and a productivity multiplier. 

At the same time, around 600 million people in Africa live without reliable access to power, meaning the liberation of educational applications is largely applicable to only those with devices and broadband.  

It’s worth noting that AI doesn’t neutralize the continent’s teacher shortage conundrum. This, against the backdrop of a burgeoning population expected to represent two in five children by 2050, has made it mission critical. 

However, when learning is no longer confined to classrooms and textbooks, AI platforms democratize education. 

“I don’t believe AI is here to replace teachers. But if we use AI responsibly, it can make quality learning more personal, more accessible, and more inclusive, and in a region historically, had fewer opportunities, that could be truly transformational,” says Marvel of NOVAR.