Nessie Whatsapp Mathbot

South Africa ranks highest in the world for inequality and lowest in maths ability.  Maths competence amongst women is key to better paying jobs and thereby addressing inequality and poverty.

But with current generations of children, especially girls, losing confidence in maths as early as foundation phase, it is essential that we focus on improving maths participation and ability in girls, so they grow up with more opportunities.

Nessie, our AI-based Whatsapp Mathbot programme, helps disadvantaged families:

• understand the benefits of maths for their children’s futures,
• progressively improve their maths participation and results

By targeting families with daughters, our programme keeps girls in maths for longer, empowers parents to support them and helps them attain confidence and better grades.

The programme is scalable globally at low cost as Whatsapp as a platform is accessible, affordable and familiar to lower income households.

Only 28.5 per cent of those graduating at tertiary institutions in STEM-related careers are women.

The low proportion of girls progressing in STEM is reducing opportunities for higher education and higher paying jobs, increasing inequality and poverty.

SA also ranks in the bottom in the world in maths ability despite relatively higher levels of funding.

The ratio of learners electing to study maths literacy over maths has increased from 0.9:1 in 2008 to 1.5:1 in 2016.

Key problems are:

- legacy of apartheid; parents had poor maths education. They are intimidated by maths, lack involvement and support.  

-communities lack awareness of how maths can improve their future prospects.

-public school education is poor and under-resourced.

-gender stereotypes are disempowering girls in STEM subjects

- girls suffer loss of confidence in maths as early as foundation phase, and continues to compound. 

Our programme:

• provides stronger maths learning from foundation phase
• changes families’ attitudes to girls’ education and maths
• uses stronger parental involvement to supplement learning
• introduces positive female maths role models within local communities

Our programme uses an AI-based Bot on the Whatsapp platform, called Nessie.

Nessie helps families maintain a positive attitude to, interest in and improvement in maths.

To recruit, disadvantaged families of young foundation-phase girls are targeted through pop-up classrooms in malls.  We engage them with the benefits of maths and problem solving for earning potential of their children. We expose them to women role models within the communities and provide mentors in maths to engage.

Whatsapp is affordable, accessible and familiar with high penetration even in lower income communities. Every week they are engaged with age-appropriate problems to be solved. Parents are empowered to become the coach in the home, working through the problems with the child, entering the solution and then showing them how to get to the correct answer, with the aid of the Bot.

The bot recognises each user and builds up data on them, customising to different local languages and gauging the level of each learner, pulling more questions for their level. It is able to mark the answers and provide feedback to families.

Rewards are provided along the way, including brand-sponsored prizes for families who continue to engage routinely.

The target is lower to middle income African families with daughters in foundation phase. Caregivers also include grandparents, aunts, uncles and older cousins.  Adults are literate but employed in lower skilled jobs due to poor education, African first language and English second language.

They cannot afford more than public schooling and no extra lessons.

They have smartphones and access to whatsapp but are concerned with data costs.  They are able to send and receive whatsapp messages if the data costs are managed.  They have limited access to tablets or computers in the home. Some families will have ADSL in the home.

The solution helps families see the link between maths and higher paying jobs. It also exposes them to the positive female role models in their local community to make the goal more achievable. It turns caregivers into coaches and empowers them to be more involved in the girl child’s education outside of school, making maths and problem solving an important regular routine in the home.  It measurably improves maths interest, participation and grades in school.

The problem is that girls lose confidence in maths as early as foundation phase and drop out of maths before high school.  They are disadvantaged due to lack of quality education, lack of parental involvement and gender biases.

Our solution seeks to strengthen maths and problem-solving education from foundation phase for girls, showing parents the benefits for the future, growing parental involvement in maths education and addressing cultural biases, to help them attain better tertiary education opportunities and employment.

Currently, the out-of-school maths programmes are not operated on whatsapp.  Ours is the first whatsapp-based maths education programme.

Competitors include Kumon, which costs R750 a month per learner - this is almost a quarter of the earnings of our target families!  Our intervention will cost a family about R30 per month in data usage on their cellphones.  This makes our programme far more affordable and accessible for disadvantaged low income families. Kumon uses alot of paper and requires meetings with human tutors for marking, feedback and testing.  Our solution avoids this. Instead the bot marks the questions on the phone and then selects further questions based on the learner pathways with correct responses.  All round, ours is a more usable and cost-effective solution.

Extra classes in maths after-school with a tutor are also costly and requires a learner to travel to the destination, with a further cost of transport.  Participation in our programme is from home and with the involvement of the parent.

The AI-based bot customises the experience with each family, and itself shows families the potential benefits their child could access through the power of maths and tech.

The solution also makes parental involvement an imperative which drives much stronger focus on maths and tech, for the family, which is more encouraging for the child.

Our solution is a new application of an existing technology.

We are using the Whatsapp for Business platform enabled with AI.

The technology is widely used by companies to interact with customers on whatsapp for other uses. For example, with the outbreak of COVID-19 the South African government set up a whatsapp platform for citizens to gain more information about the pandemic.  Whatsapp bots are also being used globally by companies to interact with consumers requiring services or to run promotions.

In 2019, our solution resulted in a 47% increase in maths grades in classes and 45% increase in maths participation by learners as reported by schools. Of the 7000 families that participated, 98% answered all their questions for the year.

The programme had a high conversion rate in terms of attaining participation and opt-ins by disadvantaged families, exceeding 80% of our reach.

Our expectation is that by starting with the current cohorts in foundation phase and engaging them in our programme annually, we will be able to ensure a higher number of girls have a stronger foundation in maths, which we will continue to support them in as they progress to higher grades.  They will continue to maintain a higher level of confidence and competency in maths through school, resulting in a higher level of girls in STEM subjects in university and ultimately better paying jobs.

Our solution will drive more equality and less poverty.

Our solution served 7000 families in 2019, 

20 000 families in 2020 

and we are looking to scale that number to 20 million families in 5 years.

Our impact goals are to:

-strengthen the confidence and competency in maths from foundation phase through to university amongst 20 million black women particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds and middle to lower income families

-create more equality by helping women 20 million women succeed in STEM subjects to attain more opportunities and better paying jobs

-reduce poverty by helping 20 million women from lower income and disadvantaged backgrounds attain better paying jobs

Within the next year, we want our solution to expand beyond South Africa to our neighbouring countries. We also want to expand to more grades of learners. And we want the programme to run throughout the year rather than a few months each year.

The barriers we have are entirely financial.  We currently have funding to run the programme for 20 000 families of foundation phase girls in South Africa only.  This costs us R750 000 in total.  

We require funding to expand the programme to more families, across more countries and for more grades of learners.

We will apply for funding. In addition we will look at bringing corporate sponsors on board who will gain from nutrition education awareness related to their brands.

Our solution team is part of Triple Eight, a multinational impact agency.

Sarika Modi is the CEO of the agency and developed the Nessie Whatsapp Mathbot as part of a campaign for a brand.  The strategy, insights and technology all belong to Triple Eight. Triple Eight is looking to create a separate business unit to focus on the solution and expand it as part of our social impact work in Africa. 

Triple Eight will also use their network, partnerships and relationships to strengthen the solution, gain funding and drive growth in impact.

Full-time staff: 8

Part-time staff 12

Contractors: 3

Triple Eight is an all-female socially conscious impact agency based in South Africa. We consist of over 70 women professionals working across 7 countries in the region.  We specialise in impact work and we are supported by leading global brands and organisations such as Unilever, Reckitt Benckiser, Nestle, Danone, Kelloggs, Samsung and the like.

We currently have over 50 such programmes in existence. Our CONNECT-ED programme is a high school sexuality education programme that has won multiple awards including the USAID Africomnet Award for Excellence in Health Communication in Africa.

We have been operating for 8 years in SA, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana and Namibia. We have on the ground, practical experience.  We also have strong partnerships with the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education and Social Development in each country in which we operate. 

We have worked in education and healthcare for over 8 years.

Our CEO, Sarika Modi, is an example of a woman of colour, from a disadvantaged background, who succeeded as a top performer in maths and science at school, was one of 3 women in a class of 97 boys at the University of Cape Town, studying actuarial science and finance. And despite all odds and gender barriers, succeeded in attaining Fellowship of the Actuarial Society of South Africa. 

Most of the women employed by Triple Eight come from disadvantaged backgrounds but succeeded due to strong education and determination.

We all have exceptionally strong skills including in technology and business.

We currently have partnerships with governments, specifically the Department of Education in SA, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana and Namibia.

We have parterships with the Department of Health in each of the above countries.

Government partnerships enable us to gain credibility and support from funders and key stakeholders like schools governing bodies, parents and educators. In addition, we are able to contribute to the countries joint efforts by partnering.

South Africa Maths Foundation - the most significant non-profit in maths education in the country.  This partnership helps both parties learn and grow and benefits the families we are seeking to help.

In addition with various leading global brands Lifebuoy, Unilever, Dettol, Durex, Nestle, Samsumg, Johnson & Johnson, Kelloggs, Standard Bank etc - these partnerships allow us to gain funding whilst also helping companies drive their CSI impact goals and make a positive impact in the countries.

Our business model consists of:

- middle to lower income families - who are the beneficiaries.  They do not pay us for the service.  They fund the cost of data to access the platform themselves, however this cost is affordable and a very small part of their disposable income, so they see immense value in participating.

- The development and running cost of the solution is currently provided by funders and brands who gain positive brand exposure through our communications with the families.  If we receive grant funding for the development cost of expanding the programme, we believe the running costs can be covered by selling communication space on each interaction to brands as a form of advertising.

We would look at creating a subscription model of payment from brands in order to help them reach the target audience through regular messaging.

Our target market offers a massive penetration opportunity to big brands and the data we mine from the interactions with families have a high value.

 The development and running cost of the solution is currently provided by funders and brands who gain positive brand exposure through our communications with the families.  If we receive funding for the development cost of expanding the programme, we believe the running costs can be covered by selling communication space on each interaction to brands as a form of advertising.

Our target market offers a massive penetration opportunity to big brands and the data we mine from the interactions with families have a high value.

Solve can help connect us to prizes and funders who are able to assist us overcome the financial barrier - primarily funding the development costs of expanding the platform across multiple countries, grades of learners and reaching families for opt-in.

Through a partnership, we would like to tap into a larger network of potential funders and mentors to guide us on how to attain the funding needed.

We need to gain further access to funding and use the funding for growth of the programme across more countries, grades of learners and families. 

MIT faculty, Solve Members and funders

We would like to request guidance on attaining the funding for growth of the programme.

We are an all-women team of innovators who are passionate about women empowerment and upliftment. We ourselves come from previously disadvantaged backgrounds. In 2019, we won the PWC Gender Award for Empowering Young Women and Uplifting Women in Communities in Africa, FM Adfocus Africa Impact Award and  Overall Agency of the Year Award. We have received international recognition through the USAID Award for Excellence in Health Communication in Africa.

We have used our skills and passion in Maths and Tech to develop Nessie Whatsapp Mathbot, to help other young girls develop in Math and Tech. The Mathbot is proven as an effective, innovative solution with a significant impact on thousands of disadvantaged girls and impact in improving maths and problem solving competencies amongst girls in Africa.  

By winning the award, we will be able to generate considerable positive exposure and PR to drive greater interest and funding for our solution. It will also inspire and excite families of young girls to show them that success is possible from even humble backgrounds and beginnings.

We will inspire millions of young girls in Africa, by showing them that our team who were in their position once upon a time, was able to create innovative solutions to help them, through the power of math and tech that we are advocating.

Our solution is also directly relevant to the sponsor of the prize Vodafone, because our solution relies heavily on cell phone networks in South Africa, where Vodafone is a key stakeholder.