MIT Solve

Solution Overview

Solution Name:

SuaCode.ai

One-line solution summary:

Smartphone-based app with an AI teaching assistant, Kwame to teach job-ready coding skills to millions across Africans

Pitch your solution.

Africa is home to the largest and youngest workforce in the world, but many companies struggle to fill IT-related positions. Nonetheless, there is a proliferation of smartphones in Africa. Less than 1% of African children leave school with basic coding skills. One major cause is poor access to computers. Hence, smartphones provide a unique means to provide coding education to Africans.

Our solution SuaCode.ai is an AI-powered, smartphone app to teach coding. It has monthly coding courses with lesson notes, exercises, quizzes, and fun coding assignments in major official languages in Africa such as English and French, course-specific online forums allow interactive discussions among students while getting answers from other students, facilitators and our AI teaching Assistant, Kwame

SuaCode.ai will enable young people across Africa who don’t have access to computers to learn coding using only smartphones and enable them to get jobs to improve their economic prospects.

Film your elevator pitch.

What specific problem are you solving?

Africa is home to the largest and youngest workforce in the world. Almost 60% of Africa’s population in 2019 was under the age of 25, making Africa the world’s youngest continent. Youth unemployment remains a major problem across Africa. Almost 16 million young Africans, around 13.4% of the total labor force of 15-24-year-olds, are facing unemployment. The majority of African youths lack digital-literacy skills to make them competitive in the labor market. Africa lags behind the rest of the world in terms of digital literacy. Less than 1% of African children leave school with coding skills

However, there is an interest among Africans to learn to code evidenced by the success of programs in Africa to introduce coding. However, most of these initiatives are designed as in-person workshops or bootcamps that require students to be at specific venues with the necessary equipment. Individual practice is essential for deepening coding skills. Yet, usually after these training events, students are unable to continue practicing due to limited access to computers. Nonetheless, there is a proliferation of smartphones in Africa with a projection of 682 million smartphones by the year 2025. Hence, smartphones provide a unique means of provide coding education to Africans.

What is your solution?

SuaCode.ai is an AI-powered, smartphone app to teach in-demand coding skills to underrepresented people in tech thereby making them employment-ready for tech jobs and improving their livelihoods. The app will have monthly online coding courses that learners can self-enroll on the platform. We will also offer schools and organizations the ability to create their “SuaCode Classroom” on the platform and enroll their students for coding courses. The app’s features are:

Lesson notes, exercises, quizzes, and fun coding assignments in major official languages in Africa such as English and French.

The curriculum uses a project-based learning approach centered around building visual and interactive mobile apps e.g. games

Automated Grading Software which grades assignments while checking for plagiarism and providing individualized feedback to students.

Course-specific online forums for interactive discussions between students, facilitators, and question-answering by our AI teaching assistant, Kwame

Certificate of Completion for students who complete courses — exceptional students get mentoring sessions with African tech professionals in companies such as Google and Amazon.

Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?

Our target demographic from students to young Africans (15-35 years old) based on analysis of our previous cohortsSuaCode.ai will enable young people across Africa who don’t have access to computers to learn a crucial 21st-century skill — coding — using only smartphones with which they can build apps to solve problems in their communities.

SuaCode.ai will go a long way to bring coding skills within arms reach of people across Africa, literally into their palms. And with the government and private sector struggling to fill positions for people with coding skills, SuaCode.ai will be the solution.

Young Africans will be able to obtain jobs and have improved economic outcomes.

Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Equip everyone, regardless of age, gender, education, location, or ability, with culturally relevant digital literacy skills to enable participation in the digital economy.

Explain how the problem you are addressing, the solution you have designed, and the population you are serving align with the Challenge.

Our solution is perfecting in line with our selected challenge as we are proving job-ready coding skills to young Africans using smartphones and AI and described in detail previously.

In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?

Accra, Ghana

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Growth: An organization with an established product, service, or business model rolled out in one or, ideally, several communities, which is poised for further growth.

Explain why you selected this stage of development for your solution.

We have run 4 pilots of our online smartphone-based course with 3000+ learners across 5 continents, 69 countries (42 in Africa), 600+ cities from 2018-2020 using existing platforms. Our recent completion rates are between 62% and 76%. We’ve been growing exponentially.

In cohort 1, we had 1117 applicants, accepted 30, and 7 completed

In cohort 2, we had 114 applicants , accepted 25 , and 6 completed

In cohort 3, we had 709 applicants, accepted 210, and 151 completed

In cohort 4, we had 2.K applicants, accepted 740, and 457 completed

Our alums have gone ahead to build further skills in programming on their own and through degree programs, obtained internships, jobs and studying computer science and engineering in top schools like MIT, Dartmouth, Yale.

We are refining our platform to enable us scale easily.

Who is the Team Lead for your solution?

George Boateng

More About Your Solution

If your solution has a website or an app, provide the links here:

https://nsesafoundation.org/suacode/

If you have additional video content that explains your solution, provide a YouTube or Vimeo link here:

What makes your solution innovative?

Our use of smartphones and AI makes the innovation unique, accessible, and scalable. More Africans have smartphones than computers and by using smartphones, we are using what is easily accessible to enable young Africans acquire digital skills and improve their career and economic prospects. Our novel bilingual AI Teaching Assistant Kwame will enable our students across Africa to get help in English and French when they get stuck while learning. This will increase engagement, the learning experience and consequently completion rates. Kwame can even be used by other course creators and educators in their courses. I believe our SuaCode.ai system will radically transform remote learning across Africa.

Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:

Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning
Software and Mobile Applications

Select the key characteristics of your target population.

Women & Girls
Children & Adolescents
Low-Income
Middle-Income
Refugees & Internally Displaced Persons
Minorities & Previously Excluded Populations

Which of the UN Sustainable Development Goals does your solution address?

4. Quality Education
8. Decent Work and Economic Growth

In which countries do you currently operate?

Ghana

In which countries will you be operating within the next year?

Ghana

How many people does your solution currently serve? How many will it serve in one year? In five years?

Now: 3K

In one year: 100K

In 5 years: 1M

How are you measuring your progress toward your impact goals?

We use the following key metrics:

Number of students enrolled in courses every month on the app
Ratings of courses
Completion rate of each
Number of alums that get internships or jobs
Number of alums that pursue coding-related majors.
Accuracy and time to response of our Kwame AI teaching assistant

About Your Team

What type of organization is your solution team?

Not registered as any organization

How many people work on your solution team?

10 part-time staff

How long have you been working on your solution?

2 years

How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?

George Boateng is a Computer Scientist, Engineer, PhD Candidate at ETH Zurich Switzerland (focusing on AI/Applied Machine Learning). He is also the Cofounder and President, Nsesa Foundation, an education nonprofit. George will oversee the running of the startup.

Victor Kumbol, Pharmacist, Neuroscientist, PhD student at the Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin. He is also the Cofounder and VP for Finance and Administration, Nsesa Foundation. Victor will oversee finance, human relation, corporate governance, etc.

We are pioneers and leaders of smartphone-based coding education in Africa. We are a team of scientists, and educators, born and raised in Ghana with more than 8+ years of experience teaching and mentoring young Africans primarily through our nonprofit, Nsesa Foundation. We have the technical skills to build the platform, expertise to create coding courses, and organizational skills to run the startup. And we have a team of software and AI engineers to develop the platform and operations leads to handle the logistics of the cohorts, sales, and marketing.

In 2017, we created SuaCode to teach millions across Africa to code. We have run 4 pilots over 3,000 learners from across the globe: 5 continents, 69 countries (42 in Africa) with an average completion rate of 62% which is above the industry standard of less than 10%. We have 5 peer-reviewed papers published by IEEE and ACM, prestigious engineering and computer science societies. Our alums have gotten coding internships and jobs and others are now studying computer science/engineering in top universities such as Yale, Dartmouth, MIT, Columbia, etc.

What is your approach to building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive leadership team?

We have committed to having a gender-balanced team consisting of people from across different parts of Africa. We believe that starts with our learners. Towards that end, we are intentional about encouraging more women to enroll in our coding courses through special mentoring opportunities with women in STEM. We are also putting efforts in ensuring people from all 54 African countries learn to code (now we have people from 42 African countries). These individuals will eventually become facilitators on our platform and mentor upcoming learners who look like them and have similar backgrounds.

Your Business Model & Partnerships

Partnership & Prize Funding Opportunities

Why are you applying to Solve?

First, we are applying to get the funds to enable us to scale our innovation. Secondly, the prestige and mentoring from the MIT Solve team will be instrumental in improving our technical solution, refining our business model and obtaining key partnerships to enable us to scale our impact to millions of Africans.

In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?

Public Relations (e.g. branding/marketing strategy, social and global media)
Product / Service Distribution (e.g. expanding client base)

Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The ASA Prize for Equitable Education? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.

Yes, I wish to apply for this prize

Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use The ASA Prize for Equitable Education to advance your solution?

Though our innovation is focused on Africa, our research reveals that it can easily be scaled and extended to the U.S.

As a parallel in the U.S. context, Black and Latinx people are severely underrepresented in the technology job space. As a Black person born and raised in Ghana who did my undergrad and master’s in the U.S. in computer science and engineering, and also worked as a software engineer in Silicon Valley, I deeply understand this underrepresentation.

Black and Latinx people do not have easy access to computers (58% and 57% ownership respectively) as they do smartphones (80% and 79% ownership respectively) according to Pew Research Center (2019). The disparity is probably worse for low-income, Black and Latinx people in particular. Yet having coding skills could improve their job prospects for high-salary coding-related jobs and consequently increase their representation in technology job spaces. Smartphones could be leveraged to introduce coding skills to them. And the convenience of being able to practice coding anyplace, anytime could deepen skills acquisition.

One of our future plans is to extend our solution for the U.S. context by making the course materials also available in Spanish. Additionally, we will have Black and Latinx software engineers serve as mentors. Low-income young people who don’t have access to smartphones can pick up these important coding skills via our SuaCode.ai platform while learning together with others like them, and receive mentoring.

Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The Andan Prize for Innovation in Refugee Inclusion? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.

Yes, I wish to apply for this prize

Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use The Andan Prize for Innovation in Refugee Inclusion to advance your solution?

Our solution can enable refugees to obtain digital skills using low-barrier technology (smartphones) which will enable them to easily assimilate economically since digital skills are needed everywhere.

Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The HP Prize for Advancing Digital Equity? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.

Yes, I wish to apply for this prize

Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use The HP Prize for Advancing Digital Equity to advance your solution?

Our solution is perfectly in line with this prize as we are providing job-ready digital skills to Africans using innovative, accessible technology (smartphones) and an AI teaching assistant.

Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for the Innovation for Women Prize? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.

Yes, I wish to apply for this prize

Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use the Innovation for Women Prize to advance your solution?

Our solution can be used to improve to economic prospects of women in particular via providing job-ready digital skills using innovative and accessible technology - smartphones.

Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The AI for Humanity Prize? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.

Yes, I wish to apply for this prize

Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use The AI for Humanity Prize to advance your solution?

Our solution is perfectly in line with this prize as we are providing job-ready digital skills to Africans using innovative technology smartphone-based bilingual AI teaching assistant, Kwame that helps students learn better especially when they get stuck which is critical to completing online courses.

Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The GSR Prize? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.

Yes, I wish to apply for this prize

Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use The GSR Prize Prize to advance your solution?

Our solution is perfectly in line with this prize as we are providing job-ready digital skills including those in the area of artificial intelligence to Africans using innovative technology smartphone-based bilingual AI teaching assistant, Kwame that helps students learn better especially when they get stuck which is critical to completing online courses.