Rori, a maths tutoring chatbot operating entirely over WhatsApp, is already changing how students in Ghana experience learning. Built by Rising Academies, an educational network partnering with 1,400 government schools across Africa, Rori asks students questions, reads their answers, and responds with encouragement and hints rather than simply handing over solutions. The questions are written by maths experts, and the material is text-based so it works on low-end smartphones.
The results from an early trial are hard to ignore. Around 500 Ghanaian school students were split into two groups: one used Rori for an hour a week, the other did not. After eight months and two tests, students who used Rori gained the equivalent of at least a year's worth of learning compared to the control group. The study was conducted with researchers at the University of Oxford and J-PAL. A larger trial covering five districts is now under way.
Rori is one piece of a much bigger shift. Across African schools, AI tools are helping teachers plan lessons, mark assignments, and even write textbooks. Students and teachers are also turning to Gemini, ChatGPT, and MetaAI, which is already embedded in WhatsApp. Rising Academies first experimented with reaching students through radio and text messages during the Covid-19 pandemic, when schools were closed. The chatbot grew out of that experience.
The excitement comes with real questions attached. Admire Mare, head of the Department of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Johannesburg and co-author of a report on AI in African education for the think-tank ECDPM, notes that most use of AI in schools is not yet guided by institutional policies. Researchers are also watching for "cognitive offloading," the risk that students let machines do the thinking for them, and for growing gaps between students who have access to these tools and those who do not.
What happens next will depend on whether schools, governments, and researchers can build proper guardrails before the technology moves faster than the policies meant to shape it.
Originally published by African Business.