ABSTRACT
Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest number of out-of-school children in the world and security and economic challenges continue to limit school enrollments. Even when children are in class, they face challenges. Many cannot learn effectively because subjects are taught in French or English rather than in their mother tongue. Teachers are often overworked with administrative tasks that can inhibit effective teaching. Artificial intelligence (AI) has vast potential to address these and other challenges in education systems to improve access to education and the quality of learning across the continent.
This project will establish a research network for responsible AI for education innovation to advance AI innovations that strengthen teaching, learning and school administrative functions in sub-Saharan Africa. The network will bring together researchers, developers and designers to develop relevant, responsible and scalable AI models and solutions to improve sustainable and inclusive education in Africa. By promoting AI developed on the continent, the project seeks to drive inclusive and sustainable education in Africa.
This project is part of the four-year AI for Development in Africa (AI4D Africa) partnership between the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and IDRC to support policy, innovations and expanded leadership that will spur responsible AI development in Africa. The mission of the program is to improve the quality of life for all in Africa and beyond by partnering with Africa’s science and policy communities to leverage AI through high-quality research, responsible innovation and strengthening talent.
LOCATION
Nigeria, University of Lagos
FUNDING
CA$ 1,248,100
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR:
- Oladipupo Sennaike
SUBPROJECTS
| Project 1 — AI assisted resource administering and allocation in Ethiopian Universities to improve Inclusion | ||
| Country: Ethiopia | Institution: Addis Ababa Science and Technology University, Addis Ababa Ethiopia | Principle Investigator: Prof Surafel Tilahun |
| Project Summary: The purpose of this project is to create an adaptive and customisable tool that will be used to create a conducive learning environment for disabled students in institutions of higher education. | ||
| Project 2 — AI4KSL: Bridging Language Barrier using Artificial Intelligence for Kenyan Sign Language among Deaf Learners. | ||
| Country: Kenya | Institution: Maseno University, Kenya | Principle Investigator: Dr. Lilian Wanzare |
| Project Summary: This project seeks to develop an assistive Artificial Intelligence technology for Kenyan Sign Language (AI4KSL) that translates spoken English to Kenyan Sign Language (KSL) for deaf people with visual representation using virtual signing characters. | ||
| Project 3 — Leveraging Machine Translation and Text-to-Speech Technologies for Disseminating Educational content in Native Nigerian languages. | ||
| Country: Nigeria | Organization: YorubaName, Nigeria | Principle Investigator: Mr. Kolawole Olatubosun |
| Project Summary: The aim of this project is to curate parallel corpora for the three main Nigerian languages (Hausa, Igbo, and Yorùbá) that cover the two core disciplines or domains which are: agricultural science and civic education; with each discipline having 8,000, and in total 16,000 parallel sentences per language. | ||
| Project 4 — Development of Responsible AI application for Personalized learning of Primary School Mathematics in major Nigerian languages. | ||
| Country: Nigeria | Institution: Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria | Principle Investigator: Mr Shamsuddeen Muhammad |
| Project Summary: The aim of this research is to develop a responsible, ethical and locally developed artificial intelligence (AI)-drivensolution to influence and facilitate the processes of teaching and learning non-linguistic subjects in Nigerian primary schools, with mathematics as the case study. | ||
| Project 5 — Design and Implementation of Amharic Text-to-Speech System for Visual Impaired and Blind Students. | ||
| Country: Ethiopia | Institution: Debre Markos University, Institute of Technology, Ethiopia | Principle Investigator: Mr. Walelign Tewabe Sewunetie |
| Project Summary: The objective of this research project is to develop an Amharic TTS system, which is mainly used to address the issue of equity and inclusion of visually impaired and blind students in Ethiopia. | ||
| Project 6 — Development of AI-Driven Text2Sign-Sign2Text System for Enabling Inclusive Education of Pupils with Hearing Impairment. | ||
| Country: Nigeria | Institution: Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile- Ife, Nigeria | Principle Investigator: Dr. Franklin Oladiipo ASAHIAH |
| Project Summary: The goal of this project is to develop a sign-to-text and text-to-sign software system that will enable seamless interactions among the students-hearing and hearing impaired- and their teachers. | ||
| Project 7 — Designing and assessing an Artificial Intelligence-enabled e-tutorial platform for gender-inclusive learning in rural South Africa. | ||
| Country: South Africa | Institution: African Institute for Inclusive Growth, South Africa | Principle Investigator: Prof Nicholas Ngepah |
| Project Summary: The purpose of this project is to leverage on the e-learning concept being developed by the AIIG’s technology partner – Social Coding, to formalise and test its efficacy in improving educational access and performance for rural girls and learners in general in South Africa. | ||