Injini, a South African ed-tech incubator, accelerator and think tank focused on improving educational outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa, has launched an eight-month AI for Education venture builder and incubation programme with support from philanthropic funder Coefficient Giving.
The programme is designed to help teams develop AI-powered education products for African classrooms, starting with problem validation and customer research before moving into product development and live pilots. Injini, which was founded in 2017 and is a registered non-profit company and member of the UVU Africa Group, said the initiative will support 12 pre-formed teams.
The first five months make up the Venture Build phase. Teams will work through problem validation, customer research and solution design before building a functional AI-powered minimum viable product and running a live pilot. The aim is to generate data from actual use that can inform the development of the ventures.
The programme will then select five teams for a three-month Incubation phase. Those ventures will work on their products, business models and go-to-market strategies, with monitoring, evaluation and learning support. Each will also receive $25,000 in equity-free seed capital.
“We’ve spent years engaging with brilliant people across the region who understand education problems intimately, but lack the team, capital, or clear path to build a solution,” said Krista Davidson, executive director at Injini.
“Add to this that Africa is significantly underrepresented in the data training AI tools. If we don’t build our own solutions now, we risk ed-tech that simply doesn’t work for African classrooms. This venture builder is aimed at closing these gaps.”
Applications are open to small teams, with three or more co-founders preferred. All team members must be based in South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia or Zimbabwe. Applications close on September 27.
