Meet ThandiCompatibilitySupportRefer a teacher or schoolLinkedIn
Public-interest AI for Africa

AI built in Africa,
stays in Africa.

Two in three Africans are not online, so the AI boom is passing most of the continent by. We build AI that runs on the phone itself: no signal, no data, and nothing a learner types ever leaves the device. We start with education.

  • MdaliMember ofNVIDIA Inception Program
  • Offline by design
  • Conversations stay on the phone
  • CAPS maths, Grades 10 to 12
  • Built in South Africa
Why offline

Most of Africa can't use cloud AI.

Africa has more than 1.5 billion people, and most of them are not online. The barrier is no longer the signal. It is the cost of data and of a phone that can use it. AI that needs the internet leaves them out.

64%of Africans are not onlineITU, 2025
63%live within mobile coverage but do not use mobile internetGSMA, 2025
4.2%of monthly income buys a 2GB mobile plan in AfricaITU, 2024
2.7%of rural South African homes have internet at homeStats SA, 2025
The learning crisis

Why we start with education.

Too many learners are falling behind, and there are not enough teachers to reach them one by one. A patient tutor on the phone they already have can help close that gap.

89%of 10-year-olds in Sub-Saharan Africa cannot read a simple textWorld Bank, 2022
118mchildren and young people in Africa are out of schoolUNESCO, 2023
15mmore teachers needed in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030UNESCO
35%of South African Grade 9s score below the lowest maths benchmarkTIMSS 2023, DBE
81%of South African Grade 4s cannot read for meaningPIRLS 2021, DBE
35learners for every state-paid teacher in South AfricaDBE, 2024
Founding pilot · Gauteng

Building for education first.

Thandi, our private maths tutor for Grades 10 to 12, is in a founding pilot with teachers and district officials across Gauteng. Every reply is generated on the phone itself, so it keeps working without signal or data, and no conversation ever reaches a server.

40,000+Tokens generated on phones
0Conversations sent to a server
10–12CAPS grades
What we're building

Technology for a new era

01

Privacy by design

Your data never leaves your phone. No cloud servers. No surveillance. Just pure on-device processing that’s POPIA compliant from the ground up. We adapt world-class open-source models for African education, putting students and teachers in control of their information.

02

Offline-first

Download once, learn forever. Our models run entirely on your device, so students can get homework help in classrooms without WiFi, and teachers can access educational resources without burning data. Internet goes down? Learning continues.

03

Built for the devices you already have

Thandi runs today on phones with 4GB of RAM, and we’re working to bring it to 2GB phones. We’re not building for flagship devices. We’re building for the real Africa, where learning happens on whatever phone you can get your hands on.

04

African languages, African contexts

Thandi teaches in English today, grounded in the South African curriculum and South African examples. African languages are next on our roadmap, built with the communities that speak them. Built by Africans, for Africans.

Co-create with us

Public models for good, built together.

We are building for education first. Alongside it, we partner with institutions that want to co-create public AI models for the sectors Africa runs on: models that run on the phone, work offline and keep people's data with them.

Healthcare

4doctors for every 10,000 people in Africa, about a third of what is neededWHO Africa, 2026

Offline support for community health workers, in the languages their patients speak.

Agriculture

49%of workers in Sub-Saharan Africa work in agricultureILO via World Bank, 2025

Advice for farmers that works in the field, with no signal.

Mining

40%+of the world’s cobalt, manganese and platinum reserves are in AfricaIEA, 2022

Safety, skills and community models for the industry and the places it operates.

Culture and history

1 in 3of the world’s languages is spoken in Africa, and up to 10% could disappear within a centuryUNESCO, 2025

Keeping languages and histories alive in models their communities own.

Telecommunications

31%of mobile connections in Sub-Saharan Africa are 4GGSMA, 2023

AI that runs on the device, so it reaches customers on any network.

Legal

5.1bnpeople worldwide have a justice need they cannot resolveWorld Justice Project, 2019

Plain-language legal information, private by design.

Partner with us
How your data is handled

Private by mechanism, not by promise.

The tutor runs entirely on the phone, so it works in airplane mode — there is no cloud to send a conversation to. The only thing that leaves the device is a small, anonymous stream of app-health numbers, tied to a random ID, never a name.

✓ What leaves the phone
  • Token counts — proof the on-device model did real work
  • Battery & performance — so tutoring never drains a cheap phone
  • Device model & app screens — which phones to support, where setup drops off
× What never does
  • The conversation — not one word a learner types
  • Identity — no name, email or phone number
  • Location & carrier — IP-geolocation disabled; network operator stripped
Read the full privacy policy →

Join us

We're creating the AI infrastructure Africa deserves. Get early access and be part of building the future of education on the continent.