Mama Mignonne teaches mathematics at a primary school in Musanze District. Every evening, after her tudents have left her classroom, she sits with a notebook and a pen, writing out the next day's lesson plan by hand. ALSO READ: When is the right time to expose children to AI? She goes ahead to prepare exercises, draw diagrams, and write out how she’ll explain fractions to her students in Kinyarwanda. It quickly approaches 8pm, her eyes are tired, her neck hurts, and she can’t stop thinking of her own children, waiting for her at home. ALSO READ: Rwanda speeds up AI integration into learning, teaching This is the reality for Mama Mignone and many other teachers like her across Africa. But what if there was a tool that could help her prepare better lessons in half the time? One that would handle most of the grinding, repetitive work so she could rest. ALSO READ: How AI integration could transform education Artificial intelligence, also known as “AI” is steadily making this dream a reality. Let’s begin by understanding AI. Briefly explained, it’s software that spots patterns and makes suggestions. That's it. You show it thousands of examples, like transcripts of lessons, and it learns what they have in common. Then when you ask it something about a lesson, it guesses based on what it's seen before. ALSO READ: Is AI threatening jobs or empowering Rwanda’s workforce? A good way to understand it in this context is, if you had a friend who'd read every textbook on fractions and could instantly say, try explaining it this way, that friend would be pretty helpful, right? AI is like that, except it never gets tired, and it can work offline. Back to Mama Mignone. She could tell an AI tool, My students didn't understand today. They got confused with improper fractions. The tool could suggest three different ways to teach it tomorrow. One way could be using a local folklore story, another using a song in Kinyarwanda, and a third using stuff from the local market. Mama Mignone would then pick what feels right for her class. Or think about a student in Nyamata who is learning English but is too shy to speak up in class. An AI app could listen to her practicing, give her feedback in Kinyarwanda privately, and let her build confidence without an audience watching. Teachers in other parts of Africa are already using these tools. In Kenya, the government has partnered with Microsoft and Google to build teachers' capacity in AI. This helps them use it for lesson planning, grading, and classroom management. In Nigeria, an EdTech company called ‘uLesson’ uses AI to track student progress and deliver personalized content through smartphones, reaching learners in resource-limited schools. And across the continent, African startups are experimenting with tools that work on basic mobile phones, even without reliable internet. Teachers in these early pilots report things like, I spend less time on marking and more time actually talking to kids about their work. This is enabling the teachers to offer personalized feedback to their students. Meanwhile, globally, the momentum is undeniable. South Korea just rolled out AI-powered digital textbooks for Mathematics and English, backed by $760 million in teacher training. China integrated AI into its national curriculum as a compulsory subject as of September 2025, beginning with children as young as six. Finland has had the ViLLE platform in roughly half its schools, giving students and teachers real-time feedback on assignments. And research shows that across the world, 86 percent of sampled students now use AI tools in some form for learning, though that number masks huge inequality: as most are in wealthy, well-connected places. Here's what Rwanda has that lots of places don't. We have real commitment to this kind of thinking. Teachers who care deeply and young people who are hungry to build things, not just use them. But Rwanda also faces what Africa faces: a digital divide. UNESCO found that fewer than 10 percent of schools worldwide - and even fewer in Africa - have official policies on AI use. That's dangerous. Without guardrails, AI can reinforce bias and deepen inequality. None of this works if Rwanda doesn't stay in control. If the Ministry of Education, teachers, and parents don't decide how AI gets used, it'll be decided for us. And that's a problem. AI trained mainly on English and American data gets weird when you ask it about Rwandan schools. It makes bad guesses. It might assume all families have internet at home, of which we don’t. It might be built only for fast internet and fail in Musanze where bandwidth is tight for Mama Mignone. And if AI tools are only available to Kigali's wealthier schools, while Nyamata's rural students are left behind, we'll have just made inequality worse. So, we need guardrails. Rwanda's government, teachers, and communities have to say, Here's how we'll use this. Here's what we won't. Kinyarwanda speakers get support. Tools get tested in actual Rwandan school environments before they're rolled out. Teachers keep their judgment. Always. And Rwanda can learn from what's working (and what's broken) in Kenya, South Korea, and elsewhere. The African Development Bank and organizations like the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) are funding projects right now: AI-powered sign language translation for deaf students in Kenya, culturally relevant children's books created with AI in Mali, localized science textbooks for DR Congo, Benin, and Cameroon. The work is happening. It's African, it's thoughtful, and it's grounded in real classrooms. If any continent can figure out how to use AI in schools without messing it up, it's Africa. It won't be easy. It won't be fast. But Rwanda, with its track record of digital ambition and its commitment to inclusion, can be part of leading the way. When the last bell rings a year or two from now, let it ring for Mama Mignone too. Not for longer nights and sore necks, but for tools that speak Kinyarwanda, work offline, and keep teachers in charge. Let’s make AI a quiet helper at the back of the room, supporting the teacher, lifting the child. And when Mama Mignone walks home at dusk, she won’t carry the weight alone; she’ll carry a promise we made together: to teach in our voice, for the welfare of every Rwandan child. Carl Mabuka is an MIT-certified AI professional and CEO of RWAiGHT, Rwanda’s leading AI consulting firm.
