Nyansapo AI

18 million students in East Africa do not complete primary school. This cripples their chances for success later in life. Through external education programs, NGOs have been confronting this issue by using a proven method called Teaching at the Right Level, but it has unneeded expenses and inefficiencies. For NGO program managers, providing paper learning materials and assessment booklets can become a huge strain on their program budgets. Their paper data collection methods are messy, insecure, and often inaccurate. Transporting all of the paper records is costly. And, more students need help than their programs can manage. NGO instructors are having trouble recording large amounts of data about their students - it is time-consuming, exhausting, and not the best use of their abilities. The Nyansapo mobile app is innovating on the Teaching at the Right Level process with 3 enhancements: digital, intelligent assessments that are independent and informative, automatic, dynamic grouping that is quick and effortless, and a library of targeted activities that instructors can use quickly – all while collecting detailed, essential data for NGOs in the background. Teaching at the Right Level provides building blocks for children who cannot meaningfully gain skills during normal classroom instruction. Nyansapo AI seeks to partner with the work of NGOs using Teaching at the Right Level to build a strong foundation for students. This is the mission of Nyansapo, a word that means “wisdom knot.” We believe that if we help a student build the proper foundation of literacy skills, that “strong knot” of wisdom can carry them throughout their future education.

The Nyansapo AI team is a collaboration between people from all over the world. Edward Amoah and Mumbe Mwangangi are the founders of the project. Edward graduated with a degree in Computer Engineering and is currently pursuing his MS program at Penn State, USA. Mumbe is an expert on Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) and has conducted many TaRL intervention programs in her community in Voo, Kitui County, Kenya. Mumbe is currently pursuing her MS program at Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology, Kenya. Edward and Mumbe met in Kisumu, Kenya through the Penn State Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship (HESE) program. Edward and Mumbe work with hard-working and passionate undergraduate students through the HESE program. The HESE team is led by Emily Snow, a sophomore majoring in Biomedical Engineering at Penn State. The other members include Adam Karan, Tanish Rastogi, Nikki So, and Lauren Werner - all of whom are enrolled at Penn State University and bring their individual expertise to the project. In addition, Justice Eli is the lead mobile application developer. Justice is an intern on Nyansapo AI who is studying at the University of Nairobi. Justice’s internship with Nyansapo AI is the result of a partnership with EldoHub, an innovation entrepreneurship center in Eldoret, Kenya.